Campaign Lessons from the Fight for the Green New Deal
Social movements can be experiences of empowerment and liberation, or on the other hand, experiences of burnout, confusion, or defeat – feelings that most often come about when it feels unclear how we can win or our plan to get there.
Campaigns are a sequence of activities that build towards a shared goal. Good campaigns feel empowering, have a clear strategy, and welcome the agency and creativity of people to participate. Good campaigns transform what is possible in our societies.
This exclusive PowerLabs webinar with Dyanna Jaye, a co-founder of Sunrise Movement, covers Sunrise’s campaign for a Green New Deal from its launch in 2018 through the 2020 General Elections, with special focus on the planning and analysis that informed action.
Before the 2018 midterm elections, climate change ranked low in priorities for the Democratic Party, and any plans the party may have had were wildly insufficient to measure up to the scale of the crisis we face. Sunrise Movement and newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched the Green New Deal in late 2018. The movement maintained a popular campaign behind the demand through the 2020 General Election that mobilized an army of young people, transformed the conversation on climate policy, and made the crisis a top and unavoidable political issue.
By watching this webinar recording, you’ll understand how Sunrise paired the big, inspiring demand of the Green New Deal with specific instrumental campaigns to move forward over a long campaign arc, and how Sunrise took action in opportune moments to bring attention and grow support for our cause.
You’ll also learn a campaign framework and principles to plan people-powered campaigns that engage people in a long-term plan and shape the political conversation.
This presentation was recorded in April 2022.
Links mentioned in the recording
Videos about Sunrise
Saturday Night Live: Senator Dianne Feinstein responds to footage of her arguing with school children about climate change with a special campaign message. Watch the interaction that led to the parody video.
Readings about Sunrise
Concepts and content that were mentioned on the webinar
Sunrise’s approach to campaigns is influenced by The DeMarco Factor: Transforming Public Will Into Political Power.
Momentum is the training institute and movement incubator that was mentioned. Sign up for their newsletter to get notified of their next training.
Frontloading is the process of movement design and planning.
Intensive training is a key component of Sunrise’s ability to have a mass movement that acts with unity and autonomy. Learn more about mass training programs in this webinar led by Dani Moscovitch of IfNotNow. The centrality of mass training is inspired by Otpor, the Serbian youth movement to remove Slobodan Milošević from power. Training materials from Otpor folks are available here.
The Our Plan to Win house party guide. Links to the videos are on page 2. Sunrise also produces magazines as an organizing tool.
Almost half of the people on the frontlines of the anti-abortion movement were pro-choice or had mixed views on the eve of their involvement in the movement. A summary of Ziad Munson’s research: How People Become Pro-Life Activists.
Presenters
Dyanna Jaye is a consultant at PowerLabs where she supports organizations to design and run people-powered campaigns. Dyanna is a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, where she helped launch the Green New Deal. As the National Organizing Director, she supported the movement to grow to 500 local chapters, contact 6.5 million voters, and elevate climate change as an urgent issue across the United States.
Before Sunrise, Dyanna led delegations to the United Nations climate negotiations and co-founded a statewide student organizing network, for which she won the Brower Youth Award. She also serves on the board of the U.S. Climate Action Network, is a chapter author in Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can.
Evan Weber is a climate justice activist born and raised on the island of Oahu in Hawai'i, where his home community is seeing the effects of the climate crisis first hand. He is the co-founder of U.S. Climate Plan and Sunrise Movement, organizations pushing the boundaries of what it means to take true climate action, take on the fossil fuel industry, and inspire a new generation into action.
He has been a leader in pushing for bolder climate policies inside Washington, DC — pressuring Congressional leaders to reject fossil fuel projects and resist Trump’s agenda and push the Obama administration for more robust regulatory action — as well as outside Washington — training leaders in over a dozen states to shift the political weather on climate action through popular movements, and supporting cohorts of youth activists to create statewide bottom-up networks that can flex independent political power for change.
Prior to starting U.S. Climate Plan, Evan had professional experience in the utility industry, green building, environmental advocacy, and electoral campaigning. He has backgrounds and experience in student and community organizing, social movement theory and pedagogy, environmental law and economics, and non-profit management.
Randall Smith is the founder of PowerLabs. He specializes in helping clients use evidence-based strategies and tactics for high-participation, people-powered campaigns.
Organizations he has worked with include Courage California, Dream Defenders, Forward Together, Free Press, IfNotNow, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Movimiento Cosecha, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and Sunrise Movement.
Previously, Randall led a team that provided strategic support to user-generated campaigns on Change.org's platform. His work at Change.org helped people win life-changing (and life-saving) victories including freeing loved ones from prison and changing the policies that govern lung transplants for kids. His team at Change.org garnered the company millions of dollars of earned media, and added millions of users to the platform.
He also led the digital program at Corporate Accountability International, an international NGO that protects people and the environment from corporate abuses. He’s also worked in the immigrant rights movement and built tenant unions in Arizona and trained thousands of people across the U.S. during the alter-globalization movement.
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Some of the projects we worked on recently include:
Supported Dream Defenders, MN350, Pilipino Workers Center, Sunrise Movement, and other organizations to design, launch, and support teams of members
Coached leadership teams at Alabama Arise, People’s Action, Sunrise Movement to improve their effectiveness
Advised founding teams of several new organizations in the US, Canada, and Europe on how to grow a powerful and healthy organization