Interview with Dejah, a climate justice organizer in her 20’s.

What brought you into climate work and the climate movement?

I grew up in Chicago and was on a path to become an environmental scientist, a marine biologist, and I studied abroad in my junior year of college. I did a climate change program where we traveled three different countries – Morocco, Vietnam and Bolivia, and it was the first time that I ever got in a real deep understanding of the root of the climate crisis, getting to our economic system and capitalism and neoliberalism. And there’s a light bulb moment in my head where I’m like, oh, this is a systems issue. It’s not enough for me to just study it, but I have to transform structures and systems of power to address this issue. So, I pivoted away from science and moved towards movement building and organizing. So I joined Sunrise in January of 2019 and joined the Chicago Hub and sort of came at a time when I was looking for a movement to be a part of.

How would you describe your approach to organizing and mobilizing young people on climate?

I think our approach in Sunrise is really about base building, membership building and direct action. And so we have the Green New Deal as our sort of core campaign vision. I think for us a lot of what we do is try to bring young people and train and develop them, give them some clear – I guess – sense of skills needed to be able to do the work around addressing the climate crisis and winning a Green New Deal. And so a lot of our programs in Sunrise that we run – I’m on our national staff – sort of work to bring young folks under 35 into the movement and sort of give them the heart and skills needed to build power, build bases, and build a membership to ultimately push for federal Green New Deal type policy.

Do you see any differences in your approaches based on age? 

I think for us we are experimenting with a lot of like digital and online stuff given that a lot of young people are on Instagram, are on TikTok, and so are really trying to experiment with ways that we take action that then go viral online that then bring people into our movements — that we can absorb into the different programs that we have.

Thinking back to before the pandemic, pre-March 2020 – what did you consider the most effective way to engage and mobilize young people on climate? 

OK, two things around this. There’s one about depth and one about scale. I think scale wise, social media is probably one of the biggest ways that we engage young people, and we have a Comms, a Digital Team, that’s experimenting with this. But how do we run exciting videos, create exciting content that attracts young people and brings them in. This was before the pandemic. But I think, and I think from my experience in the Chicago Hub, we never really canvassed. We would like table occasionally, but a lot of the ways that people came to Sunrise was through [action]… They saw an action, they saw us on social media and they wanted to join. Post-pandemic, I think we still do that and are still leaning on that a lot but have made a really big shift towards trying to really base-build and like get in community, talk to our neighbors, talk to our friends, talk to our people, and really meet people face-to-face and organize them.

During the pandemic, what were the primary ways that your organizing and your job changed? 

Yeah, I think during the pandemic a lot of our work was virtual, which is very hard. I originally got hired in Sunrise to be a regional organizer, had plans to travel across the Midwest and, you know, run training for hubs, develop their leadership, build their teams – and that didn’t happen. And so I think it was really hard – it is really hard – to like build relationships with people when you aren’t with them in-person. But it’s interesting because while that was a challenge, we also had in the Chicago hub at the time our biggest hub meetings ever, because we were on Zoom and people from across the city could come together, they weren’t limited by— they could “only come to the meetings on the north side” or “on the South side.” And so there was an interesting relationship between like, our engagement with people and the times during the pandemic. I would also say people have more free time with like, getting checks from the government, and so they didn’t have to work as much and they could organize with Sunrise. And so yeah, I don’t know if there’s like a direct correlation around the impact of the pandemic on achieving our goals.

Do you think it’s important to build a sense of collective efficacy or confidence among peers? How does that change with online organizing and activism?

I think that there are limitations to online organizing, and –as an organizer right now in Sunrise–on like using digital tools and systems as the floor and not the ceiling. And that really to organize people into our movement who are ready to take the risk and escalate, and sort of do what must be done to address climate change – I don’t think we’re going to get that solely from being in a relationship with people online. And so yeah, I think to build a sense of collective efficacy, we really need to be meeting people in-person and I think a lot of Sunrise’s work has shifted towards figuring out how to do that. And again, I think there’s still a role for online organizing, but it’s the basis and the start – not the end.

Do you see any parallels between the ways in which the U.S. govt has handled Covid and the way that it could address climate change?

This is a great question. I think the biggest threat – through both of them – is the inability to actually see the problem. I felt this with the Republican Party, and I think the Republican Party’s response to both COVID and climate are pretty similar, where it’s like, deny, deny, deny that the problem exists. Other parallels, I think another one is around solutions that don’t actually get to the core or root of the problem. For climate especially, it’s like we just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is one of the biggest climate pieces of legislation in history, and still is also is nowhere near enough of what is needed. And I think one of the biggest things is that it doesn’t do is deliver a dent, or death blow – as I like to call it – to the fossil fuel industry – one of the biggest entities in the way of massive progress on climate. And so that feels like an issue or a parallel. Yeah, to the first point around the not seeing the problem and kind of just ignoring it and then another problem around not getting to the core or root of the issue.

How do you feel about the Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to climate action, and any actions they’ve taken thus far?

I’m completely underwhelmed. And you know, the Inflation Reduction Act has passed and there is a recent LNG decision that came out, but to me, when you look at the data and the context of the liquified natural gas, it’s actually I think six or nine wells that are being paused but not stopped and shut down. And I think, yeah, they would get an F in my report card if I had to grade them on climate action. The fossil fuel industry still has an immense amount of power. We are providing carrots for decarbonization. So like incentives, tax rebates for corporations and businesses, not sticks. And not actually doing things like pushing for a phase out of fossil fuels, which is one of the biggest indicators for me that we’re not on track to decarbonize our society. A then I think there’s also the piece around like social safety net, which is why I was so in love with the Green New Deal – that it wasn’t just about carbon in the atmosphere, it was about building a society where eople have good housing, good access to transit, they can breathe clean air, they have good, dignified union jobs; and I think Biden has – because of people like Joe Manchin and caving to his interests – not done enough.

How about Congress?

I think I would say the same thing about Congress.

How do you generally feel about the state of the youth climate movement and our prospects for progress? Are we moving in the right direction?

So I think my biggest feeling and sentiment about the youth climate movement, I think one: it’s disparate. I’m sort of deep in Sunrise, and so I’m really like… Sunrise is my world. I feel like there are burgeoning groups like Climate Defiance and Pop in New York City that are sort of coming together very direct action-ey. But I think the biggest gap to me is that there is no overall strategy or plan to deeply weaken the power of the fossil fuel industry. This is something that I’m like always harping on in Sunrise. We can run really powerful campaigns and we’re running one right now that actually does try to do this – there’s a End the Fossil Fuel Era demand around having the government prosecute and go after fossil fuel executives, and doing things like ending subsidies, but I think we like, must reckon with the power of the fossil fuel industry and work to obliterate it if we are to pass anything like a Green New Deal or massive federal climate policy. And so yeah, I think I’m like, we need a stronger strategy in the youth climate movement around addressing the fossil fuel industry. I think we also need to articulate a very clear vision of society, sort of the post-Green, I don’t know, eco capitalist [world]—I don’t know if that’s a word…but I think the other thing that we’re missing is like putting forth this vision of the world that young people feel excited about – a world where people have clean air, clean water, the right to rest and play, the right to have housing that isn’t expensive and is green; have access to jobs that are meaningful, whether you’re an artist or an organizer or a teacher that’s like low-carbon oriented. I think we’ve missed out on this vision. Like, right now we’re living in the dreams and nightmares – honestly – of billionaires, and wealthy white people, and I think we need to articulate a more sharper and clearer vision – to me – the vision of the Green New Deal. And to energize young people and get them fired up about an alternative. And yeah, I think there could be some more coordination between some of these groups like Sunrise and the Extinction Rebellions. I don’t really talk to folks in those spaces that much, and I think it could be helpful for coordination.

And that I think the only other final thing I’ll say, which maybe is a spicier take, I just think strategy… I come back to strategy and power when I’m thinking about the work and organizing that I’m doing in Sunrise. I see so many people that are taking action, being very bold and brave, and standing up to power. But it is not always in the context of a campaign or doesn’t have a clear arc or campaign around it… or strategy to be honest. And I just think a lot about like Martin Luther King Jr and Bloody Sunday, I believe, and how actions were art couched within a broader campaign that was about energizing people, bringing them to the movement and growing the movement. I think sometimes I felt this in Sunrise in the past where we were taking action but there wasn’t any coherent strategy or campaign within it; and we I think we’ve done that better lately. But I think my agitation to organizers and activists is like: good strategy. And there is a really good book – Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, that might be by some like business-ey guy, but it’s really helpful that it states we have to always be assessing power: Who has it? What do we want? Who’s in the way? Who can give us what we want? And like building campaigns and strategy that are actually rooted in a power assessment or power analysis. I think sometimes you like, throw shit at the wall and we need to do that a little bit more strategically because the opposition is incredibly organized and we need to be too.