Transcript

How I Built Resilience: Varshini Prakash of Sunrise Movement

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And thanks. Hey everyone and welcome to How I Built This Resilience Edition. On these episodes, as many of you know, we talk with entrepreneurs and change makers about how they're meeting today's challenges with new strategies and ideas. And today we're going to hear from Varshini Prakash, the co-founder and executive director of Sunrise Movement. It's an organization founded by young people to mobilize against climate change and to make the issue a top priority in the United States. Barcini launched Sunrise in 2017, along with just a handful of like minded activists, and it's since grown into one of the largest youth movements in the world. In the country.

We were just young people who were fed up with seeing politicians kicking the can down the road, sweeping what is the greatest. threat facing our generation under the rug and refusing to deal with the reality of the crisis at hand and realized, you know, at the the young age of well, I was twenty two at the time, um There weren't any adults in the room and we had to step up and take action. How did you begin to Organized.

what would become sunrise movement. So it's you and a a few friends I guess and you're all committed to climate activism. I mean it was a number of us who were kind of getting activated in the Obama days, right? So I was working on a a fossil fuel divestment campaign at UMass Amherst where I went to school. Others of us were working on the international climate negotiations or uh fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline or so on and so forth. And I think we realized that the sort of culmination of the Obama years that Much had been won, but at the same time the power of our movements were not keeping pace with the rising seas, uh the worsening storms.

Essentially there was a crisis that was becoming a full blown emergency and we didn't have a force that could contend with the disaster that would be upon us. And so we actually went into a period of study, we gathered about twelve young climate activists from around the country. We went into a period of study for a year, um, learning from other social movements, uh, the civil rights movement, LGBTQ movements, so far as you know, Indian revolutionary movements to understand How to build mass movements. And then we also realized as we were watching Bernie Sanders gain power, but also Donald Trump, when we reckoned with the fact that The climate fight, the climate crisis was not an urgent political issue by any means in this country that we had to combine our social movement organizing with political power. Um, and so when we launched in the summer of 2017, we had our our theory of changes were largely around building

A critical massive enthusiastically supported public officials on the issue, um, building a a large and active vocal disruptive base of young people, um, and combining those two strategies for long term change. So Barcini, it's so interesting because there's so many parallels, right, between what you do and and what an entrepreneur does when they start a a business. I mean you are an entrepreneur in in that sense and I hope that I hope that's okay if it's an entrepreneurial Venture.

And it's not just about businesses, it's also about Things like this. Building a mass movement can't happen spontaneously. You can't just say to everybody, hey, let's show up here at five o'clock. Like There is real hard work.

to organize people, right? Because once you organize people, then you amplify An idea through. thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of voices. So how do you begin to Organised people. From one cell, one small group to

Thousands. Yeah. I mean, I will say the beginning days of sunrise were not nearly as pretty as the actions at Pelosi's office or whatever else that people might know us from. Um we had literally six of us or eight of us at the beginning. It was all over the country. So some of us were based in Kentucky, some in Michigan, some in California. Um, all over and the first thing that we ever did as sunrise um was we took 15 of our friends and we canvassed, we went and talked to like over a thousand people at the People's Climate March in April of 2017. Two months later we brought together 20 of the top leaders that we had worked with in the climate movement up until that point to Pennsylvania to Philly, where we trained them in the basic sort of theory of change, the strategy, the story that encompasses sunrise movement and

Issue to call to action. Like we want you to go back to the communities that you came from and start a local chapter in sunrise and start pushing your politicians to get off of fossil fuel money to put forward climate plans that are commensurate with what the science is mandating. And that kind of grew and expanded and we did trainings I remember like sleeping on the floors of of just people I barely knew uh in Colorado or you know, going out there and doing some trainings that like three people showed up to in the beginning days because no one knew who we were or what we were up to. Um, but slowly and slowly we built chapters across the country, but I think everything came to a head when we did this Quite dramatic direct action at Nancy Pelosi's office about a week after Democrats took back control of Congress in 2018.

And said you know Our generation just helped you get back into office. Now we need you to take action and have our backs by backing the Green New Deal and by mandating that any Democrat that wants to clean the mantle of leadership in this party swears off of oil and gas money. And I think because that moment people weren't used to seeing People issue challenges to democrats. People weren't used to seeing

youth movements taking action and because there was Just a real moment around the climate disasters that were taking place during that time and the IPCC report that had just come out. And this new leader in Congress, Alexandro Ocasio Cortez, who joined us at that action, I think it created this moment of the whirlwind just in six months following that action and all of the action that took place afterwards, we went from having just twenty chapters to having over four hundred in six months. So I mean it's an important lesson, which is that

Had you tried to kind of grow the movement simply by just reaching out to other activists. It might have been a slower. Totally. but by doing something dramatic. going to Nancy Pelosi's office, sitting in there, you got a lot of media attention. And that essentially

enabled you to attract enough attention where a lot of other young people were like, Well, what is this thing? Let's let it check it out. Right, exactly. And so it's it's coupling these big viral moments that garner media attention, but also just spread the word organically to potentially millions of people who have never heard of a movement like this before, but would totally want to participate in one. And then giving them routine, consistent opportunities and structures within their own communities that they can take action on the day to day. So it's like, yes, come to DC. We issued the call, and over a thousand young people came to D within 10 days, three weeks following this action at Pelosi's office. And then they went back to their communities and started local chapters where they could continue the work. And so I think, you know, both combining the viral moments.

But also the brass tax day to day grassroots organizing that is what builds power in local communities. You know, after the pandemic began, um, there were so many people who really wanted to help frontline healthcare workers, for example, or people who were doing essential services. My wife got involved in a group called Frontline Foods and literally overnight. And this was really A lot of the people who kind of built this movement came from the tech sector and what sh what her observation was was how remarkable the

we're able to scale this organization. See it becoming a huge organization with millions of dollars. In a matter of weeks and These people have experience scaling movements or scaling businesses. So for them it was like, okay, here's the playbook. And it was so interesting to hear that perspective. And I wonder whether There's something to that with what you're doing because what you're doing is

Life or death, right? It's not about building the next tech company or how to get CBD delivered to your house faster with a lot of you know, right? Or like how to get a pizza robot made. This is about like our lives and the lives of our children, what you're trying to do. So Do you Do you look to those models for kind of inspiration on how to how to scale what you're doing to to something that is so big that it cannot be ignored.

Абсолют, амі, да. For us, we are also recognizing when you consider the expanse of what it means to tackle the climate crisis. It isn't just, you know, okay, we decarbonize or whatever. There is a whole I mean, we probably have to pass dozens of pieces of legislation at the federal level over the next decade of time, which means that people with our values have to govern and hold on to governing power for perhaps a decade or longer. I mean growing up sort of at the line between uh the death of bipartisanship and the birth of political tribalism. And it is almost inconceivable for me to even imagine the federal government being able to pass that level of policy. So for us to exert the kind of pressure both outside the halls of Congress as well as electing the kind of people who can exert internal pressure, that will require a movement of millions. Um and what Sunrise is attempting to do is

you know, taking direct action, but also ultimately we are going to have to create a movement that has millions of people that can quite literally bring business as usual to a halt in this country that can say, you know what, like our institutions our governments, our towns, our cities, they cannot continue to operate as though this crisis is not upon us, and that will require many, many more millions of people being in the streets. Pershing, it's very frustrating, I think, for many people that climate change has become a political issue because mass hurricanes um kill democrats and republicans. I live in Northern California, the choking smoke. damages the lungs of people on the left and the right. It doesn't matter who you are. Climate change is real. It's a scientific fact. And the fact that it's

Controversial is insane. But That's the reality. So opponents of what you do. They um have played a very powerful game of Seizing power and and a

pursuit of power. Yeah. Um at the expense of things like bipartisanship and compromise. Do you now believe that people in your generation and people with your political values have to actually do the same thing, but from the other side of of the aisle? Yeah, absolutely. I think we realized very early on we cannot continue to just rail against

A a set of people in the political establishment who do not come from our communities, who do not hold our values. We have to kick people like that out of office. And we have to replace them with people who will fight for our communities. And that might not happen in the next two years or the next three years, but We are showing right now that young people you know, people in general are ready to get politically activated. There are lots of Democrats who, while they may purport to understand the science, have not taken action or heeded the dire warnings and are not fighting with with a deep Understanding And visceral understanding of what the calamities are ahead of us. And so, you know, we saw Jamal Bowman oust Elliot Engle in New York 14.

Sunrise teenagers, literally teenagers, made eight hundred and fifty thousand of the one point three million phone calls that were made to voters in his district, ultimately helping him defeat Elliot Engle. Like I'm watching 14 year olds who can't even vote in this election, who are training and leading hundreds of other young people. in how to get politically activated. So this is a possibility. I feel a lot of hope around that and I think our next generation is is fully activated. When we come back in just a moment, Farsini talks more about how sunrise brings new voices into the movement and also how it responds to criticism.

About its tactics. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition. From NPR. And one more thing, the New York Times best selling book, How I Built This, is now available. It's a great read and a great gift for anyone looking for ideas, inspiration, wisdom, and encouragement to have the courage to put out an idea into the world.

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Hey, welcome back to how I built this resilience edition, and I'm talking with Varshini Prakash, the co-founder and executive director of Sunrise Movement. And earlier we heard her talk about the sit in that they did at Nancy Pelosi's office back in twenty eighteen. Today, a lot of people tell Varsini that that was a great strategic move. But at the time? Sunrise got

Quite a bit of pushback. That day I was getting Call after call after call from reporters being like, Why on earth are you going after Democrats? Why on earth would you do that? Um, why would you make these choices? And I mean we've also gone after Republicans in the same way, asking like why do you need to use these sort of disruptive conflict oriented tactics? But the truth is, like, it has sparked the conversation. You know, many of these tactics that were used really we learned from studying the civil rights movement, who were expert strategists. Amazing organizers. I mean. is is one of the best anybody wants to start a business should read about the bus boycots. And how how in the methodical

careful planning that went into that. That's organized. thousands of people and then create, you know, carpools to bring people to work. And project C in Birmingham stood for project confrontation. And this was you know these were you know strategically wielded Moments of action that were Aimed at forcing an entire nation to grapple with the reality of black Americans in this country and you saw kids getting shot at and

fire hose and unleash dogs upon and it was something that woke the nation to the crisis at hand around white supremacy. And so, you know, I don't think we're at that stage quite yet with the climate movement, but I think For people to truly understand. You know, the reason why we do civil disobedience or the reason why we take this type of of action is so people so that we can bring the kind of private suffering that is happening all across the country into public relief and force that into the national dialogue and debate. Yeah, Marcini, it's it's interesting because

You understand the urgency of climate action, and many, many people do, but there are many people who For some reason, I'm sure you've encountered them who just don't. It might be somebody who's afraid of losing their job or that they work in an industry that depends on you know, fossil fuels or whatever it might be. Do you even try to engage? Those

people or do you focus on on just energizing people who are already who already believe in in the science. I would say for the most part we focus on those who understand the reality of the climate crisis, who are terrified about it and want to do something about it, but haven't yet found the community or or the movement to participate in. And I do find that fear holds those people back as well. Young people actually of both political parties are terrified about the climate crisis. And we know that young people support moving to a renewable energy economy.

You know, in super majorities, the problem is a lot of those individuals are sort of standing on the sidelines. And most of the reason why they are standing on the sidelines is because they literally have not been asked to join. What we found was For a very long time the climate movement was Kind of doing a lot of preaching to the choir, a lot of navel gazing, if they even had Grassroots. organizing efforts at all. A lot of them did not. They were either, you know

On the hill um lobbying efforts um or policy ventures. And actually it's relatively new that we have mass organizations that are targeting everyday people who have not participated in movements before to join in. And I find the most effective ways to bring individuals into the movement is One, literally to ask them and see what they say. I think a lot of people do not have the questi ask the question, Will you join a movement? Um, but two, helping people identify Like what's your skin in the game?

What's your stake in this fight? Who do you love? What do you love that stands to lose in the midst of the climate crisis? Um, for me, like I'm the child of two immigrants and the story of the way the climate crisis is unfolding in India affects me super deeply. It is the reason I think why I so clearly pursued the path of of climate action. Um and so I think if you can

If you can identify that fire that is already burning with you and and bring it out. That is the spark that gets you involved. I'm getting a couple of questions here, so I won't get to all of them. Um and thank you for um asking them, folks. This is uh James Chang from Facebook. Um James asks, how do you go about fundraising? Because it costs money to do these campaigns and to get the word out. And I know that you're probably almost entirely volunteer run. So how do you actually raise the money to Amplify your voice. So we

really rely on both grassroots donations as well as uh foundations. And so we run a really robust grassroots program and and particularly ask people to become monthly donors. Um, so that is like the most sustainable way. And grassroots donations are also amazing because they allow us to not necessarily have to be beholden to foundations or wealthy individuals, but allow us to be beholden to like the everyday people that we're trying to organize. Are you willing to take money from corporations or from

Big Funders in order to You know in order to be able to Play hardball? Yeah, I mean I think we're discerning about which funders we actually take money from. We do take money from foundations. I think the key here is that.

you can do quite a lot with not that much money. I mean if you think about the first year in twenty eighteen when we did that Pelosi action when the Green New Deal became a national conversation, when we saw those thousands and thousands of young people come out of the World Bird for the first time. We were working on a minuscule budget like minuscule Um We had a very, very small team.

I think We can't underestimate underdogs in this situation, especially underdogs who are terrified for our future and are willing to do whatever we need to do to to ensure that the future doesn't unfold in the way that we are, you know, the future that we are barreling towards. There's a real question of At what point does that not become enough? Do you need more resources? But I think we have a lot of money at our disposal, not just as sunrise, but as the entire left or the environmental movement. The question is, is that being wielded effectively or is it not?

Do you imagine like there was a you know a moment in the um you know, in the last decade where like the tea party and the freedom caucus. You know, they really actually put a lot of pressure on conservatives. moderate republicans of the eighties and nineties aren't really around in in in the Congress anymore.

because these grassroots organizations were very effective, the Tea Party and others that really challenge candidates and primary races and so on is your goal eventually to make this movement so powerful That you can actually do a version of that that you can go into congressional districts and endorse a candidate and support a candidate. That may

turn you know a a more moderate or conservative democrat. And you know, bringing a more progressive Democrat as the As the nominee. Exactly. I think what the Republicans did was they shifted the entire center of gravity around the conversation towards a more conservative worldview. And a lot of people, you know They're like, why don't you just compromise with the Republicans? Why don't you find some kind of middle ground?

But the truth is they have pulled the entire conversation so far to the right that on climate change, I mean the middle ground is is probably worse than we are today, and so We need a new center of gravity. And what young people are doing is holding the Democratic Party, but also the country as a whole. to a standard of we have got to be in line with what science and justice demands. You know, we are not

about one political party. We're not even about one political champion or anything like that. We are about the ultimate mission at hand. And if we stay true to that. And we build a movement that is powerful enough, perhaps we can shift the entire conversation towards that end. That's an excerpt from my conversation with Farshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director of Sunrise Movement. To see our full interview, you can go to Facebook.com slash how I built this, and if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there or at youtube.com/slash NPR. If you want to find out more about the how I built this resilient series or other virtual NPR events, You can go to nprpresents. org.

This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with help from JC Howard, Will Mitchell, Bruce Grant, Matt Adams, L. Mannion, Gianna Capadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, Our intern is Farah Safari. Thanks for listening, stay safe, and I'll see you back here in a few days.

I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This Resilient Edition. From NPR.