Hello friend,

I hope you're doing well and spring is knocking at your door as it is mine.

As you may have seen [[link removed]] , I’m writing to share that I will be transitioning from my role as Executive Director in Fall 2023 after 7 years of building and leading Sunrise, and over a decade in the youth climate movement.

I’ve committed a lot of time over the last two years to developing a strong, strategic cadre of young leaders to shepherd Sunrise into our next phase. With COVID on the retreat at last, and with our new organizing programs launching every day, the time has come to let go of my formal duties as Executive Director and take on a supporting role to the next generation of leaders in the climate movement. I believe in the vision for our movement’s next phase (more on that below!) and in the young people who will lead us there.

What we’ve accomplished as Sunrise is the stuff of dreams and magic for me. Six years ago, my friends and I came to this community with a vision - make federal climate action rooted in racial and economic justice a priority in American politics for the first time. Now, as I look back on all that Sunrise has accomplished alongside so many others, it speaks to how successful we were that that vision sounds like common sense.

I remember demonstrating in Nancy Pelosi’s office for the first time - anxiously wondering if AOC was truly going to show up, the solemn faces of the dozens of youth arrested in the halls of Congress with signs reading “Dems, what’s your plan?”, and the rush of phones ringing off the hooks from reporters around the country wondering what “the Green New Deal” was. In the months and years after, we fought to keep climate at the center of American politics through relentless sit-ins, office visits, media presence, and political engagement. Never would I have imagined I’d be sitting at a table with John Kerry, AOC and Gina McCarthy negotiating climate policy that would ultimately dictate the President’s agenda.

We delivered a mandate to the Democratic establishment that, to garner the votes of our generation, they must commit and deliver on a climate plan in line with what science and justice demand. During an unprecedented uprising, we joined forces with allies to turn out thousands of young people in the streets to fight for racial justice. And we withstood and evolved through a global pandemic that turned the world upside down at the moment we were most successful.

Two years later, the climate movement won the largest national climate bill in world history [[link removed]] – which, while flawed and inadequate, marked the first time the federal government had acted on climate in history. Now, it’s up to us to ensure that these bills are just the starting point of the decade of the Green New Deal.

I’m so proud of the ways our organization has shaped the climate movement and, even, changed our world. And still, after ten years of sprinting alongside many other young people, everything inside of me is calling for rest and the time to learn and dream again.

I always planned to stay in Sunrise until I could pass the torch to a future generation of youth leaders to lead the next phase of our work. I feel confident in saying that that time has come. The intelligence, passion, and commitment I see in the next Sunrisers are exceptional. They have navigated the turbulent terrain of a global pandemic, engaged in honest conversations about race and class that build our power, redesigned our strategy for a new political moment, and emerged prepared to take another swing at fighting for a livable future over the next 5 years. I can’t wait to introduce more of them to you, and I’m sure you’ve met many already.

In the next 3-5 years, these leaders will:

- Transform Sunrise from a youth start-up to a powerful vehicle for 5,000 trained, committed, and diverse leaders and organizers that will ramp up the urgency on ending the fossil fuel era.

- Help young people realize their own power by winning concrete victories in their schools and towns – think free public transit, municipalized power, city-wide gas bans, electrified school bus fleets – by leveraging hundreds of billions of federal dollars our movement helped win in our first phase.

- Create communities of belonging and invest more deeply in our members, especially those who are BIPOC and working class, through a new membership democracy structure and constituency organizing programs specifically for Black and Latine youth.


As far as my future plans, I’ll continue to stay involved in Sunrise by supporting the transition of my position through 2023 in a part-time role and have been asked to join the Sunrise Board of Directors where I plan to take an active role in the ongoing support of our future ED (or EDs!). I’m planning to take a few months to rest, read and learn, and invest in my own spiritual and leadership development journey that will allow me to emerge from this period as a better leader, thinker, and human.

Over the next few weeks we’ll set up a Transition Team to support the hiring process that includes members of the Board, Senior staff and larger staff body, and we’ll create several opportunities for our members to engage in the process.

Thank you for any role you played, large or small, to support Sunrise and allow us to be the organization we are today and the leader I am today. And thank you for all you’ve done to fight for a more stable, just and free future. I’m endlessly grateful.

With love,

Varshini

---

Email us: [email protected]

This email was sent to [email protected] [#] . Sunrise is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up here to get updates from Sunrise. [[link removed]]

NEW: Click here to sign up for our 35+ Supporter Email Updates. [[link removed]] You'll get more personalized info about how you can support our fight for the Green New Deal.

You may also click here to receive fewer emails from Sunrise [[link removed]] , or if you no longer wish to receive any emails from Sunrise please unsubscribe: [link removed] .

Donate to support the movement » [[link removed]]

712 H St NE Unit #626 Washington, DC 20002