John,
Two weeks ago, I was at home in Springfield, Missouri, wishing my town had a Sunrise hub but not sure how to get one. After going to the Midwest Regional Summit, I’m ready to build that hub myself from the ground up.
Before the Summit, I felt isolated. As far as I know, I’m currently the only Sunriser in Springfield, and that used to be one of the main things holding me back from starting a hub: I didn’t think I could do it alone. The Summit changed that in two huge ways.
For one, it gave me a community. From the moment I arrived, I made friends without trying. We all felt the same fear of the climate crisis. At the same time, we were building hope as we planned to stop it.
The Summit also gave me the skills I need to start a hub from scratch. I took workshops from people who have experience building new bases of Sunrise members in places like Springfield where there aren’t any yet. Now that I’m back in Springfield, I have a recruitment plan and I’m ready to get started.
In the next two months, thousands more young people will descend on regional summits across the country to step up and take their leadership to the next level in our fight for a livable future. Be one of them: attend the South Regional Summit, Sept 28-30 in Nashville, TN.
The coming year is a critical one for our movement. This is the year we’ll elect a President and Congress who will have the power to make the Green New Deal a reality--or not.
In order to make sure we’re ready to meet the challenges of 2020 head-on, we need to spend the next few months scaling up our movement as quickly as we possibly can. And that’s what everyone who attended the Midwest Summit is getting started on now.
As our first step back home, we’re all making plans to either grow our hubs or build new ones. In Springfield, I’m starting to recruit members by tabling at my school and reaching out to other community orgs. Once my hub starts growing, I’ll get started planning local actions to push for a Green New Deal in 2020.
And while we’re getting to work, there are still three more Summits to come. By the end of September, our Summit leaders will have trained several thousand new young organizers like me who are ready to become leaders working for a Green New Deal in our communities.
