Hey John, it’s Aru with Sunrise Movement.

I’ll give you three guesses who said this:

“Are we on the side of the robber baron, the ultra wealthy billionaire, the oil and gas polluter, the union buster, or are we on the side of the American working family, the small business owner, the farmer, the immigrant, and the student?”

If you'd told me 8 years ago, before Sunrise Movement even existed, that the newly elected DNC Chair had just said that, I wouldn’t have believed you. But those are the words of Ken Martin, newly elected DNC Chair, in his acceptance speech.

And here’s the thing, that didn’t just happen in a vacuum. It happened because the Democratic Party is facing unprecedented pressure from its own voters, from movements like us.

For far too long, Party leaders and billionaires have successfully put their thumb on the scale to sway the direction of the Democratic Party. Not this time around. 

Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi all aligned behind a different candidate, as did billionaires like Reid Hoffman.

We’ve spent weeks at candidate forums around the country pressuring candidates to support a ban on billionaire and SuperPAC spending in Democratic primaries, including at the DNC Chair candidate debate last week, after which all candidates pledged to reject money from oil and gas companies.

This is only the first step, but it is a good first step. Does this mean we’re going to let up one bit on the Democrats? Of course not. Does one speech change everything? Of course not. But we can see that clearly because we DO intend to change everything. We’ve just gotten started.

Together in movement,

Aru

P.S. We just launched our Substack, and our first post is about the DNC Chair race.