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YOUTH-LED US CLIMATE ACTIVISTS WIDEN FOCUS TO FIGHT AUTHORITARIANISM
 
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Dharna Noor
October 5, 2025
The Guardian
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_ The Sunrise Movement, which led calls for a Green New Deal, will
organize against Trump’s attacks on universities. “How are we
going to win on climate under authoritarianism?” _

The Sunrise Movement held a study-in followed by a rally to protest
the dismantling of the Department of Education, image: Jason Gooljar,
Flickr

 

As the Trump administration cracks down on both environmental policies
and progressive activism, the Sunrise Movement
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the youth-led climate justice organization that popularized
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a Green New Deal, is widening its mission to fight authoritarianism.

“Every day, Donald Trump
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and shredding the Constitution,” Sunrise’s executive director, Aru
Shiney-Ajay, wrote in an open letter to Sunrise members, funders and
allies. “What ordinary people do in the coming months will determine
whether he and his billionaire cronies can cement their grip on power
and turn this country into a playground for the rich and powerful.”

Unlike the majority of Sunrise’s past work, its newer efforts will
not necessarily center the climate crisis
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O’Hanlon, a co-founder and spokesperson for Sunrise, said the
projects will aim to build a world where climate action is possible.

“In order to win the bold action that we’ll need to prevent
climate catastrophe, we’re going to need a country where we have the
right to dissent and protest,” she said. “How are we going to win
on climate under authoritarianism?”

One key focus will be campus organizing to urge schools to resist
Trump’s attempts
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control their curricula and rules around political dissent
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the letter from Shiney-Ajay says. Another will be garnering rapid
responses to the administration’s deployment of troops and
immigration policies to cities, and attempts to “infringe on our
first amendment rights”. And a third expansion area will be training
young activists to “recognize authoritarianism” and resist it
using non-violent tactics.

The missive formalizes work already underway at Sunrise. Last month,
the group helped organize student walkouts at four Washington DC
universities to protest Trump’s deployment
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the national guard and their intimidation of activists
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Two weeks later, the organization staged a comedy
show-cum-demonstration outside ABC’s New York headquarters in
response to the network’s temporary suspension
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Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Chapters have been taking on localized fights for free speech and
immigrant rights, as well. At Duke University’s Sunrise chapter,
activists have focused on protecting a beloved campus bus driver
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temporary protected status was revoked by the Trump administration
last month – and who subsequently lost his job of 20 years. They are
also urging school officials to overturn anti-protest policies and
developing pro-worker campaigns alongside labor justice groups.

“In order to win a Green New Deal, climate justice, labor justice,
racial justice, etc … we’re gonna need to defeat
authoritarianism,” said Artivista Karlin, a junior at Duke
University who organizes with the campus Sunrise chapter, who said
that under Trump, the US has seen an “unprecedented manifestation of
fascism”.

Future Sunrise Movement efforts could include nationwide efforts to
stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice
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raids, campaigns to back city officials standing up to Trump, and
actions to resist Republicans’ cuts to healthcare programs
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The organization will also build toward a mass student mobilization on
1 May 2028, when United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain has called
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a general strike.

The refocus comes seven years after
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captured national headlines when its members stormed the office of
then incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Joined by then freshman New
York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the group demanded the
rapid phase-out of fossil fuels
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of good jobs, and the strengthening of social programs across the US.
The policy platform, which they called the Green New Deal
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helped inspire some of Joe Biden’s green policies, most notably
the Inflation Reduction Act
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O’Hanlon sees the new tactics as an outgrowth of the fight for a
Green New Deal, which highlighted how climate is intertwined with all
other major social issues.

“The Green New Deal is critical for laying out an alternative world
from the one that Donald Trump
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she said. “We’re going to keep talking about that, keep fighting
for that vision, but in the short term, we need to also be
confronting, their assault on our communities and on our rights.”

The shift also comes as climate concerns slip slightly down the list
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electoral concerns in favor of economic issues, though evidence shows
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people still want to draw down emissions.

“My guess is you’re not going to see a lot of politicians using
the word ‘climate,’ because people see that as a nice-to-have ,
not a must-have, and right now they’re in the must-have mode,”
Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, told reporters in New
York last month.

Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris last year came under
fire for messaging around the threat Trump poses to democracy
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rather than economic concerns, with some blaming the shift for her
loss of the 2024 election. But O’Hanlon says concerns about
authoritarianism feel more potent to Americans amid current attacks
from the administration, and that Sunrise’s new campaigns will be
far more concrete than Harris’s.

“A lot of the messaging on the Harris campaign was focused on this
abstract idea of democracy, of saving democracy, but I think most
people in this country feel like democracy is pretty broken,” she
said. “When you’re talking about saving democracy, then people
understand that as saving a broken political system that very, very
few people think is working, and Donald Trump was able to position
himself as the person who is going to disrupt and change the broken
system.”

Sunrise, by contrast, will focus on the need for major changes,
including the removal of corporate interests
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as the fossil fuel industry from politics.

“We’re being very clear that yes, we need to defend rights to free
speech, we also need to be serious about overhauling our democracy so
that we are not in a situation where someone like Donald Trump can
consolidate power in this kind of way ever again,” O’Hanlon said.

The expansion comes amid an all-out assault from the White House on
both green protections and progressive organizing. Since January, the
president has rolled back
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of environmental rules demolished Biden-era incentives for carbon-free
technologies. In recent weeks he also designated the decentralized
antifascist movement, antifa, a “terrorist organization
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and issued a memorandum aimed at reining in what he calls the radical
leftwing domestic “terror network
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Last week, Trump said George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who
funds the Open Society Foundations (OSF), is “a likely candidate”
for prosecution
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unspecified charges. Sunrise obtained $2.1m from the foundations
between 2019 and 2023, OSF’s website shows
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“We will raise our voices against this authoritarian abuse of
power,” Shiney-Ajay said.

Trump this week also posted Trump 2028
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on social media, indicating interest in a potential, unconstitutional
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term
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“We are just seeing outright disrespect for our constitutional
rights, and we can’t accept that,” said O’Hanlon.

* Sunrise Movement
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* Green New Deal
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* Authoritarianism
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* universities
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* youth
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* Grassroots Organizing
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