Hi John,

We promised you we’d shut it down for May Day, and we weren’t lying! Sunrise members were everywhere yesterday, pulling off the most successful coordinated day of action in our movement’s history.

You don’t hear from me much. My name is Allyson, and I’m Sunrise’s Digital Director, which means I’m usually behind the scenes leading our social media and email programs. This also means that yesterday was INSANE for me: I have never experienced a day like it, frantically jumping between Signal messages and Instagram requests and footage and photos and video edits from Sunrise volunteers all across the country who were not only taking action, but taking highly successful action that stopped the normal functioning of key targets and reached millions of people through skilled hub comms:

• Volunteers in New York City shut down EVERY ENTRANCE to the New York Stock Exchange during peak trading hours.
• The Twin Cities shut down the Hennepin Avenue Bridge
• Portland occupied a Hilton that has been housing top DHS officials
• Bay Area shut down the San Francisco airport with a coalition of unions and workers
• Los Angeles took over a Home Depot for their complicity with ICE
• DC shut down roads surrounding the American Petroleum Institute
• Our school hubs organized upwards of 100,000 students to walk out of class.
• Dozens of Sunrise hubs mobilized for May Day events and marches.

We’ve been building a youth movement capable of reaching mass noncooperation to bring down fascism and win a Green New Deal, and yesterday proved that our hard work is paying off. 

I’m writing directly to you today because I want to let you in on the secret of how we pulled it all off: trainings. 

This spring, we held an in-person Strike Camp for top hub leaders who were preparing for noncooperation. We also hold regular online trainings (for example, my team has built our own coaching and training infrastructure for hub comms leads). Sunrise is committed to high-quality development opportunities for our members, and that’s why we’re becoming the home for young people who are hungry to fight fascism. 

So today, I’m asking you to dig deep and think about what you’re capable of giving, because there’s no way around it: these trainings cost money. Yesterday proved that Sunrise has the secret sauce, but to reach a scale of noncooperation that creates sustained, nation-wide crisis for fascists and billionaires, we need the resources to train up hundreds of thousands more young people. 

Will you help us defeat fascism and win a Green New Deal? We’re launching a massive training program for students this summer. Your donation is what will make it happen.

DONATE 

I went to my first Sunrise PDX hub meeting in January of 2019, and today, I have never been prouder to be a part of this movement. I can’t wait to show you what’s next.

With love,
Allyson