 John, This is likely one of many year-end fundraising emails you’ve seen in your inbox. After the struggles of this year—a chaotic president, a global pandemic, more job and housing insecurity than this country’s ever seen before—I understand how fundraising can seem like the last thing on your priority list. This email is a little longer than most, but I wrote it to explain why our movement is asking for support right now. -Mattias 27 days. That’s how much time we have before the Biden administration is sworn in. And with it, our best hope for the next two years at stopping climate change, lifting our country out of crisis, and creating millions of good jobs. For the final week of this mess of a year, we’re asking for you to join us—together, we’re trying to raise $100,000 by December 31st to prepare for Joe Biden’s first 100 days. I’d like to dig into a bit of history to tell you why. We all know this: Joe Biden is inheriting a society and economy on the verge of collapse. We’re in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and we’re still careening head first into a climate catastrophe. After nine months and hundreds of thousands of lives lost without any meaningful action to bring relief to people struggling to keep afloat, our government has the audacity to suggest we only need $600 to keep going. This is a slap in the face. When Joe Biden takes office, he has a unique opportunity to kick off the decade of the Green New Deal, restoring our economic well-being while averting climate change—all in his first 100 days. It’s commonly said that the first 100 days of a President’s term are their most important for all four years. But do you know where that comes from? Directly from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who passed 15 major laws and signed 99 executive orders in his first 100 days in office, kicking off the New Deal and lifting the country out of the Great Depression. Those laws and executive orders weren't perfect, but they paused the financial crisis, established the Civilian Conservation Corps, and established a Federal Emergency Relief Administration to provide emergency support to those who needed it. January 20th, 2021 can be Biden’s FDR moment. He can lead with a bold vision and ambition, or wring his hands and call for compromise while establishment elites continue to erode trust in the government’s ability to make any kind of change. Biden’s done some promising stuff so far, and a big part of that is because of our organizing. He’s nominated a progressive climate cabinet team, free of corporate fossil fuel ties, and ran on a pledge to create millions of good-paying jobs to put us on a path to achieving carbon-pollution free electricity by 2035.1 But we know it will take a lot of public pressure for him to follow through. Our job is to escalate that public pressure, so much so that Biden and Congress have no choice but to make the urgency of climate change and the necessity of bold action a first-100-days priority. FDR’s Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, said this about her proposed policies, which included establishing Social Security and a minimum wage: “Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before. You know that, don’t you?” That’s Sunrise’s job: to envision the unprecedented and fight for it. Frances Perkins’ statement holds true now. Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before. John, chip in today to help us hit our $100,000 goal to be ready for Joe Biden’s first 100 days. Together, we can achieve the unprecedented, and kick off a Green New Deal in 2021. [1] www.sunrisemovement.org/theory-of-change/averting-climate-change-lessons-from-the-new-deal/ |
