Dear John:

My name is Shoshana, and I’m a rabbi, mother, writer, and climate activist in Boston, MA. 

When I was in high school in the late 1990s, heartbroken and desperate to take action on the environmental crisis, I stumbled around making improvements to my school’s recycling system. I had no training in power analysis or campaign strategy. I had no idea how to organize my friends to help me make bigger systemic changes. I dreamed of saving the world and the best I could do was schlep aluminum cans to the recycling center.

I needed a movement.

It took fourteen frustrating years before I found my stride as a rabbi and activist. Years I could have spent organizing like hell for a thriving, just society and a livable climate.

Sunrise is the movement I desperately needed as a young person. Ironically, I was 35 when Sunrise launched, juggling a full-time job and a brand new baby. I could not take physical risks alongside young leaders.

But I could give.

Over the past two years, my husband and I have raised over $100,000 for Sunrise between our extended personal networks and our personal investments. We don’t consider this philanthropy. We consider it a real financial investment in a thriving future for us and our son. (I wrote about this last year in YES! Magazine and you can read the full article here).

Your continued financial support makes a tremendous difference for the movement and I hope you will continue investing in Sunrise. Social movements like Sunrise are wildly underfunded compared to their societal impact, and moving money to Sunrise is a highly effective way to make an impact on climate change, especially for those of us unable to be in the streets at this moment in our lives.

In just five years, Sunrise has skillfully deployed movement-building tactics to turn climate from a back burner issue to a mainstream concern of American voters. They've changed the messaging from polar bears to human lives, jobs, and homes. They've backed climate champions, staged sit-ins and hunger strikes, and pressured members of Congress to take climate action. Climate legislation would never have passed Congress without Sunrise.

Now Sunrise is poised to defend democracy and fight for a Green New Deal at all levels of our country. Through the Green New Deal for Schools campaign, Sunrise will find students like I was in high school, and give them the skills they need to be real movement-builders and systemic change-makers. Through Green New Deal for Communities, Sunrise will leverage the tens of thousands of young organizers they've trained and fight for climate solutions at the municipal and state levels, where climate fights are vitally important now – and winnable.

To do this, they need money.

And listen. Even in my darkest moments, when I think we have no chance at stopping runaway climate change, I still believe we can succeed in building a humanity that knows how to organize and take care of each other no matter what comes. And I know that is worth investing in.

Please join me at whatever financial level is right for you this Giving Tuesday and invest in our collective future by investing in Sunrise.

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With Love,

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

P.S. You can read more about my work and background at rabbishoshana.com. You can also listen to The Tide Is Rising, a climate anthem I co-wrote with my husband Yotam Schachter, which has spread widely in the climate movement (and is forthcoming as a picture book in 2025!)