{"id":44404,"date":"2025-10-06T11:46:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=44404"},"modified":"2025-10-06T11:46:55","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:46:55","slug":"sunrise-movement-founded-to-fight-climate-change-pivots-to-fighting-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/sunrise-movement-founded-to-fight-climate-change-pivots-to-fighting-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"SUNRISE MOVEMENT, FOUNDED TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE, PIVOTS TO FIGHTING TRUMP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Trump targets his critics on the left, Sunrise says it needs to battle authoritarianism to protect the climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Matt Sledge<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 2 2025 (theintercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"WASHINGTON,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay gets arrested while protesting JD Vance\u2019s ties to big oil companies in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 2024. Photo: Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE YOUTH-LED CLIMATE<\/strong> activist group Sunrise Movement is expanding its mission to battle \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d as the Trump administration targets left-leaning organizations and puts one of the group\u2019s major funders in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no serious way to think about stopping the climate crisis under a fascist government,\u201d Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay told The Intercept. \u201cThe path to climate lies through getting rid of the authoritarian government we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move comes as President Donald Trump furiously dismantles the green energy initiatives that Sunrise fought to see enshrined in President Joe Biden\u2019s 2022 Inflation Recovery Act<\/a>. In a striking success for the climate group, the law contained parts of Sunrise\u2019s top priority: the Green New Deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group, now eight years old, has decided that it cannot continue to fight climate change without fighting Trump, Shiney-Ajay told The Intercept. Delegates from the nonprofit\u2019s more than 100 local hubs voted by a wide margin last month approve its expanded mission, Sunrise announced Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunrise is making the change public just a week after Trump sent a chilling message to activists who oppose him: In a memo, he directed cabinet officials to investigate nonprofits and their funders<\/a> for supposed links to terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the Crosshairs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While the Sunrise Movement has received no official word that it is under investigation, the group has ample reason to believe that it may be targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Justice Department has\u00a0directed<\/a>\u00a0local prosecutors to investigate billionaire financier George Soros\u2019s Open Society Foundations, which gave $2 million to Sunrise between 2019 and 2013,\u00a0according to a grant database<\/a>. In doing so, the Justice Department cited the right-wing Capital Research Center, which recently\u00a0published\u00a0<\/a>a report claiming that the Sunrise Movement supports \u201c\u200b\u200bAntifa-associated anarchist terrorists.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trump Wants to Label Antifa a Terror Group. His Real Target Might Be a Lot Bigger.<\/a><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

That report is fashioned as a road map for Trump officials as they follow through on the crackdown he promised<\/a> after the September 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk. The day he released his domestic terror memorandum, Trump called Soros<\/a> a \u201clikely candidate\u201d for prosecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Open Society Foundations and the Sunrise Movement both say they reject violence. The Capital Research Center report focuses on Sunrise\u2019s support for a legal defense fund<\/a> associated with Stop Cop City<\/a>, a decentralized effort to halt the construction of an Atlanta police training facility inside a forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prosecution\u2019s case against dozens of Stop Cop City protesters collapsed last month when a judge dismissed most of the charges against them<\/a>. While she stands by her group\u2019s support of the bail fund, Shiney-Ajay said that it was limited in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I look at that report, what I see is a desperate attempt to paint what is ultimately a large youth protest movement in negative terms, because they are really looking to villainize and crack down on protests,\u201d Shiney-Ajay said. \u201cThat is a strategy with authoritarians.\u201d
Read Our Complete CoverageChilling Dissent<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work in Progress<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Standing up to elected officials is nothing new for members of the Sunrise Movement \u2014 but for years, they focused more on embarrassing Democrats into action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group, which restricts membership to people under the age of 35, became famous for acts of political theater such as storming former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s office in 2018 to pressure her <\/a>on climate change. An appearance<\/a> from then Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped catapult the New York Democrat to national prominence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunrise\u2019s decentralized structure has sometimes led to fractures between national and local leaders<\/a>, but it remained a force in progressive politics after Biden\u2019s election. The group\u2019s relationship with the White House alternated between productive and contentious<\/a> before its members soured on him over Israel\u2019s war on Gaza. It was the first major environmental group to call on Biden to quit <\/a>last year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunrise\u2019s latest pivot, which 74 percent of delegates approved in a September 5 vote, is a work in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group has already organized a walkout<\/a> of Washington, D.C., university students in response to Trump\u2019s military crackdown. New projects could include responses from local chapters to deployments of the National Guard or Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents, municipal campaigns to support mayors standing up to Trump, and pushback against university administrators rolling over for the White House<\/a>, Shiney-Ajay said. At the national level, the organization hopes to furnish anti-authoritarianism training to tens of thousands of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matt Sledge<\/a>sledge@theintercept.com<\/a>@sledge.41on Signal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Trump targets his critics on the left, Sunrise says it needs to battle authoritarianism to protect the climate. Matt Sledge October 2 2025 (theintercept.com) Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay gets arrested while protesting JD Vance\u2019s ties to big oil companies in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 2024. Photo: Andrew… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44404"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44405,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44404\/revisions\/44405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}