Higgs 0

2020

Civic Engagement,
Identity, and Group
Mobilization
AS DEMONSTRATED BY:

THE SUNRISE MOVEMENT

SOLOMON HIGGS
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Solomon Higgs

Dr. Jonathan Koppell

PAF112

12/2/20

What is The Sunrise Movement?

The Sunrise Movement is a nonprofit organization that fights to push the Green New

Deal into federal public policy as quickly as possible to minimize the potentially apocalyptic

effects of human-made climate change on America's people, economy, national security, and

critical institutions.

The Sunrise Movement is a youth movement to stop climate change and create

millions of good jobs in the process. We’re building an army of young people

to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting

influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up

for the health and wellbeing of all people. (About The Sunrise Movement,

https://www.sunrisemovement.org/about/?ms=AboutTheSunriseMovement)

How do They Aim to Achieve This Goal?

The Sunrise Movement works to achieve its goal by: building an army of young activists

willing to fight for their futures, organizing these activists behind the Sunrise banner by creating

chapters all across the country, and finally, mobilizing this army as a force of strong political

engagement through activities such as strikes, sit-ins, marches, voting/voter registration

campaigns, volunteer work, and interactions with elected officials. The Sunrise Movement lends

a powerful voice to the group that is going to adopt this country and its problems and that voice
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is saying We Demand Change. This paper endeavors to examine this organization through the

lens provided by this class, in an effort to better understand how it operates and influences

change in our country.

What Part Does Identity Play?

A 2008 study conducted by Catholic University of the Sacred Hearth, Milan, Italy and

submitted to the Journal of Adult Development concluded:

other-oriented motivation, group integration and satisfaction with the organization,

are strongly related to young people’s volunteer identity, whereas merged effects

and support are not.

This could mean that integrating one’s own identity, to be aware and caring of

others as well as being satisfied and integrated in the organization, could affect

length of service…. volunteer identity is very important in the decision and in the

will to continue volunteering. (Elena Marta & Maura Pozzi 43-44)

The knowledge that a young person properly engaged in volunteer work is likely to remain

involved in volunteer work through their life, paired with the knowledge that the young

population of America has been voicing an overwhelming amount of support for action against

climate change in recent years, as demonstrated by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign,

makes the youth demographic an excellent identity target for The Sunrise Movement’s

recruitment campaigns. They make their targeting of this group clear and intentional by stating it

in the first line of their mission statement (quoted in the opening paragraph of this essay) and by

frequently making the calls to action in their videos directly to the young people of America with

titles like “How YOUNG PEOPLE are stopping the Climate Crisis”
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(https://youtu.be/jG511fIvnZ4, Sunrise Movement). By playing to this demographic, they are

pushing the idea that it is the coming generation whose futures are being threatened and

destroyed by global warming and plays to the psychology of older people by making them

remember when they were younger and how they would feel if all of the potential and

opportunity they saw on the horizon was being blocked by the clouds of their elder’s decisions.

How do They Reach Them?

Conveniently, when your target group is primarily the youth demographic in this age of

technology, you can connect with millions of potential members in the place that houses a large

portion of their social capital and that they spend a large portion of their time, from the comfort

of your own home through the internet. The Sunrise Movement takes advantage of this through

their use of provocative YouTube videos like this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbva38xskIc, by building social media presence (88,480

followers on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sunrisemvmt/ , 202,141 followers on

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sunrisemvmt/ ), and appearances on podcasts and shows

that young environmentalists might listen to (https://sustainabilitydefined.com/42-climate-

advocacy). These forms of digital outreach combined with strong efforts from their chapters all

across the country to engage local communities through connections to college campuses and

good old-fashioned peer communication, create a powerful force of coalition and organization.

As Dr. Koppell teaches us in the course,

All of these types of associations, social engagement, are equally important parts

of civic engagement that make for a rich society. And they all spring forth from

the same tendency to organize, to solve problems, and not wait for the
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government to do something, or a king, or a noble, or a wealthy person. It comes

from our own tendency to organize. Now, where is the resource that allows this to

take place? What gives people the power to organize? Some people have called

this underlying resource social capital. (Koppell 1:51-2:34)

The Sunrise Movement recognizes the huge existing social capital networks that their target

audience is so frequently engaged in, and utilizes it to grow their movement as well as a tool to

mobilize their amassed forces around the causes they fight for.

What Does Mobilization Look Like?

One of the most important ways that The Sunrise Movement mobilizes its members, is by

campaigning for public officials who have committed to supporting the cause like Bernie

Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Charles Booker, Ed Markey, Jamall Bowman, Alex Morse,

Andrew Romanoff and others. The movement engages with these officials who promise to fight

for a Green New Deal and works with them to make political ads and get boots on the ground

effort in their voting grounds to gather support and votes for these candidates. Recently, a lot of

attention has been turned to Georgia and my home state of Kentucky regarding their races for

senate seats and The Sunrise Movement has taken a stand in both of these efforts through ads

like this one supporting Charles Booker “Look us in the eyes Mitch”

(https://youtu.be/AZCp8tquFlA, Sunrise Movement) and by organizing groups to make phone

calls to registered voters and gathering support and awareness of Booker’s rallies. Evan Weber,

A Sunrise Movement member who attended one of these rallies said

As he [Charles Booker] said those words “we’ve already won” tears came to my

eyes as I thought about the thousands of Kentuckians — Black and white, old and
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young, rural and urban, “from the hood to the holler” — that have poured into the

streets in recent weeks demanding justice for Breonna Taylor and David McAtee,

saying that “no lives matter until Black lives matter.” I thought of the farmers and

coal miners who have been inspired by Charles’ vision for a Green New Deal, and

the young Kentuckians whose lives have been ruined by Mitch McConnell as long

as they’ve been alive believing they have the power to oust Mitch McConnell for

the first time. (Weber, June 22 2020)

The Sunrise Movement helps people to form a deep emotional bond with candidates that they

truly believe will do the best thing to support them and their dreams like this activist and this

passion combined with political action is what really grows an underdog campaign towards

success. Charles Booker may not have won his race, but even the pain from that loss can be used

to fuel the people’s passion to fight against the injustice that we see in our country and in our

own communities through involvement with organizations like The Sunrise Movement.

In Conclusion

Throughout this course, we learned a lot about the different ways that American citizens

participate in their democracy and the ways in which associations and the coalition of like-

minded people can have a meaningful effect on our government and the institutions of our

society. We learned that when we, as a People, see wrongdoing and injustice in the functions of

our society, it is our duty as well as our right to stand up to it and fight the good fight to defeat it.

The Sunrise Movement sees all too clearly the wrongdoing and injustices of the status quo and

shouts loud to the people of this country to create change before it’s too late. Against climate

change and pollution, against systemic racism and wealth inequality, against corruption and
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corporate misdeeds and ultimately, against the destruction of our collective future. The Sunrise

Movement has rallied behind the identities most threatened by these issues: the impoverished,

minorities, and youths of America and has given them a platform, movement, guidance and

motivation to take meaningful civic action and create the change they wish to see in the world.

The Sunrise Movement is a prime example of the role that non-profit organizations play in our

democracy and the power that the People hold when they stand together.
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Works Cited

Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria. “Green New Deal Resolution (H. Res. 109).” Issuu, 7 Feb. 2019,
https://issuu.com/sunrisemvmt/docs/gndres/14?ff.

Marta, Elena, and Maura Pozzi. “Young People and Volunteerism: A Model of Sustained
Volunteerism During the Transition to Adulthood.” Journal of Adult Development, vol. 15,
no. 1, 23 Jan. 2008, pp. 35–46., doi:10.1007/s10804-007-9033-4.

“What Trump Fears More Than Coronavirus” YouTube, uploaded by Sunrise Movement, 15 Oct.
2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbva38xskIc.

Siegel, Jay, and Scott Breen. “Episode 42: Climate Advocacy with Brady Walkinshaw (Grist)
and Varshini Prakash (Sunrise Movement).” Sustainability Defined, 2019,
https://sustainabilitydefined.com/42-climate-advocacy.

“Association and Social Capital” YouTube, uploaded by CPP112x - Service Year Alliance, 18
Jul. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_SUOk6iIsY.

Weber, Evan. “On “winning” elections” Uprising News, 22 Jun. 2020,

https://www.sunrisemovement.org/theory-of-change/on-winning-elections/.