Fellowship Reflection: DD and Emily
THANK YOU
Our names are Emily and DD, and we were Sunrise Chicago’s full-time fellows (from February through the end of June). Now, with the first cohort of the fellowship behind us and the perspective of a summer to go on, we wanted to thank all of you–the generous people whose donations made this possible. A lot of what we imagined we would work on has changed as all of our lives, and our fights for justice, have been impacted first by the pandemic and then by the uprising against police violence and racism.
What hasn’t changed is our hub’s commitment to fight for the world we want to live in. In late 2019, when our hub decided to start–and fundraise for–an independent fellowship, the idea was that a few people working full-time in the short-term could make our long-term work soar. And it’s true: the fellowship has helped bring our hub to a place of ever-expanding growth.
BACKGROUND
Everything about the fellowship was an experiment, and as fellows, the ultimate measure of the fellowship’s success–our north star–has always been: did we help evolve the capacity of this hub, creating systems and processes to help bring new members and partners into this work so that even when the fellowship ends, we as a hub can take on and accomplish things that wouldn’t have been possible before? The consensus–from a series of conversations with the Sunrise Chicago core team–is that throughout this tumultuous period, with so many shifting priorities, the fellowship was still able to do what the hub set out to accomplish, often in ways we couldn’t have imagined. With that in mind, we want to share with you some of what we’ve been working on these last few months. We’ve tried to be brief; of course, there’s so much more to say about each of these, so please reach out if you’re interested to know more details.
Please note: none of these are things the fellows accomplished alone–not by a long shot. They are merely some of the areas where having a few full-time people allowed the work to really thrive in a way that would not have been possible otherwise.
Building Political Power
One of the major areas of growth for the hub over the last six months has been in our role to help build political power. From our electoral work, powerful coalitions and partnerships, and participation in direct actions Sunrise Chicago has helped mobilize young people around the vision of the Green New Deal.
Endorsements
This past winter Sunrise Chicago endorsed 4 candidates across the Chicago area that truly embodied what it means to be a Green New Deal Champion. For months we knocked doors every weekend and in the end over 75 hub members canvassed or phone banked, in the end knocking on 4,000 doors and when we had to pivot to remote Get Out the Vote right before the election we were able to connect over 5,000 calls with voters in just one weekend. We are so proud of the impact we were able to have on the election, including being a part of Marie Newman’s progressive upset of a long-time incumbent. The fellowship helped us build the kind of infrastructure needed for Sunrise to show up in full force for our endorsed candidates and what we built continues to have an impact on our hub today, so many hub leaders got involved with Sunrise through our endorsements and canvassing efforts.
Earth Day to May Day
Sunrise has continued to build powerful partnerships and coalitions. Most notably we helped launch the Earth Day to May Day Coalition, exploring the intersections of climate justice and labor justice by bringing together over 60 Chicago-area organizations who worked together to mobilize for Earth Day and May Day. Although we had to shift our original Earth Day plans in light of the pandemic, our place in the Earth Day to May Day Coalition nonetheless resulted in a powerful line up of speakers on our virtual Earth Day Town Hall. The connections and relationships built through this coalition space have led to continued collaboration at the intersection of climate, racial, and labor justice.
Actions Team
Towards the beginning of the fellowship, one of the areas of the hub we set to help build out was the actions team. What that has looked like: coaching newer faces to be comfortable taking on responsibility within this crucial team, and bringing hub members into team leadership. Like so much of our work this is always ongoing, but in part because of the fellowship’s deep investment in the actions team, this summer we had two Sunrise led actions planned by incredible hub leaders who have stepped up into leadership just over the last few months.
Mutual Aid fundraiser
As mutual aid networks blossomed during the pandemic and the mass uprising against police brutality began early this summer, we decided to tap into Sunrise’s networks to help fundraise and support some of our partner organizations’ work in such a crucial moment. In the end, we raised $5,000 each for GoodKidsMadCity, the International Indigenous Youth Council, and Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), and are so proud and grateful to have materially supported these incredible organizations.
RECRUIT, RETAIN, DEVELOP
Although our hub has grown and accomplished an enormous amount since its founding in January 2019, we had lacked clear pathways for people to get and stay involved, modes of equitable outreach, and support systems within our hub to help people find direction, grow their leadership, and stay committed to this work long-term. In order to do that, we needed better infrastructure: consistent, efficient systems for understanding and keeping track of who we were reaching, what their path to committed involvement looked like, and how we could do a better job at the equitable outreach we need to build a cross-class, multi-racial movement.
Recruitment Team & Strategy
Prior to the fellowship, our hub’s recruitment and on-boarding work didn’t have a clear or consistent space in the hub, which was often a barrier to our movement’s growth. Over the past few months, we have built up a thriving recruitment team that has taken on the task of coordinating outreach throughout the hub, done various projects (see below) to help bring new people in and help them find their place in Sunrise, and created tools and systems that have helped us rapidly and meaningfully grow both our hub and our skills.
Sunrise School
In response to the pandemic, Sunrise’s national organization quickly pivoted and rolled out an innovative digital education and training program called Sunrise School. Here in the hub, through 1-on-1 outreach, “welcome calls,” follow-ups, and systematically tracking new members’ engagement, we reached and connected with the hundreds of young people from the Chicago area who hadn’t previously been involved but got trained through Sunrise’s national Sunrise School training program. Many of these people have now become dedicated team members and leaders in our hub!
Coordinated Outreach
We regularly help teams develop outreach goals and strategies for events, trainings, and actions, and support them in their outreach efforts (through textbanking and phonebanking, outreach emails, doing relational recruitment workshops, and more) to help make events, actions, and team meetings a success and ensure our hub is always growing bigger and more powerful.
BIPOC School
The environmental justice movement has historically been very white and middle/upper-class, but as Sunrise we deeply know that we can only do what we are here to do–win a Green New Deal, well-paying jobs for all, and a just transition–through building a genuinely cross-class, multi-racial movement. In a segregated city and a society that drives wedges between communities in order to prevent solidarity, it’s a challenge, but we are so proud to have helped envision, recruit for, and bring to life the first ever Midwest BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or People of Color) Organizing School, where over 50 BIPOC came together to form community and build the skills necessary to organize their communities around collective liberation. And then we did it again, this time with over 100 applicants who were totally new to our hub! Stay tuned for round 3.
Membership tracking
It used to be that we got a lot done despite a whole set of messy data practices. Over the past few months, we have worked diligently to make consistent and efficient use of the data we have: keeping track of who comes to what events, doing steady outreach after events to new people, and coordinating our outreach across teams to both divide labor and ensure that new people were well-supported. This is reflected by how many new people are not just finding our hub but joining teams, becoming committed members, and feeling supported and empowered enough to take on leadership.
LOOKING FORWARD
Three pages in and we’ve barely touched on the fact that all this happened in a global pandemic! After the first month of the fellowship, we spent a lot of our time and energy figuring out how to organize powerfully given the drastically shifting world. Nearly everything we talked about above happened in this context. And ultimately, even though we’ve had to change our focus and shift almost all meetings and programming to be virtual, our hub has experienced an incredible amount of growth this past half-year, no matter how you measure it: hundreds more people on our email list, 60+ people at our monthly hub meetings, new or additional leadership on nearly every team, a summer internship program, two rounds of BIPOC Organizing School, and a structure that supports this kind of growth.
In June, when we discussed what would happen after this round of the fellowship ended, the Core Team came to a general consensus that we’re interested in doing a second round of the fellowship. The current plan is to start building toward Round 2 over the next few weeks and months, and maybe launch again in January–but of course, as 2020 has shown us time and again, planning for more than a month (or even a week or a day) ahead can prove difficult.
Regardless, we want to say again that we are so grateful to you all for making this possible. Both of us have grown an incredible amount as organizers. So much this year has felt sad and hard, and Sunrise & the Chicago hub have been points of hope and direction. The fellowship has allowed us as individuals to give the maximum amount of time and heart to ensuring that that stays true, and that our hub can be a safe and powerful home for everyone who is ready to fight like hell with us for the future, and the present, that we need and deserve.
In solidarity,
Emily Isaacson & DD Klionsky
