Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images
People participate in a Sunrise Movement March on Congress for climate action in September 2021.
On Election Day, November 5, it’s expected to be 75 degrees in Philadelphia, 79 in Pittsburgh, 70 in Scranton, and 74 in Detroit. It’s going to rain in Battle Creek and Milwaukee, but unseasonably warm temperatures (upper 60s and low 70s) mean that it won’t turn to snow.
Climate change hasn’t been a major feature of this election, taking a back seat to issues like immigration, abortion, and the economy. But with late-spring temperatures across the Northeast in early November, we can say that climate change is just outside the voting booth.
That’s doubly true in places like North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, where Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated cities in late September and early October, and in some areas made it far more difficult to get information about voting and even to cast a ballot.
During this election season, the Sunrise Movement made a valiant effort to get voters to connect the lived experience of a changing climate with political outcomes. Its outreach initiative, which includes door-knocking, social media ads, and tabling on college campuses, attempts to persuade young people, especially those in swing states, who are concerned about climate change, and educate them about the impacts of a Trump presidency on the fight for climate justice.
Sunrise launched its first major digital ad targeted at Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in mid-October. The ad, titled “Trump Doesn’t Care About You,” features footage of houses falling into the ocean alongside Trump’s remarks about how rising ocean levels would lead to the construction of new seafront property. The goal of the ad is to show Trump’s lack of concern for those most at risk from the climate crisis, said Shiva Rajbhandari, a student at UNC-Chapel Hill who works in Sunrise’s Durham hub in North Carolina.
“He doesn’t care about you or me, and I think you see that very clearly with his response to the recent hurricanes, but to climate change as a whole,” Rajbhandari said. “He takes millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to fund his campaign. He continues to deny and lie about the cause and effects of the climate crisis.”
Though Rajbhandari has criticized both Trump and Harris’s records on environmental issues, he ultimately believes that a Harris presidency provides a better opportunity to organize toward climate justice. His stance mirrors that of Sunrise as an organization, which has not officially endorsed either candidate but has clearly positioned Trump as a bigger threat to the climate justice movement. The pre-election organizing all points in that direction.
“I think we’ve all forgotten that politicians are not our friends,” Rajbhandari said in a September video posted to Sunrise’s Instagram account. “They’re not our saviors. They are the political conditions under which we organize.”
Sunrise as an organization has not officially endorsed either candidate but has clearly positioned Trump as a bigger threat to the climate justice movement.
Sunrise has two major hubs in North Carolina, in Durham and in Asheville, a major city in western North Carolina that was overwhelmed by Hurricane Helene. Both cities are in solidly blue counties with large numbers of college-aged voters, many of whom will be eligible to vote for the first time this year. And with the presidential race being so close in North Carolina, that could very well determine who wins the state, as highlighted in another ad titled “The Power of Gen Z.”
Harris has led among youth voters in polling, with a 2-to-1 advantage (64-32) in the most recent edition of the Harvard Youth Poll. That lead expands to 70-23 among young women.
Rajbhandari encountered many young voters in and around Durham who were excited about a Harris presidency and just needed information on how and when to vote. But others were more conflicted, largely due to the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the war in Gaza (which Sunrise has also criticized the administration for).
“We’re people who are also calling for an arms embargo, and also really want to see more from Kamala Harris when it comes to the humanity of the Palestinian people,” Rajbhandari said. “So many voters who care about this genocide are kind of being alienated in a way by the Democratic Party, and they’re really looking for a reason to vote for Kamala Harris. And so those conversations have been hard, but have been really gratifying.”
Operations in Asheville have focused on door-knocking and getting out the vote while also providing mutual aid such as food and electric generators to those still suffering the effects of the storm. Sunrise has collaborated with students at UNC Asheville to do this work, even while university operations are still closed.
Though Sunrise as a national organization is focused on reaching young swing-state voters, many of its over 100 hubs are also organizing around local politics across the country. For example, organizers in Sunrise’s Orlando hub in Florida are focusing their efforts on state-level elections, local amendments, and efforts to legalize marijuana and abortion.
“We’ve been doing that a lot through specifically youth voter outreach, youth canvassing, and lots of those things,” said Manuel Guerrero, an organizer who attends the University of Central Florida in Orlando. “We’ve been very successful within Orange County and within the greater Central Florida, Orlando area, and getting people to register to vote, and now, like getting them to go to the polls early.”
Like the hub in Asheville, the Sunrise Orlando hub has done a lot of mutual aid work for those in the parts of Florida hit by Helene and Milton. Though there wasn’t as much of a focus on getting out the vote, organizers still assisted residents with mail-in ballots, informing voters about their polling places, and distributing voter guides.
Similar to Sunrise Durham, Sunrise Orlando has found success with voter outreach among college students, who Guerrero said are generally already on board with Sunrise’s work toward climate justice. However, when it comes to door-knocking in residential neighborhoods, organizers were more likely to face hostility from potential voters.
“I will definitely say that the primary disparity is on a racial and an age basis,” Guerrero said. “When we go into a richer, primarily white community in West Orlando, we face a lot more backlash and a lot more rude comments than we do in a poor Black neighborhood in this area.”
But regardless of how receptive voters are to their message this election cycle, organizers at Sunrise want them to remember that the fight for climate justice requires more than just voting for a specific candidate.
“We still need to be organized and we still need to be working,” Guerrero said. “Politics don’t end on November 5 and that’s a very difficult concept for many people, even on the college level, to grasp. That politics continue and that these things have to continue being worked on after the election.”
