History of Sunrise Nashville
The Nashville hub of the Sunrise Movement was founded in early 2019. Some of our early focus was geared towards building broad support among both the public as well as elected officials for the Green New Deal, both as an idea as well as the actual 14-page Green New Deal resolution that was introduced in Congress. Equally important, was significantly escalating public discussion and political narrative to the scale and urgency of the climate crisis. Both of these remain integral to our work today and all the work we do today falls under the vision of the Green New Deal, but our focus on the 14 page resolution has transitioned into building support for both legislation as well as other changes government or otherwise that will push us towards the vision of the Green New Deal. Our work also plugged into the work and campaigns that the national organization was involved in.
In early 2019, a target of our work included house representative Jim Cooper, a bluedog conservative democrat, who at the time represented Nashville before the district was gerrymandered. When we initially met with him, his response was to give us a book recommendation instead of supporting the Green New Deal.
We also continued to build people power. We held a community town hall featuring speakers from partner organizations and city councilman Freddie O’ Connell, did presentations with other organizations in the city, and built relationships with partner organizations both in and not in the climate space.
We also invested in the community of our hub. During the summer of that year, we held a retreat and training on a farm in Wartrace, TN. Trainers from the national organization were present and members of our hub co-facilitated trainings with them. We used this time to build knowledge and skills around the work while also building a strong sense of community within the hub.
At the end of September 2019, Sunrise held a series of regional summits across the US and decided to host their Southern regional summit in Nashville that fall. Our hub dedicated a lot of effort towards the planning it. This was a weekend long training where folks across the South came together to train and build community. The Monday, following, we held a Nonviolent Direct Action – a march followed by a sit-in. Nashville’s new mayor (who happens to be Jim Cooper’s the aforementioned congressman’s brother) was about to have his first day in office and climate was not discussed at all in the mayoral race. We wanted him to declare a climate emergency for Nashville. We marched from the capitol, stopping at his brother’s office to again demand his support for bold climate legislature before walking over to the mayor’s office. We occupied his office most of the day.
Going into 2020, the presidential election was top of mind. Members of our hub protested and marched to the TN Democratic party office demanding as part of a larger campaign that state party officials vote to hold a Democratic Climate Debate. We held more educational trainings, etc. We also spent time hosting town halls, being a part of and hosting a variety of other events and critically, building good, real community.
When the tornado of April 2020 occurred, our hub played a part in organizing communities in disaster response. Of course, COVID then happened.
Our numbers had been dwindling and for a large period of time it was really just 2-3 folks. As such, we began reaching out to local, allied organizations and Sunrise hubs in Knoxville and Chattanooga. The fostering of these relationships culminated in a state-wide youth summit for Climate Justice in the summer of 2022, funded through grants given to the Sunrise Nashville hub . The youth summit brought together numerous climate and social justice activists throughout the state and ended with a large-scale protest and sit-in at the construction site for Vanderbilt’s Owen building in relation to the Divest Dores movement.