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The beginning of a new semester also means the start of several student-led initiatives. A recent, appropriate addition to Lewis & Clark — a college that ranks No.17 on The Princeton Review’s list for Green Colleges and No.13 on the list for Most Politically Active Students — is the Sunrise LC Student Hub. This new hub is part of the larger youth-led Sunrise Movement, a group founded in 2017 with the objective of fighting in support of the Green New Deal, which proposes an economy driven by 100% clean and renewable energy. This group, which has over 100 hubs across the United States, is meant to draw attention to the Green New Deal, which has seen faltering explicit mentions in Congress from Democrats since 2020. To make the Green New Deal popular, the Sunrise Movement established the Four Pillars, which form the foundation for the Green New Deal. These include: “stop the climate crisis, create millions of good-paying union jobs, invest in racial and economic justice and reimagine our government to work for everyday people.”
While not an officially-recognized club on campus, the new hub creates an accessible space for LC students to participate in climate grassroots advocacy and action. For Co-Hub Coordinators Emilie Thoreson ’28 and Jordan Owen ’28, the Sunrise Movement was something they had been interested in since high school, but when they met in their first year here, there were no climate activism-oriented clubs on campus.
“It was a response to a lack that we saw on campus of a space for students to do climate activism,” Thoreson said. “We do have a lot of environmental programs here, and I think this is just another pillar that I feel like has been lacking here. We want to strengthen that and make sure that we do have direct community activism on campus.”
Owen explained that, unlike other popular climate movements in the United States, the Sunrise Movement commits to intersectionality, integrating both social and climate justice into its campaigns to achieve local and national feats. Additionally, the movement explicitly aims to “invest in Black, brown and working class communities,” which the Sunrise Movement’s website warns will be disproportionately affected by the future of climate change.
“Sunrise is a movement that is the whole U.S., bringing everyone together and actually fighting for everybody, and not just one group of people,” Thoreson stated.
Though the Sunrise Hub is chaptered at LC, the campaigns and goals of Sunrise LC will not just focus on the LC community. In the future, the LC Hub hopes to work collaboratively with the Portland and Reed hubs and, as the semester progresses, create a concrete campaign for LC students to lead. On top of addressing pressing local issues, the group will continue to promote the current national campaign, “Make Polluters Pay,” which is “turning the public against Big Oil’s oligarchy” and showing their deep involvement in today’s heated politics.
“We want it to be led by the people who decided to join Sunrise, and we want them to be able to pursue what they’re passionate about and help facilitate that in the best way that we can,” Owen said.
Throughout the year, the LC Hub will meet once a week and — in the future — will host monthly National Days of Action corresponding to different local and national interests for the movement. As the LC Hub continues to develop and consider different topics to center a campaign around, students are encouraged to fill out the involvement interest form to meet with a team member and share which social justice and environmental actions they are passionate about. Students can keep up with the LC Hub through their Instagram @sunrisemovement.lc and their WhatsApp group through the LinkTree on their account. The hub is still looking for a finance lead, an action lead, three recruiters and a hub delegate to support their leadership team.
“I hope that this continues beyond us, and I hope that we’re able to find students who are passionate about this,” Thoresdon said. “Within the Sunrise Movement, people are brought together in the community and given an opportunity to help.”
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