If Biden wants to win, they say, he must end U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza and declare a climate emergency.
“Trump, are you for ordinary people or are you for oil millionaires? Why are you letting my generation’s future burn? Why aren’t you fighting for people like me? You are taking millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry,” 17-year-old Sunrise Movement activist Adah Crandall shouted at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Laconia, New Hampshire, Monday night.
Six other protesters soon followed, disrupting Trump one by one, with some unfurling yellow banners reading, “Oil Sellout” before police escorted them out of the resort where the event was being hosted.
The night before, Sunrise activists disrupted former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley during a campaign event at a Courtyard Hotel ballroom in Nashua, New Hampshire. “My community is suffering through asthma and cancer from the fossil fuel money that you are taking,” one activist shouted. “How can you look at me in the eye? How can you look at my generation in the eyes?”
Haley offered only broad platitudes about the environment before pivoting to her support for a more robust exploitation of the country’s fossil fuels. All told, Marriott security removed six protesters from the Nashua ballroom, some with yellow banners reading, “Haley: Climate Criminal.”
As Sunrise Communications Director Stevie O’Hanlon puts it, the activists wanted to know how either candidate could claim to be fighting for the people while taking millions from the oil and gas industry. O’Hanlon, who was present during the actions, tells Truthout the interruptions are part of a larger primary-focused strategy targeting both Republicans and Democrats as election season ramps up.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s recent dropout, O’Hanlon says, only further cements Trump’s position as the GOP front-runner. “I think it really puts the pressure on Joe Biden, honestly. Because the general election is about to kick off. It could kick off this week,” O’Hanlon tells Truthout. “Biden needs to start showing that he cares about the lives of young people and the lives of Palestinians if he actually wants to win the votes of young people and people of color in this country. He can’t win without us.”
Sunrise is challenging Biden to end the United States’ support for Israel’s continued genocidal assault on Gaza and to formally declare a climate emergency in order to shore up his position against Trump in a general election. Nothing short of that, O’Hanlon says, can motivate enough youth voters to turn out for him. “Biden has made a lot of young people angry with him in the last few months. And that’s because of his foreign policy in Gaza and also, because he’s approved fossil fuel projects like the Willow project in Alaska, that are putting us on track to produce more fossil fuels than ever before.”
Sunrise launched a more intensive campaign in December to pressure Biden to formally declare a climate emergency, which would unlock new executive powers to address the climate crisis, including ensuring increased grid reliability and reining in runaway methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure, among other powers. The group, O’Hanlon says, is ramping up pressure amid the 2024 primary season, planning multiple election-focused actions, including a February 19 President’s Day action in which hundreds plan to show up at local Democratic Party offices to conduct actions pressuring President Biden to declare a climate emergency and protect Palestinian lives.
Other climate-focused direct action groups are also keeping Democrats at the top of their priority list for disruptive action. The youth-led direct action group Climate Defiance recently interrupted West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin as he was giving a speech at a local diner last week in Derry, New Hampshire. Youth activists cut off Manchin as he was delivering a line about his support for intensified border security with chants of “Off fossil fuels, Manchin, off fossil fuels!” before police escorted the activists out. The outgoing West Virginia senator is considering a third party run on a “No Labels” ticket and has said he’ll make a final decision after Super Tuesday.
“We confronted Manchin because he is a climate criminal who is cooking the planet for profit,” Climate Defiance Executive Director Michael Greenberg told Truthout.
