Resource Type: Case Studies

Campaign wins don’t happen without broad-based, community organizing on the ground in the communities most impacted by the pipeline. Effective and successful climate campaigns require a combination of multiple strategies and actions, garnering as much organized influence on the local, state, national, and even international level. Welcome and support new leaders who’ve never been involved and respect them, even when their political and cultural views are different than your own. There is great need for building community and mutual support. A powerful key to victory was the collection and widespread dissemination of valid, reliable, and culturally responsive and competent research and use it wisely in the campaign alongside the power of committed and able people. This report documents organizing lessons learned from the experience of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in North Carolina.

Working in the climate advocacy space, our focus is almost always turned towards the communities we are building power with and the actors and systems we wish to influence and change. As the calendar flips to May – Mental Health Awareness Month – I want us to take a look inside our movement spaces at the evidence around the urgency of addressing burnout, the additional mental health stressors present in our sector, and where the evidence points us towards improving the success and sustainability of our movement.Throughout this newsletter, I will be digging in on some of the recent evidence –including from the Lab itself! – on the four-day work week as an institutional strategy to address the factors that contribute to burnout.

From studying past social movements, the Lab has learned that the transformational change necessary to equitably address the climate crisis is more likely to occur when multiracial, cross-class (MRXC) movements* claim their collective power, expand the imagination of what’s possible, and organize and mobilize people at scale. In the last 5 years, the Sunrise Movement has demonstrated a commitment to learning and practice on multiracial, cross-class movement building. This week’s newsletter features reflections and lessons from Lab member and Deputy Organizer Director at Sunrise, Dejah Powell. As a Lab member yourself, you can read the full report* on how Sunrise has been working to build a movement across race and class, and the implications and learnings based on those efforts. This report was developed as part of the Lab’s Climate Justice Microgrant Program.