In September, 2021, my freshman year of high school, I awkwardly stumbled around the ETHS Volunteer Fair. The Senior Courtyard was crowded with white plastic tables, colorful banners and sweaty teenagers, fenced in by towering brick walls. I lurched to a hasty stop when I saw a lone high schooler with long wavy dark hair handing out black and yellow stickers at the Community Service Club’s table. The stickers read “SUNRISE.”
“Oh my god, we do have one!” I loudly blurted out. The teenager jumped slightly, looking confused. That was when, to my horror, my mouth decided to gain its own consciousness and talk without my go-ahead; I began rambling about the episode of “Queer Eye” my mom had recently forced me to watch. The Fab Five had done a makeover for a Sunrise leader, a young woman living in a home with several other environmental advocates.
Three and a half years later, and I have officially been a part of E-Town Sunrise ever since. The Evanston chapter of Sunrise is an entirely youth-led environmental justice organization that runs independently from ETHS. It focuses on advocating for increased sustainability policies in our city and school districts, and changing the culture surrounding climate change via education and community engagement. While my identity as a leader and environmentalist has been fundamentally shaped by my experience of being a part of E-Town Sunrise, there are three specific lessons I point to as my biggest takeaways.
- The most successful advocacy comes from a place of love and compassion for your community.
Anger, while a key and valued emotion in organizing, is not sustainable. I do not show up to E-Town Sunrise’s leadership meetings every Sunday on Zoom out of anger. As cliche as it may sound, I show up because I genuinely believe that my efforts and the efforts of the people around me will lead to a cleaner, safer, fairer world. I believe that we deserve that world. Again, anger is very useful; it propelled me to help plan E-Town Sunrise’s rally in November 2024 and speak at City Council meetings in support of the Healthy Buildings Ordinance. Yet that anger fizzled out quickly. Purposefully drawing on the love I have for the people around me gives me the motivation to continue organizing.
- Climate change is an act of violence.
While recognizing this truth may appear ugly, and counterintuitive to the first lesson I learned, I believe the two are inseparable. For a long time, I had this subconscious idea that global warming was an accident. A crisis that we stumbled into without realizing what was happening. However, my thinking began to fundamentally change as I planned the workshop “History of Global Warming, Environmentalism and Climate Change” for ETHS’s 2025 Climate Justice Conference. I learned that the earliest record of global warming was in 1896, and that since the early 1950s oil and gas companies have poured millions of dollars into covering up the crisis. I also learned that on June 24th, 1988, a scientist from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration testified before congress that global warming is real and caused by human activity. People in power have had decades of opportunities to stop climate change and have chosen not to. In order to build a cleaner, safer, fairer world, we need to reconcile ourselves with all the factors worsening climate change, including those who have caused it.
- Last but not least, intrinsic motivation is the key.
Over the course of numerous conversations with my fellow students about E-Town Sunrise, I have gotten a sense that the organization is not seen as credible. By this, I mean that because we are not run through ETHS or sponsored by an adult, we are seen as less official or less organized. We are not seen as something you can put on your resume or college application. However, my experience has been the opposite. The section of my resume devoted to skills I have learned from E-Town Sunrise is the longest one, and I wrote multiple supplemental essays for college applications based on my experience in the organization.
The key to the type of success I described achieving in my resume and college applications is members’ intrinsic motivation and initiative. The lack of an adult sponsor may make student turnover and general organization harder, but it also opens up a wealth of opportunities. Our projects and time are entirely spent on what we find important and what we want to work on. While that level of responsibility may appear intimidating, it is actually the foundation of my love for the organization. Watching the level of teamwork and ingenuity that goes into making E-Town Sunrise not only function but consistently succeed is beautiful. Out of all my classes and experiences thus far, I am confident that my time with E-Town Sunrise has prepared me the most for life after high school.
