Protest presses Senate Democrats on new leadership and ending the filibuster
Dozens of protesters with the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate organization, were arrested Thursday after staging a sit-in inside Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s Washington DC office. US Capitol Police detained the protesters near the office. The Sunrise Movement said 54 people were arrested among a few hundred who joined the protest from across the country, including some from New York, which Schumer represents. US Capitol Police were not immediately available for comment.
In a clip posted on the group’s Instagram, young people sat on the office floor chanting: “Hey hey, ho ho, Schumer has got to go!” The clip had drawn more than 40,000 likes at the time of publication. Protesters, including children, held signs reading “The filibuster kills,” “Stop the climate crisis,” and “Schumer: Step up or step aside.”
The protesters delivered a letter to Schumer arguing, per the group’s press release, that “after a collective decade of Schumer leadership it was time for change,” and demanding that Democrats prioritize ending the filibuster when Congress returns in January. They also dropped the letters at the offices of every Senate Democrat.
On Instagram, the group is fundraising $24,000 to cover bail fees and any potential legal fees for those arrested.
The sit-in came as Senate Democrats prepare to vote on a majority leader for the upcoming Congress. The Guardian reported that Democrats are “wrestling with how to navigate what feels like a clear mandate for anti-establishment voices from communities historically underrepresented in federal office to step into leadership.” Several Democratic senators have said they will not support Schumer for the position, including Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and members of the freshman class such as Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and South Carolina’s Annie Andrews. Some have backed Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen as a challenger, including Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s senator-elect, and 50501, one of the major groups behind the No Kings protests.
Kidus Girma, the Sunrise Movement’s campaigns director, said Thursday’s action is one of several planned over the next two weeks targeting Senate Democrats and “demanding they actually take action.”
“Young people went to Senator Chuck Schumer’s office to demand a Senate majority leader that would fight for the young people who elected a historic blue wave last week,” Girma said. “They’re demanding change, not the same old, same old.”
Early data from Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which monitors youth civic engagement, indicates the 3 November elections saw the second-highest youth turnout for a midterm election in 30 years, trailing only the 2018 midterms in Donald Trump’s first term. Girma said last week that the outcome “shows that young people deeply, deeply care about their futures and the current government – but also, they’re making clear demands around how to fix it.”
“Chuck Schumer has been in office longer than I have been alive, and I’m 31 years old,” Girma said. “[Young people] didn’t vote for a return to the Biden years, but rather a change.”
Thursday was not the first sit-in at Schumer’s office organized by young people this week. On Tuesday, three protesters were arrested during a protest by Get Free, a youth advocacy group, whose executive director, Nicole Carty, said voters “need Democratic leaders to meet the moment lest we repeat history again.”
The Sunrise Movement first made headlines in 2018 with a sit-in targeting then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi and helped launch calls for a Green New Deal alongside congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who took part in that protest. In the eight years since, the group has regularly protested against politicians and supported progressive candidates. Last week, Sunrise co-founder Will Lawrence, 36, won his race for a Michigan US House seat after campaigning against datacenters.