Dozens of protesters with the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate organization, were arrested after staging a sit-in inside Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s Washington DC office Thursday
According to the Sunrise Movement, 54 people were arrested, among a few hundred who joined the protest from across the country, including some from New York, which Schumer represents. On its Instagram, the group is fundraising $24,000 to cover the bail fees and any potential legal fees for those arrested.
Capitol police were not immediately available for comment.
In a clip on the Sunrise Movement’s Instagram, with over 40,000 likes at the time of publication, young people sitting on the office floor chanted: “Hey hey, ho ho, Schumer has got to go!” Protesters, including children, held signs reading “The filibuster kills,” “Stop the climate crisis,” and “Schumer: Step up or step aside.”
As Senate Democrats prepare to vote on a majority leader for the upcoming Congress, they’re 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, as well as several members of the freshman class, like 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.
The protesters on Thursday 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 Democrats prioritize ending the filibuster when Congress returns in January.
They also dropped the letters at the offices of every Senate Democrat. According to the Sunrise Movement’s campaigns director, Kidus Girma, Thursday’s action is one of several planned over the next two weeks targeting Senate Democrats and “demanding they actually take action”.
The group has regularly protested against politicians since first making headlines in 2018 with another sit-in targeting then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and helped launch calls for a Green New Deal alongside congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was part of that 2018 sit-in. In the eight years since, Sunrise has supported progressive candidates, and last week, a Sunrise co-founder, Will Lawrence, 36, won his race for a Michigan US House seat after campaigning against datacenters.
“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. They’re demanding change, not the same old, same old,” said Girma over the phone.
According to early data from Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (Circle), which monitors youth civic engagement, the 3 November elections saw the second-highest youth turnout for a midterm election in 30 years – following only the 2018 midterms in Donald Trump’s first term.
“Chuck Schumer has been in office longer than I have been alive, and I’m 31 years old,” Girmus said. “[Young people] didn’t vote for a return to the Biden years, but rather a change.”
This isn’t the first sit-in of Schumer’s office organized by young people to happen this week. On Tuesday, three protesters were arrested during a protest by the youth advocacy group Get Free, who were there saying voters “need Democratic leaders to meet the moment lest we repeat history again”, according to executive director Nicole Carty.
Last week, Girma said the election 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”.
