Dear John,
We timed Power Shift '21 within the first hundred days of the new presidential administration strategically.
By training thousands of young climate activists in critical skills around campaign design, direct action, and movement history and analysis, Power Shift 2021 will shape the direction, culture, and impact of the youth climate movement during these critical next few years. Past Power Shift convergences have planted the seeds that became organizations like the Sunrise Movement, Divest Ed, the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition, and now more than ever, we need to embolden and empower young people to act creatively to build powerful campaigns to build more power and bring more people into this movement for a stable climate.
But, we urgently need your help to continue to scale up this movement to meet the climate crisiswith a movement powerful enough to meet the scale and urgency of the climate crisis itself.
This year, as a result of the pandemic, PSN has had our foundation funding drastically cut by 62% because COVID caused uncertainty for our funders - something none of us could control. We need your help to close that funding gap. PSN is the only national Black womxn-led, youth climate justice organization that provides political education, training, mentorship, and leadership development to young people and grassroots climate justice organizations. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier, that disproportionately impacts people from every marginalized demographic. We’re uniquely positioned to bring people traditionally left behind in the environmental spaces into the movement for climate justice, making our work even more powerful.
We’re currently paying recruitment fellows more than $15,000 a month in stipends, and are committed to making this Power Shift the most inclusive yet. That means we’ll need tens of thousands of dollars for interpreters, more money than ever before for registration scholarships, online platforms, and more. We just can’t continue to do this work without your support.
And we need it right now, because we need to train the most geographically, racially, issue area, and socio-economically diverse group of young people to learn the skills needed to disrupt oppressive, extractive economic systems and create alternatives rooted in solidarity, humanity, and justice for all people. Planning the Power Shift 2021 can’t happen without your help!
Yesterday, I was able to breathe with ease for the first time in four years. I know the same is true for many of us. But the reality is, there’s still so much about our future that’s up in the air. The climate crisis continues to outpace almost all predictions, and we need to put an end to the fossil fuel economy, like, yesterday.
Please give generously to help ensure PSN can continue to support, educate, and train the powerful and compassionate young people to empower them to fight effectively to win livable futures for us all.
In solidarity and with love,
Dany Sigwalt
Co-Executive Director, PSN
