Students have always enjoyed flaunting revolutionary politics — the posters, the slogans, the Che Guevara T-shirts.

Like gender fluidity and ultimate frisbee, these radical affectations often don't survive graduation. It's a tale as old as time: One day you’re shouting into a bullhorn; the next, you’re typing on Slack.

Members also earn 'rays' on a Sunrise patch as they progress through the ranks — a visible marker of participation and standing within the organization.

What does endure, however, is the sophisticated political machinery designed to harness this youthful fervor and put it into action.

'Political revolution'

This week, watchdog group Defending Education published internal documents outlining a coordinated push for political upheaval from one of the country’s most visible youth activist organizations.

The Sunrise Movement is a 501(c)(4) environmental organization that describes itself as “a movement of young people fighting to stop the climate crisis.”

But slides leaked to Defending Education from a March 17, 2026, membership meeting reveal a highly structured and strategic operation calling for a “political revolution” and “structurally chang[ing] the foundations of this country" — language that goes well beyond climate advocacy.

The message is as simple as it is sobering: The goal is not reform, but replacement.

The revelation here is not the Sunrise Movement’s rhetoric. “Revolution” is already central to the group’s public-facing language; its homepage describes itself as part of a broader climate revolution. What the slides add is clarity: That “revolution” is not just metaphor, but a program laid out in concrete terms, from pressure campaigns and mass noncooperation to institutional targeting.

Defending Education

Path to a 'New System'

The goal: “Eco-socialism, [a] multi-racial democracy, and Green New Deal legislation.”

A section titled “On the Road to Revolution” lays out a path to a “New System” — including passing Green New Deal policies and “ending the billionaire 2-party system.”

The slides also describe a strategy of “repolarizing” the country. One passage calls for “get[ting] majority of society out in the streets and an explosion in voting,” arguing that “we need to repolarize society” to move people away from what it describes as a “(corrupt) system” and toward a new one with “more democracy.”

Target: Hilton

The materials also outline how that shift is meant to occur in practice — through a sequence of escalating actions tied to specific campaigns.

It begins with a March 28 No Kings event and builds toward a May 1 national strike. In between: sustained pressure.

A slide titled “Hilton to May Day” points to coordinated economic disruption, including efforts to target "ICE enabler" Hilton Hotels over its alleged ties to immigration enforcement. Tactics listed include public boycotts, so-called “wide awake actions,” and coordinated booking and canceling of hotel reservations — designed to impose financial and reputational costs.

Defending Education

'Dawn' to 'Dusk'

The slides also lay out what the group calls its internal “culture” — a set of guiding principles members are expected to adopt. The language reads less like loose organizing advice and more like a shared creed: “Nothing about us without us,” “Motivate the base, isolate the opposition,” and “It is our duty to fight for our freedom, it is our duty to win.” The effect is to define not just tactics, but a common vocabulary and moral framework for participants.

Another section details a tiered membership structure, with clearly defined ranks — “Dawn,” “Morning,” “High Noon,” “Afternoon,” and “Dusk” — each tied to specific benchmarks: recruiting new members, completing actions, attending meetings, and undergoing training. Advancement comes with increasing responsibilities, access, and internal status.

Members also earn “rays” on a Sunrise patch as they progress through the ranks — a visible marker of participation and standing within the organization. The structure resembles a formal pipeline, designed to scale participation and develop organizers over time.

'Full Dictatorship'

The presentation outlines three possible futures, each portraying the current system as compromised and the stakes as existential — conditions that, in the materials’ framing, justify escalation.

The most extreme — “Full Dictatorship” — imagines Donald Trump consolidating power, using the military against opponents, and restricting speech.

The function is clear: Escalation isn’t optional. It’s required.

Defending Education

Defending Education

Defending Education, formerly Parents Defending Education, has focused on political activity in schools — curriculum, student protests, and institutional ties to advocacy groups.

Defending Education was founded in 2021 amid a surge of parental backlash to politicized curricula and school policies. The group uses public records requests, whistleblower tips, and document releases to surface what it describes as ideological activism inside education systems.

RELATED: Defending Education gives parents tools to fight leftist indoctrination

In recent years, it has zeroed in on the overlap between student organizing and outside advocacy groups — arguing that protests framed as grassroots are often supported and shaped by national networks. The Sunrise materials, it says, fit that pattern.

The Sunrise Movement has been linked to student walkouts, including protests tied to immigration enforcement. What the newly released slides add, Defending Education argues, is a clearer picture of how that organizing is structured and scaled.

“While calls for a ‘political revolution’ by left-wing activist groups are not unique, these coordinated plans to put economic and social pressure on universities … should raise serious concerns,” said Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education.

“Our academic institutions should be places of higher learning … not weaponized or punished to achieve a ‘structural change’ to the political foundations of this country.”

Defending Education

Pushing left

Founded in 2017, the Sunrise Movement helped drive the Green New Deal into the political mainstream through protests, sit-ins, and youth mobilization.

The Sunrise Movement operates as a decentralized network of local “hubs,” many based on college and high school campuses. That structure has allowed it to scale quickly — turning student energy into coordinated national campaigns.

Since its founding, the Sunrise Movement has proven itself an effective pressure group within Democrat politics, helping push climate policy from the margins to the center of the party’s agenda. Its early backing of the Green New Deal helped turn what was once a fringe proposal into a defining litmus test for progressive candidates.

The group also played a visible role during the 2020 election cycle, applying sustained pressure on Joe Biden and his campaign to adopt more aggressive climate positions. While not all of its demands were met, Sunrise and allied activists helped shape the administration’s climate framework — demonstrating that its model of protest plus pressure can move policy, not just headlines.

Its strategy has consistently blended electoral pressure with direct action. What the newly released slides suggest is a continuation of that model, but with a more explicit emphasis on escalation and institutional leverage.

For a generation told that it is inheriting a world on the brink, the climate is the cause. For groups like Sunrise Movement, the target is something more immediate: the system itself.

What emerges is not just a campaign for the planet, but a bid to reshape political power around a broader program of systemic change.