The Sunrise Movement and its political action committee, Sunrise PAC, will host a virtual phone bank Tuesday featuring prominent environmental attorney Steven Donziger to mobilize voters for political candidates Will Lawrence and Abdul El-Sayed.
The two-hour event, scheduled for Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. EDT, aims to rally grassroots support for left-leaning candidates in key competitive districts. Event organizers said they will provide training to participants at the start of the session.
“Let’s hop on the phones and win this thing!” Donziger said in a statement released ahead of the drive.
The organizers said the phone bank will support Lawrence, a co-founder of the youth-led climate organization Sunrise Movement, in his home congressional district, running on a platform opposing foreign conflicts and high-energy data centers.
It will also back El-Sayed, a public health expert campaigning on campaign finance reform, middle-class tax relief, and expanding Medicare for All.
The youth-led climate coalition framed the campaign around economic populism and corporate accountability, saying its mission is to shift power from corporate donors and fossil fuel executives to working-class voters.
Donziger became a prominent figure in environmental activism after leading a decades-long legal battle against oil giant Chevron Corporation, when the giant polluter made a strategic decision to “demonize” him and unleashed a furious personal attack on the lawyer.
Donziger represented more than 30,000 Indigenous residents and farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon who suffered severe health and environmental damage from billions of gallons of toxic oil waste dumped in the region.
The lawsuit resulted in a landmark $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in Ecuadorian court in 2011, but instead of paying, the company contested the ruling in the United States, filing a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) suit, and convincing a conflicted U.S. federal judge to rule that the Ecuadorian judgment was invalid.
When Donziger appealed an order to hand over attorney-client communications to Chevron’s legal team, the judge lodged a criminal contempt of court charge.
He served nearly 1,000 days confined in house arrest and a six-month federal prison sentence, becoming the first lawyer in U.S. history to face pre-trial detention on a misdemeanor contempt charge.
Donziger’s detention generated international attention from human rights organizations, legal scholars, and climate activists, who viewed his prosecution as corporate overreach designed to silence environmental advocates.
His high-profile struggle against corporate power turned him into a symbol for grassroots anti-corporate and climate justice movements.
Lawrence and El-Sayed both align with the Sunrise Movement’s core mission: ending fossil fuel reliance, fighting corporate dominance in politics, and championing economic and environmental policies for working-class communities.
Lawrence is a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement itself, making his platform a direct extension of the movement’s core climate and youth-organizing principles. He opposes the expansion of high-energy data centers and industrial projects that place strain on local energy grids and communities.
His platform focuses on investing in public housing, expanding access to quality healthcare, and shifting government investments away from corporate tax breaks and foreign conflicts toward domestic community needs.
As a physician and public health professional, El-Sayed gained national attention by linking environmental degradation to human health (including industrial pollution and public safety crises).
The Michigan Senate contender refuses corporate PAC contributions and campaigns on taking money out of politics to hold fossil fuel executives and wealthy corporate donors accountable.
El-Sayed also strongly supports Medicare for All, expanding public safety nets, and passing progressive economic measures that put money back in the pockets of everyday working families.
By backing both candidates, the Sunrise Movement aims to prove that left-leaning economic populism and climate justice resonate strongly with voters in crucial swing states like Michigan, showing that grassroots youth organizing can defeat corporate-backed political interests.
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