DECISION MAKING

The Sunrise Movement's "Rules for Strategy" set the foundation for decision making within the hub:

3-person rule

If any three people decide an action is good for the movement, they can take it! This also means that nobody does anything alone. Each of us have perspective, experience, and skills to bring to the table. Moreover, each of our decisions have ripple effects for everyone else in the hub. We build our movement by talking to each other and we model this in our decision making.

Ask for advice, not permission

When making a decision, we seek advice from people who will be impacted by the decision and those who hold expertise, but there is no one who can “give permission” for actions and decisions. This means that relevant people are included in the decision making process. If the decision would result in a person taking three hours (more or less) out of their week, that person is considered relevant and should, at the very least, know about the decision. “Three hours” isn’t a hard rule, but it does represent a chunk of time that people would actually have to plan around, so think of it as shorthand for the baseline of consideration we should have for other people’s time and labor.

We vote “with our feet”

We give energy to the actions we want to support. There is no one right action to take—everyone is empowered to take action where they feel the most excitement to further the movement. Within in hub, new initiatives obtain legitimacy by obtaining the buy-in others. This means that projects that struggle to keep people’s attention should be allowed to fail, even if only temporarily. There is always time for priorities and energies to change

All teams have a coordinator and a messenger

We move the work forward and report back to the whole, respectively. This means that everybody’s role is unique, but nobody is irreplaceable. We honor different capacities, ways of knowing, and work processes. We understand that no single person’s word is law and emphasize a collaborative approach to conflicts in opinion and personality. We reject top-down leadership. The role of a leader is not to single-handedly shape any project or team, but to empower the members of the team to make decisions, take power, work cohesively, and communicate effectively.

All decisions should be made in a way that ensures that those impacted are given an opportunity to have their voices heard.

We do this in three ways:

  1. Holding strategy sessions early and repeatedly, and sharing those strategies with others: Setting strategy allows teams to develop agreed theory and tactics from which future decisions can be judged. Sharing that strategy allows others to provide feedback.

  2. Consulting with those who will be impacted and with those who hold expertise: Bringing up the decision with the people involved, as well as seeking out the opinion of others who might be able to provide insight. As a general rule, we should be mindful of the potential impact of our decisions. If we cannot properly visualize the impact of what we are deciding, then it’s time to loop other people in. 

  3. Establishing clear channels of communication and decision making: Taking time as a team to agree upon the manner in which decisions will be made and communicated to one another. This helps ensure transparency and accountability later on.

The point of these conversations are not to slow decision making down. When a decision is time-sensitive, hub members should feel empowered to take action as needed. By discussing strategy and decision making processes early on, we can allow for clear and efficient decision making, while still ensuring that decisions are made in accordance with our movement’s values, goals and theory of change.

WHO IS ABLE TO MAKE DECISIONS IN THE HUB?

Taking initiative and experimenting is something that everyone in the hub should feel empowered to do. A good idea can originate from anyone. We want to foster an environment where we are able to come together as needed but trust each other’s judgment to handle the day-to-day decisions on matters that are most relevant to them. 

HOW ARE DECISIONS MADE IN THE HUB?

While we honor that spontaneity is one of Sunrise’s greatest strengths, we also acknowledge that clear delegation of work and decision making is essential to creating a long lasting movement. Our team and leadership structure allows us to better distribute the work and responsibility of decision making. (For instance, external communications with other organizations might be less confusing when communication and some level of discretion is afforded to a single team, or a small handful of people.)

Decision making authority for Sunrise LA is distributed throughout our various teams, and to the members within them. Teams have discretionary authority over their work so as to avoid "bottlenecking", while also allowing all members to gain experience in the strategic decision making process.

Within teams, responsibility is determined by the distribution of work. We want to afford team coordinators, spokespeople and members the maximum flexibility to determine their leadership and working structures independent from top-down micromanaging. 

ANTI-OPPRESSION, DECISION MAKING & BUILDING A JUST HUB

In an ideal world, we all feel equally empowered to take the lead on the wants and needs that propel us into and around Sunrise Movement. But let’s be real: we live in a fucked-up society dominated by the weirdly specific, sadistic, and extractive whims of capitalist, ableist, straight cis white heteropatriarchy and we are prone to replicating oppressive dynamics in our hub as well.

Our movement, like the society we live in, is embedded with systematic inequality. Even with the best intentions, “voting with our feet” can often result in the loudest voices dominating the decision making process, and further perpetuating inequality. 

Generally speaking:

  • If you have privilege, you have a responsibility to help create conditions within the hub that facilitate the work of people less privileged than you. 

  • If you lack privilege, you are welcomed and empowered to demand the change you need—and take leadership where you feel you must. 

Having clear and transparent strategy and decision making process is one way of allowing us to actively and intentionally combat those systems, promote transparency, bring new voices to the table, and ensure that the strategic framework for future decisions is one based in justice.