Dylan Wahbe

Sunrise Movement NYU

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Hub Director and founding member
2020-2023


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Highlights

  • Helped start Sunrise NYU, official chapter of sunrise movement
  • Initially served as Communications director, moved to Hub director
  • Led recruitment, brought in over 300 members
  • Led weekly meetings, leadership meetings, 1:1 leadership team
  • Co-led campaign for fossil fuel divestment at NYU
  • Co-led press rollout, getting featured in international publications like The Guardian and Rolling Stone

Background

I helped start the Sunrise Movement chapter at NYU in 2020. After a semester of recruitment, building a base, and creating some internal structure, we collectively decided to push NYU to divest from fossil fuels.

When we began our campaign, we reached out to the previous generation of student organizers who were working on fossil fuel divestment. We wanted to connect with them, learn from their mistakes and wins, and see where we could pick up from. While these previous campaigns didn't get NYU to divest, they laid the foundation for us. These organizers were able to have NYU establish the Office of Sustainability, they educated the student body on the impact of the fossil fuel industry, and won key support from a variety of faculty organizations. If it wasn't for these efforts, our campaign wouldn't have been able to be successful.