Guido Girgenti

Guido Girgenti (born 1991 or 1992) is an American activist best known for co-founding the Sunrise Movement, an organization that advocates political action on climate change. He has also worked on communications for Justice Democrats on campaigns to elect candidates who support a Green New Deal such as Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and others.

Early life Guido Girgenti grew up in Brooklyn. Girgenti told the New York Times that a formative moment for his political beliefs was when he went on a volunteer trip to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to "view it through the lens of racial and economic injustice." In 2010 he began attending Occidental College to study Urban and Environmental Policy. He then began attending Swarthmore College in 2015 and to pursue a degree in political science.

Career Occupy Los Angeles

While at Occidental College, Girgenti was among a group of 45 students and 30 adults who started the Occupy Los Angeles protests as part of the larger Occupy Wall Street mass protests against economic inequality and corporate greed. Girgenti received a $747 grant from the college's political science department to stay in Los Angeles over winter break to volunteer for Occupy Los Angeles and write a paper on the Occupy Wall Street movement. This enabled him to develop training on nonviolent protest and direct-action for attendees.

On November 11, 2011, Girgenti was named Activist of the Month by Occidental College.

Swarthmore Mountain Justice

Much like other activists who would later go on to found Sunrise Movement, Girgenti was involved in efforts at Swarthmore College to divest the college's endowment from fossil fuels as part of a group called Mountain Justice. Girgenti participated in a sit-in to pressure the college administrators that lasted 32 days. He was an organizer of the sit-in.

1,100 faculty and alumni and 970 students (61 percent of the student body) signed a petition in favor of divestment. It even received support from Christiana Figueres, the United Nations climate chief, who graduated from Swarthmore in 1979. Despite the support, the college's board rejected the proposal. Had the college divested, it would have become the largest college endowment to do so, with over $1.9 billion. It was not the first time that the board had rejected the proposal, again citing a desire to maximize investment returns.

Sunrise Movement

The idea to found the group came after a 2015 march to the White House organized by various climate groups. In the summer of 2016, Girgenti and about a dozen others trained at Momentum, an organization that teaches community organizing.

In 2015, Girgenti co-founded Sunrise Movement with William Lawrence, Sara Blazevic, Victoria Fernandez, Varshini Prakash, and two others. The organization officially launched in 2017 with the goal to be a more confrontational environmental movement and utilize civil disobedience and non-violent protest to effect political change. They were inspired by past movements like Act Up, the anti-apartheid movement, and the anti-nuclear movement. Girgenti acted as the organization's communications advisor.

In 2018, together with Justice Democrats and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Blazevic and a group of other Sunrise members organized a sit-in in the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She was also responsible for ensuring that no one under 18 got arrested. Sunrise organized a similar event in February 2019, bringing a group of young people to confront Senator Dianne Feinstein in her office.

By November 2019, Inside Philanthropy reported that the group had grown to 1,140 monthly donors, and had 90 volunteer hubs pop up in six weeks, across 33 states. In their review, Publishers Weekly said "By selecting contributors wisely, Prakash and Girgenti offer both a comprehensive representation of the climate movement and a practical road map for change. Young progressives will be especially affected by this impassioned and eloquent plea for progress." Socialist Alternative was more critical, stating "Unfortunately their strategy to win involves staying within the lanes of capitalism, a system that created and is unable to deal with this existential crisis."

Justice Democrats

By 2021, Girgenti was the media director of the Justice Democrats and was involved in the group's successful congressional election upsets by Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, as well as some candidates that were not successful like Jess King. He also created the group's podcast, Bloc Party, which ran from November 16, 2020 until June 29, 2023.

Personal life As of 2021, Girgenti lived in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn with his girlfriend Sara Blazevic.