Hundreds of youth held a rally at the Democratic National Committee summer meeting in San Francisco on Friday, urging party leadership to host a debate on the threats posed by climate change.
The rally came a day after the DNC’s Resolution Committee defeated a resolution on a 17-8 vote to call for a presidential debate focused on the climate crisis. That decision was met with raucous protest Thursday.
Members of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led organization advocating for political action on climate change, held signs Friday that said: “It’s time for a Green New Deal,” “This is an emergency. Act like it” and “Our future is not a single issue.”
They chanted “climate debate” and hung a banner outside a parking garage adjacent to the Union Square Hilton, where the meeting is being held, that said: “Dear DNC. This is an emergency. Climate debate now.”
More than a dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls were in attendance at the DNC’s summer meeting, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders.
While climate change came up during the first two Democratic presidential debates, Mattias Lehman with the Sunrise Movement said the issue deserves more airtime in debates that reach a broad audience.
“If we’re talking about the political discourse that reaches more than just the highly engaged audience and actually speaks to Americans, debates are the only way to do that,” Lehman said.
Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez showed no signs of wanting to rewrite the debate rules midstream. Yet it’s clear that the grassroots action — supported by some DNC members — has rattled party leaders who argue that the debate structure for the 2020 primaries is a settled matter.
The discussion Thursday came a day after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ended his presidential bid that he’d hinged on a pledge to make climate action the nation’s top priority. Inslee was able to attract more than 130,000 individual donors — the mark the DNC set as one qualifying metric for the September debate stage. But Inslee was well shy of an additional requirement to hit 2% support in at least four national or early nominating state polls from reputable pollsters.
!['Honestly I've felt like a minority all my life: with being young, with being a female, with being Latino. I feel a lot for plants and animals and they don't have a voice. They feel like a minority [too] and I feel like I want to be their voice,' said protester Sofia Mesa in front of the Union Square Hilton in San Francisco on Aug. 23, 2019 during the DNC summer committee meeting. The youth-led Sunrise Movement urged Democratic leaders to hold a presidential debate on the threats posed by climate change.](https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/08/sunrise-movement-1920-800x533.jpg)
Inslee had repeatedly called on Perez to dedicate a DNC-sponsored debate to climate action.
Perez has stuck by his earlier decision not to hold “single-issue” debates, instead planning at least a dozen debates, six in 2019 and at least six in 2020, in partnership with television networks. The third of that series is set for Sept. 12 and potentially Sept. 13 if enough candidates qualify.
Perez has argued that he wants the broadest audience possible to see Democratic candidates discuss a wide range of issues. His aides also noted that the party has received separate requests for single-issue debates on civil rights, guns, poverty and issues affecting older Americans.
Additionally, the party has barred its candidates from attending any non-DNC sponsored debate, which the chairman defines as candidates interacting on the same stage at the same time.
The DNC instead has encouraged other groups to hold issue-based forums where candidates appear one at a time for more extended discussions with moderators.
KQED’s Annika Cline, Don Clyde and Stephanie Lister and the Associated Press contributed reporting to this post.
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