Newly obtained training materials from a March 2026 Sunrise Movement membership meeting lay out a sweeping, years-long strategy to dismantle what the group calls the "billionaire 2 party system" and replace it with what the slides describe as "eco-socialism" and a "multi-racial democracy." The internal presentation, obtained by the education watchdog group Defending Education, maps a four-phase road to what it openly labels "political revolution", complete with mass strikes, corporate pressure campaigns, and a timeline stretching past 2032.
Fox News Digital reported on the slides as far-left groups ramp up calls for a nationwide strike on May 1, May Day, the international socialist holiday. The timing is not accidental. The Sunrise Movement's own materials treat May Day as a launchpad for broader disruption, folding it into Phase 1 of a plan whose stated "grand objective" includes passage of Green New Deal legislation and the structural transformation of American governance.
The presentation describes a group that is not content with protest signs and campus marches. It wants to reshape the country's political and economic foundations, and it has written down exactly how it intends to try.
The slide deck, as described by Fox News Digital, includes a roadmap titled "On the road to revolution." Phase 1 centers on three goals: "Stop Trump's grip on power," "build up to mass noncooperation" through protests like May Day, and "use the [2026 midterms] to build toward electoral breakthrough, win big." In short, the group treats the upcoming midterm elections not as ordinary democratic participation but as a staging ground for systemic upheaval.
Phase 2, pegged to 2028, escalates further. The slides call for "MASS strikes," a "Huge historic 2028 turnout for our candidate," and what the presentation describes as the "biggest tentpole of masses against Trump + his billionaires." Phase 3, covering 2029 through 2031, carries the blunt title "political revolution." Phase 4, set for 2032 and beyond, is labeled "The New System", which the presentation says will include, with a touch of dark humor or candor, "Happiness (maybe)."
That parenthetical aside may be the most honest line in the deck. The group's own roadmap concedes that even after a decade of organized disruption, the promised utopia is uncertain at best.
The Sunrise Movement's strategy does not stop at elections and rallies. One slide outlined tactics including "booking and cancelling reservations at Hilton Hotels" as part of a broader corporate pressure campaign. Youth climate protesters have claimed that noise protests alone cost Hilton hotels "at least $18 million," though the basis for that figure is unclear. Another slide urged college students to push their schools to sever ties with companies the group labels "ICE enablers like Hilton," framing the effort as an attempt to "topple the corporate pillar."
The tactic of weaponizing campus purchasing power against private companies cooperating with federal immigration enforcement is not unique to the Sunrise Movement. A similar playbook surfaced in Los Angeles, where a teachers union planned to mobilize students and redirect school resources to resist ICE operations.
The pattern is clear enough: target the private sector for cooperating with lawful federal agencies, squeeze institutions through economic harassment, and frame it all as righteous activism. The Sunrise slides make the quiet part loud, this is about coercion, not persuasion.
The presentation also laid out three potential political scenarios for the country's future. One was labeled "full dictatorship." A second described a "seesaw democracy." The third, the group's preferred outcome, called for "mass noncooperation and huge electoral turnout." In the dictatorship scenario, the slides envisioned Trump allegedly "steal[ing]" future elections. The group also characterized political opponents as "authoritarians."
This framing is worth pausing on. A group with documented links to Antifa, an organization the Trump administration has labeled a terrorist group, is casting itself as the defender of democracy while openly pursuing what it calls "eco-socialism" and "political revolution." The contradiction is baked into the slides themselves.
The Sunrise Movement's ties were enough to draw concern from the House Judiciary Committee chairman in November, Fox News Digital reported. The nature and scope of those concerns were not detailed, but the fact that congressional leadership flagged the group's connections before these slides surfaced suggests the alarm is not new.
The broader May Day mobilization extends beyond the Sunrise Movement. At a No Kings Rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, in late March, Ezra Levin, co-founder of the left-wing organizing group Indivisible, joined the call for a national strike and urged protesters to prepare for economic disruption.
Levin told the crowd:
"I want everyone here to put this on their calendar... It is a tactical goal, an escalation... It is an economic show of force, inspired by Minnesota's own day of truth and action."
He continued:
"On May 1, on May Day, we are saying, 'No business as usual.' No work, no school, no shopping. We're going to show up and say, 'We're putting workers over billionaires and kings.'"
The rhetoric is revealing. Levin frames the strike as an "economic show of force", not a peaceful expression of dissent, but a deliberate attempt to inflict economic pain. Minnesota has already seen escalating anti-ICE protests that prompted serious federal responses. A January 23 shutdown attempt in Minneapolis targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement saw limited success, but the organizers clearly intend to build momentum.
Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education, the group that obtained the Sunrise Movement slides, told Fox News Digital the materials should not be dismissed as typical activist bluster.
"While calls for a 'political revolution' by left-wing activist groups are not unique, these coordinated plans to put economic and social pressure on universities to achieve a socialist 'democracy' should raise serious concerns."
Staley added:
"Our academic institutions should be places of higher learning, discovery, and robust debate around ideas and policies, not weaponized or punished to achieve a 'structural change' to the political foundations of this country."
Staley's point cuts to the heart of the matter. The Sunrise Movement is not simply advocating for policy change through legitimate channels. Its own slides describe a strategy of economic coercion aimed at universities and corporations, institutions that serve the public and employ millions of Americans. When a group tells students to pressure their schools into cutting ties with companies that cooperate with federal law enforcement, it is not engaging in debate. It is attempting to build a parallel enforcement mechanism outside the law.
The broader far-left movement has struggled to convert this kind of energy into actual electoral results. Squad-backed candidates went 0 for 6 in recent Illinois primaries, a sign that voters in even reliably blue territory are not buying what the activist left is selling. The gap between the movement's ambitions and its democratic support is wide, which may explain why the Sunrise slides lean so heavily on strikes, boycotts, and institutional pressure rather than persuasion.
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to the Sunrise Movement for comment. Whether the group responded is not stated. The silence, if that is what it is, fits a pattern. Organizations that draft detailed multi-year plans for "political revolution" and "eco-socialism" tend to be less forthcoming when asked to defend those plans in plain daylight.
The Sunrise Movement's presentation is a rare case of a radical group putting its long-term strategy on paper in granular detail. The four-phase timeline, the corporate targeting, the campus pressure campaigns, the explicit goal of dismantling the current political system, none of this is ambiguous. The group said what it meant.
Americans watching the May Day buildup should understand what is being organized. This is not a spontaneous expression of grassroots frustration. It is a coordinated, phased campaign with stated goals that include mass economic disruption, institutional coercion, and the replacement of the existing American political order with something the organizers themselves call "eco-socialism." The partisan battles over federal budgets and spending priorities look almost quaint next to a movement that wants to scrap the system entirely.
When activists write down their plans for revolution and someone finds the paperwork, the public ought to take them at their word. The Sunrise Movement did not hide its intentions. It filed them in a slide deck, complete with phases, timelines, and a parenthetical admission that happiness is optional.
A group that openly plots to "structurally change the foundations of this country" and then asks you to believe it is defending democracy deserves exactly the scrutiny it is now getting. Americans who still prefer their revolutions at the ballot box should pay close attention.
