Police arrested dozens of demonstrators on Thursday after members of the youth climate group Sunrise Movement held a sit-in inside Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's office in Washington, DC.
The organization said 54 people were taken into custody, drawn from a few hundred participants who traveled from across the country, including some from New York, the state Schumer represents. The group said on Instagram it was raising $24,000 to pay bail and possible legal costs for those arrested. Capitol police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Footage posted on the group's Instagram account, which had drawn more than 40,000 likes by the time of publication, showed young people seated on the office floor chanting, 'Hey hey, ho ho, Schumer has got to go!' Protesters, some of them children, carried signs reading 'The filibuster kills,' 'Stop the climate crisis,' and 'Schumer: Step up or step aside.'
The protest comes as Senate Democrats prepare to choose a majority leader for the next Congress, a debate shaped by pressure for anti-establishment figures from communities long underrepresented in federal office to take on leadership roles. Several senators have said they will not back Schumer, among them Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and incoming freshmen such as Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed and South Carolina's Annie Andrews.
Some have rallied behind Maryland's Chris Van Hollen as an alternative. His supporters include Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota's senator-elect, and 50501, one of the major organizations behind the No Kings protests.
Demonstrators on Thursday handed Schumer a letter arguing that 'after a collective decade of Schumer leadership it was time for change,' according to the group's press release, and demanded that Democrats make ending the filibuster a priority when Congress returns in January. Copies of the letter were also left at the offices of every Senate Democrat.
Kidus Girma, the group's campaigns director, said the action was one of several planned over the next two weeks aimed at Senate Democrats and 'demanding they actually take action.' He told reporters by phone, 'Young people went to Senator Chuck Schumer's office to demand a Senate majority leader that would fight for the young people who elected a historic blue wave last week. They're demanding change, not the same old, same old.'
Sunrise first drew national attention in 2018 with a sit-in targeting then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi and later helped launch calls for a Green New Deal alongside congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who took part in that 2018 action. The group has since backed progressive candidates, and last week its co-founder Will Lawrence, 36, won a Michigan US House seat after campaigning against datacenters.
Girma, who is 31, framed the challenge to Schumer in generational terms: 'Chuck Schumer has been in office longer than I have been alive, and I'm 31 years old. [Young people] didn't vote for a return to the Biden years, but rather a change.' Early data from Tufts University's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which tracks youth civic participation, found the 3 November elections produced the second-highest youth turnout for a midterm in 30 years, trailing only the 2018 midterms during Donald Trump's first term.
Thursday's arrests were the second sit-in at Schumer's office this week. On Tuesday, three protesters were detained during a demonstration by the youth advocacy group Get Free, whose executive director Nicole Carty said voters 'need Democratic leaders to meet the moment lest we repeat history again.' Girma said last week's election results show 'that young people deeply, deeply care about their futures and the current government, but also, they're making clear demands around how to fix it.'
