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Sunrise Movement Pushes Anti-War Candidates, Endorsing Melat Kiros in Denver

The group’s increasing anti-war push shows how progressives are leveraging an unpopular war in the midterms.

The youth-led Sunrise Movement is seizing on the U.S.–Israel war in Iran to boost challengers to sitting Democrats, joining a coalition of progressive groups arguing that lawmakers who take money from defense contractors and AIPAC cannot meaningfully oppose the war. 

In Denver, Sunrise is endorsing Melat Kiros, an anti-war candidate and attorney who was fired for refusing to take down her post on the genocide in Palestine, the group shared exclusively with The Intercept. Kiros is challenging longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. 

“Voters today, they want to see their candidates and their representatives refusing AIPAC money and refusing [military industrial complex] influence,” said Kiros. “They’re seeing how much it has dragged us into these endless wars, and how much it is dragging our taxpayer dollars into funding this violence as well.”

Kiros is among a growing list of insurgent candidates — including William Lawrence in Michigan and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, also both Sunrise-endorsed — who are taking Democrats to task on their complicity in the endless wars in the Middle East.

Sunrise Movement, Founded to Fight Climate Change, Pivots to Fighting Trump

Sunrise’s endorsement is part of a broader strategy shift in which the activist group, founded in 2017 to fight climate change in particular, pivots to fighting authoritarianism more broadly. 

“There’s just no winning on climate unless we address how absolutely broken our political system is,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. Focusing on corporate PAC money and the wars it fuels abroad is an essential part of the organization’s broader mission, she added. “The path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy, and that includes having a democracy that doesn’t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.”

“The path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy … that doesn’t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.”

“The path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy … that doesn’t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.”

Shiney-Ajay said Sunrise Movement organizers are “really excited” about Kiros, 28, because of her moral clarity. “She is really clear about standing up for working people,” she said. “And she’s very clear about not taking corporate PAC money.”

Historically, foreign policy issues have not been top of mind for Democratic primary voters, said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas. But as the Trump administration wages its unpopular war on Iran, he said, “candidates that are........

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