210 OCTOBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
gives a little shrug. “It can’t be that hard,”
she says. She heats the oven, opens a car-
ton of eggs, and begins jogging a yolk
back and forth between two bits of shell.
“It’s a bit like snot, isn’t it?” she exults.
She whisks the yolk with a flourish.
“Nothing can go wrong now.” Colman
looks quizzically into the bowl. “I’ve lost
count,” she says. “Was that four?”
“Four or five?”
“Let’s pretend it’s four,” Colman says,
cracking open another egg. She consults
the iPad. “ ‘With your mixer still running,
gradually add the sugar and a pinch of sea
salt.’ ” An immersion blender is produced.
She hands me a cup of sugar. “I’m gonna
keep whizzing while you put that in!”
Alfred, Lord Waggyson, is watching
us from as far away as possible, curled up
at the head of a sofa near the front win-
dows of the house. I am not so vexed:
There is something fun about working
with Colman, even on this small and
foamy project, and I start to understand
why David Tennant recalls “laughing
more than we should have done” while
making even the grim, bleak Broad-
church. “It’s obviously getting so thick,”
she says suddenly, nervously peering into
the bowl. “I’ve about over-whisked it.”
“I don’t think over-,” I say.
She checks the instructions. “ ‘Seven to
eight minutes until the meringue is white,
glossy, and smooth. If it feels grainy,
whisk for a little bit longer, being careful
not to let the meringue collapse.’ ”
We stare at our bowl for a while. The
egg whites sit there in a foamy lump. “I
don’t think it’s collapsed,” I finally say. “It
looks quite... present.”
Colman sticks in a finger. “It doesn’t
feel grainy,” she says.
“It does look glossy and smooth,” I say.
Colman spreads a sheet of parchment
on a baking pan and pours the mixture
into two gigantic dollops. “Wish it good
luck,” she exclaims and carefully ferries
the tray into the oven.
I ask her then whether she doesn’t
marvel sometimes at the course her life
has taken: Two decades ago, she was
cleaning houses, and yet, unlike with the
mythical waitress turned starlet, the
accrual of magic in her life happened over
years, touching work and family alike.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it? Ed and I do
sometimes go, Look. We’re still together.
We’ve got a family. I’m working,” she
says. “Appreciating what’s happening
when it’s happening, I think, is quite good
and healthy,” she says. “When the kids do
badly with exams or something, I want
them to know that in the grand scheme of
things, it doesn’t matter. Life’s that big.”
She smiles and gives me a warm, bashful
look. “I just want to try to keep them
buoyant and happy. And seeing life as—
potentially—beautiful,” she says. @
FUTURE TENSE
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 189
Nineteen-year-old Munira Berhe, smiling
and moon-faced and wearing a black
hijab, says she is here because droughts
in the Horn of Africa affected her fam-
ily in Ethiopia. Like most Sunrisers,
Berhe does not fit the environmental-
movement cliché of the white, hacky
sack–toting trustafarian. A rising
sophomore at Minneapolis Communi-
ty College, Berhe has nails painted
neon yellow and clutches her iPhone
emblazoned with a Glossier sticker (her
favorite product is the Boy Brow). For
her and many of the fellows, 2020 will
be the first election they are old enough
to vote in. “There was nothing worse
than seeing 2016 happen and not being
able to do anything,” says Maggie
Herndon, 19. “I wanted to use my pow-
er once I knew I had it.” I ask if she or
any of the others would be here if Hil-
lary had won. “I don’t think Sunrise
would be here,” says Emily Thompson,
- There’s some debate over this point,
but Allie Lindstrom, 21, agrees with a
sigh, “I would never say Trump win-
ning is good, but we’ve been able to use
that energy.”
Before that night’s taco dinner, Emily
LaShelle, a 21-year-old with a blonde
Megan Rapinoe–esque coif, leads a song
workshop. One of four daughters of a
former Evangelical pastor from Boze-
man, Montana, LaShelle explains that
the unifying power of song in the church
applies to movement building. Quartets
cluster in the hall with the assignment to
write a Sunrise-inspired verse to a classic
song. ABBA’s Dancing Queen becomes
“Gee N Dee/Saves the Earth and econo-
meee/Oh, yeah... .” Three different
groups rewrite lyrics to Lil Nas X’s Old
Town Road: “AOC’s got our back/Mar-
key is on track/Biden’s plan is wack/
Elites feelin’ attacked.”
The mood is playful and sometimes
astoundingly earnest (there is a gratitude
Slack channel, and most Sunrisers ask
permission before hugging each other in
greeting). But taped to a wall behind a
group presenting their parody of “Old
MacDonald”—naturally changed to
“Old McConnell”—there are savvy dia-
grams of how to stand during a protest
for maximum visual impact. When I
leave the retreat center, I feel confident
that this is not the last time I will see
many of these young people. “My big
hope for this country is that a lot of
those activists ultimately end up running
for office,” says Heather Zichal, a former
Obama adviser and climate-policy con-
sultant for Biden’s campaign.
A few weeks later it is the eve of the
first Democratic debates, and more than
two dozen Sunrisers have spent the night
on the brick steps of the Democratic
National Committee offices in D.C. (fed
by Domino’s sent by the Sanders cam-
paign). Their demand? A Democratic
debate devoted to climate. Days later the
DNC agrees to put it to a committee
vote in late August. This kind of success
keeps happening; the targets set are met
sooner than anticipated. “I keep think-
ing to myself, Are we not asking for
enough?” wonders Fernandez. “We keep
setting goals and then reaching them like
that.” She snaps.
This fall Sunrise will roll out a bigger
fellowship and expand its Movement
House program, including hubs in key
electoral states such as Iowa and New
Hampshire. It will continue growing
through the presidential election, and
there are plans for “mass civil disobedi-
ence” in 2021 to help usher in the Green
New Deal, says Blazevic. When I ask
what happens if Trump wins, Sunrise
leadership all respond with varying
degrees of dejection. “I don’t want to
pretend that our strategy isn’t banking on
a very narrow window of opportunity,”
admits Will Lawrence, a cofounder who,
at 28, with a tightly groomed beard, is
somewhat of a village elder in the move-
ment. “Because it’s always been that way.”
They all are startlingly optimistic on
the prospect of a Democratic president’s
passing some version of the Green New
Deal. “It’s possible you could see quite a
bit of talk about it during the campaign,
but then it may not be the top issue for a
new president,” cautions Harvard’s Jody
Freeman, noting that moderate Demo-
crats from fossil-fuel states will make
passing sweeping climate legislation dif-
ficult. However, she is quick to point out
that “there’s a difference between policy
and politics. I don’t think [the Green
New Deal] is ‘politically achievable,’ but
I think it might be a very useful political
strategy.” McKibben agrees, which is
why it is important to do this work in the
primaries. “Because now, if Joe Biden
gets elected, he has a set of commitments
that we can then hold him to.”
I’m in Boston with Prakash and her
fiancé, de Carvalho, a volunteer leader at
Sunrise’s hub here and a data analyst at
Liberty Mutual. He is only a few inches
