Introductory note

This text is a reflection on the climate justice student movement in the past years, especially focused (but not exclusively) on drawing lessons from the intervention of the “End Fossil: Occupy!” campaign since its launch in early 2022 until I left in early 2024. During this time, the campaign coordinated 3 waves of school and university occupations in more than 10 countries in Europe, Africa and North America. In this time there was also 2 international congresses: the Bern Congress (February 2023) and the Amsterdam Congress (August 2023).

This text should be interpreted carefully: I’m not writing this in the position of a winning movement who is now passing down lessons to its successors. Much the contrary: I’m writing this from the angle of someone who has retired from a student movement that did not yet reach its intended goals and, faced with a couple of years of failures and lessons, is trying to contribute to the moving forward (“failing forward”) of the movement.

End Fossil is still active in organizing students everywhere to smash the fossil economy by 2030 and building climate justice through student power! Check out the Student’s Letter to End Fossil 2030.

1. Creating End Fossil

1.1. A careful strategical choice

End Fossil was not a random idea. It’s actually a good example of a well-thought strategy process based on movement mapping and strategical thinking, as described in the “All In” book. In that sense, it was a deliberate and carefully thought intervention in the youth movement.

In early 2022, after 3 years of organizing in the national and international youth climate justice movement, we – a few people at Fridays for Future (FFF) Lisbon and, as we soon found out, many ex-school strikers worldwide – were frustrated. We were part of the first generation of the youth climate strike inspired by Greta Thunberg. We were able to mobilize thousands to the streets with basically no effort. In 2019 the world was exciting, everyone was talking about climate justice and things were boiling down to a very interesting point. As with the start of many revolutions through history, many people who had never thought about politics before (in this case, school students) were actively engaging in thinking about what the world should be. After 2019 the movement had started declining.

By late 2021, we – a few people at FFF Lisbon – were very frustrated of 2 years of internal fighting and basically no internationalist vision to build a truly radical mass movement nor any escalation process inside the youth movement. During the pandemic years, I got involved in international coordination for the climate justice movement. I, as well as other FFF Lisbon comrades, worked a lot to involve Fridays for Future groups at international level with the Glasgow Agreement, a new proposal of international coordination coming from Climáximo and that united over 200 organizations around the world. Our vision was that the student movement would take a step forward and engage in mass civil disobedience, while simultaneously increasing the coordination capacity of the movement as whole. Due the concentration of power, unaccountability and reformist influence inside FFF, we were never successful at this.

In the meantime in Portugal, our own organization kept declining due to the lack of ambitious vision and escalation plans. We kept just calling strikes every 3-4 months, with no in-between plan and no conflict escalation strategy whatsoever. After COP26 in Glasgow we understood that there was a wide frustration in the youth movement in general. It was in November 2021, while Climáximo was organizing the 5th Ecosocialist Encounters, that we realized that the frustration with the lack of ambition and plans inside the youth movement was actually growing. At that time, we – a few people in FFF Lisbon – had already had the idea of occupying schools and escalating the conflict instead of just striking (as many student movements had made before us, anyways), but we hadn’t thought of a way of articulating it internationally yet. It was in early 2022 that we realized the need and potential to launch the idea of occupying at international level, filling the strategical void left by FFF and hoping to bring new life to the climate justice movement by re-launching a potentially mass movement that’d be more disruptive and radicalized on a more concrete and anti-systemic demand.

Our strategy process went more or less like this:

1. We realized that the climate strikes were mobilizing less and less people, and that organized FFF groups were collapsing due to internal conflict – mainly a consequence of this lack of strategy and vision. FFF was no longer fulfilling the role of mass mobilizing in the international movement ecosystem, it had no vision and it wasn’t looking at any opportunity. There was a void.

2. We identified a very strong narrative capability of the youth climate justice movement, as well as a potential for a disruptive capability in the sense of being able to mobilize in a truly massive way – something that was missing in general in the movement at the time, and that we desperately needed to bring back. We understood that for creating a ruptural movement ecology that would work, we’d need to be reviving the youth movement that was currently lost with no direction.

3. Based on an analysis of the reality, a scanning of youth’s strengths, the tactical “innovation” (at least in the student movement for climate justice – occupying has always historically been used by students to demonstrate power) idea of occupying that was already on the back of our heads, and a strategic internationalist anchor in leading the movement towards rupture, we set up the End Fossil campaign. All the choices we made in the carving of this campaign were very intentional. I’ll explain how below.

 

1.2. Inspiring to win

With the “End Fossil: Occupy!” campaign our main goal was to re-ignite the mass movement and create another “2019” moment that could spark the same effect in society as the climate strikes had done a couple of years earlier. This time the difference was that we’d be giving a vision for conflict escalation through mass civil disobedience at schools and universities, and launching a pathway towards political radicalization and increasing coordination of the student movement that the strikes could not fulfill anymore. We drew inspiration from several past experiences in the progressive student movement to imagine and inspire others on what would this look like.

An important example we drew inspiration from was the courage of students participating at “Primavera Secundarista” in Brazil in 2016, where thousands shut down hundreds of schools across the country in defense of public education. From them we gained inspiration and insight on being brave on the streets, on defending the occupation from the police with whatever means you have, and how the occupied school in itself can be a radical place of learning how to live collectively. Other movements we drew inspiration from include the fight of students in Chile for public education with the Revolución de los Pinguinos in 2006; the societal revolt brought upon by students in the May of 1968 occupations in France; the braveness of the Soweto Uprising school students in South Africa fighting against racism and apartheid; and, although not so related to students, the direct democracy and massiveness of Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

Empowering through inspiration was crucial. Learning more about the revolutionary legacy of student movement’s all around the world made us feel inspired and empowered into taking action. Through movie sessions, readings, and imagery, we were able to (at least in Portugal) empower many other students into occupying. This is important because the task ahead of us requires students to feel empowered, and thus political education on the revolutionary potential of the student movement and its previous achievements was key into building agency.

 

1.3. Designing the structures

At the organizational level, we tried to replicate a sort of “XR model” where we’d come up with the core DNA of what End Fossil was supposed to be like, and then reach out and let it spread like a wildfire. That was the organizational model we were looking at in order to be able to reproduce itself and be truly massive: strong DNA, and loosely structured. The main organizational question we were posing was “How can we make random students come across End Fossil and reproduce it in their own schools?”. This was materialized in a loose structure of having one main demand, and then 3 principles. The idea was simple: if you agree with the main demand and the 3 principles and you want to occupy your school/university, you’re part of End Fossil.

1.3.1. Principle #1: Climate Justice Framework

Having “End Fossil” as a demand was not so obvious at first. We wanted a main demand because we identified one of the problems of FFF as being too loose and not having a radical systemic demand. We reached the model of having “End Fossil (2030)” as a main international demand because of several reasons. The first was that it’s materially true that our first task as an international climate justice movement is to keep it in the ground and to dismantle the fossil fuel economy, which can only be done at international level. In the Global North, the heart of fossil capital, this needs to happen by 2030 (and here it’s better explained why). This demand also allows for a strategic and analytic focus in the movement: capitalist greenwashing may be perceived as a threat, but capitalism is dependent on the fossil fuel economy and thus the only way of truly changing the system depends on dismantling the fossil economy. Another reason was that, precisely because capitalism and imperialism are global, the fossil fuel economy is absolutely everywhere on Earth in a deeply interconnected way, which meant it made sense with the vision of an internationalist mass movement – the “global task” that this book refers to. And that is why the proposal was that each group could choose the “End Fossil” demand that made more sense in their local context: end fossil extraction, funding, finance, importation, etc.

1.3.2. Principle #2: Occupy until we win – conflict escalation

The main question we were posing was: when do we call off the climate strikes? With the climate strikes, we kept demonstrating in the streets outside parliaments in hopes the system would change. After a few hours, we’d go home and return maybe next Friday, maybe next month. There was no vision for escalation of conflict. The principle of “occupy until we win” was a tool to guarantee conflict escalation in the actions themselves, as well as building an escalation cycle: either the group wins the demand, or it must keep occupying and escalating the conflict until they either finally win or are physically stopped from continuing (ex: students get arrested). There was no more simply “going home” from the climate strike.

 

2. Why organizing students matters to building a mass movement

Our 3^rd principle was “Youth-led”. It’s a bit hard to define “youth” in class terms: there are so many kinds of “youth”, and being young doesn’t necessarily mean you have a material interest in system change. What was really meant was “student-led”. But why do we need to organize students and why were them the main political subject of End Fossil?

Students are angry. A world on fire is the cherry on top of not knowing if you will ever have a decent job, your own house, stability, etc. They are preparing themselves for a miserable future, and that’s why they have a huge possibility to revolt. Although the climate crisis is and will affect us all, it’s true that the dreading emotional effects are hanging heavy in the youth due to the material fact that we’ll have to endure the worsening of this crisis for most of our lives (actually, many of us are already born into climate crisis). This lack of future also creates a big narrative capacity for the student movement with the powerfulness of kids and teenagers bravely putting their education and lives at stake to fight against the system and radically changing the conversation on the climate crisis, as showcased in the 2019 FFF strikes and mentioned in the “All In” book.

Students aren’t that invested in the system. They may be taught at school that capitalism is the only way but young students usually have a lot more imagination to think of alternative futures, and they’re not so attached to their careers and to the system’s values. This can be for a couple of reasons. One of them is that they’re not really seeing the system working on their behalf, especially when they’re studying hard only to realize that the future that is being promised is not corresponding to reality – when wildfires are destroying millions of hectares, or when the system that they are taught is supposed to be protecting them is deporting the families of friends. The other reason may be that, since many of them haven’t started working yet, they have less ties to the system’s values and ambitions. Students haven’t really given up on the rest of their lives yet, because they have just started living.

Usually, students have more free time and they don’t have any other big responsibilities. Sure, some of them work part-time or help around the house, but they rarely have dependents on them (especially younger students). And yes, exam periods are shitty to mobilize. But student’s overwhelming free time and lack of big responsibilities (children of their own, mortgage, etc) compared to full-time workers is a big organizational advantage because it allows for potential more risks to be taken, with less fear attached: students understand how their future is at stake and how that’s so much more meaningful and worth fighting for than whatever crap is capitalism’s value system is trying to tell that they should be doing instead.

Schools and universities are a reproductive pillar of the system. Schools and universities are literally educating and formatting the new generation of the working-class. And most of them are formatting for individualism and for the idea that there’s no alternative to capitalism, creating young adults who either actually believe in the system or, as we’ve seen more and more, who don’t really like the system but think there’s no other choice. Schools and (especially) universities are often times alienated places: everyone is living in a false promise of a future that, deep down, they know doesn’t really exist. What if we could break with this? Organizing at schools and universities holds the potential power of harming the system’s reproductive capacity by unleashing new imaginations of other possible futures through the realization that because of capitalism they’re studying to “secure” a future that is being destroyed by the same system they’re taught is supposed to “protect”.

As pillars of the system, there’s a big disruption capability. What if you are able to actually shut down all the schools in a country? Or even just one third of them? What if students all massively boycotted the exams that lead into university? What if the education system was froze for a month, and the whole society needed to be talking about why? That’s a pretty big deal and can threat the ruling class, especially as the rage and inspiration can spread out to other sectors of society as well. Historical examples such as May of 68 are a good illustration of that.

I wanted to especially highlight the role of high-school students, as at least in Portugal they had a really important role. High-schoolers were key because not only were they truly organizing a working-class phenomena (as one does not pay to attend public high school), but they were also contributing to the political education and radicalization of many teenagers who were, for the first time, thinking deeply about the climate crisis and social issues. High-schools also proved to be a pretty interesting place to be organizing, as people are not as isolated from each other and as (most of them) are still exploring their political views and opinions on the world. Moreover, many of them end up going to college – so it’s strategical for a student-led organization to be organizing in high-schools as it renews leadership and potentially helps further politicize colleges.

For all these reasons, students may well be a potential revolutionary subject. They’re the ones the system is reproducing itself in, teaching their values and training for its professions; while at the same time destroying all hopes for a future and stability right in front of their eyes. At the End Fossil Congress in Bern in February 2023 we identified 3 important capabilities the radical youth could offer to the climate justice ruptural movement as a whole: narrative, disruptive, and coordination. How did End Fossil succeed in fulfilling these roles?

 

3. How End Fossil drove the movement further

End Fossil had failures so far, but I think it also drove the movement further in some ways. I figured it’d be important to at least state them.

3.1. First of all, and most fundamentally, I do believe that End Fossil truly contributed to a radicalization of the international climate justice movement especially in the youth circles. In some degree, it normalized civil disobedience in the climate youth movement. It’s true that it did not achieve that in its full potential, but it managed to have FFF groups doing civil disobedience for the first time. It achieved a tactical and strategical escalation in a coordinated way. Some FFF groups had already engaged in civil disobedience, but never on an internationally coordinated way. It’s also worth mentioning that the international launching of End Fossil allowed some previously stagnated FFF groups to re-flourish and have something exciting to organize for. At the same time, it allowed already-established student groups previously disconnected from the climate justice international movement to get closer and engage in international coordination (examples include Fossil Free Penn in the USA, the student groups in Leeds or JugendRat in Austria).

3.2. Altogether, End Fossil organized occupations in over 10 countries in 3 continents. It organized several hundreds of students, and reached surely thousands. This means that the radicalization didn’t just happen at the organizers level, but also in the students around them. Where occupations flourished, dozens if not hundreds of students came into contact with the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for ending the fossil fuel economy. In a lot of cases, they saw that authority is not really that binding: after all, students occupying were doing it against the rules. They saw the power of community meals and teach-ins in Prague or Vienna, and developed stronger anti-system feelings when they saw their classmates being dragged by police in Lisbon or Rotterdam.

3.3. One last thing I’d like to point out is a narrative capability, mirrored in the radicalization of speech and demands at the international Global Climate Strikes after End Fossil. This was not due entirely to End Fossil (other groups and initiatives have also played heavy influence on this), but it certainly played its role. In 2023, the main slogan of the September FFF climate strike was “End the Era of Fossil Fuels”. Previously, in March 2023, it had been “End Fossil Finance”. The year before it was just “People Not Profit”. The Declaration of Lausanne, signed by hundreds of young organizers in the summer of 2019, had set 3 demands for Fridays for Future: keep the temperature below 1.5C, ensure climate justice and equity, and listen to the best united science currently available. This narrative focus on ending fossil fuels is politically relevant as it allows for the movement to grasp its first task, before anything else is truly possible: dismantle fossil capitalism.

 

4. Where we failed (so far) & what we learned

Our main objective was to re-ignite the mass youth movement and radicalize it, giving it a purpose of strategy and direction. The goal was also for End Fossil to eventually become a vehicle for international civil disobedience coordination, at least at the student movement level.

I think the two main failures of the End Fossil campaign were: 1) it did not re-ignite the mass youth movement at the level we were hoping for; and 2) so far, it has failed to bring coordination of the student movement in a ruptural framing to a deeper and more consequential level. Of course, these two are deeply connected to each other. I’ll try to develop them below. I must say that this does not mean that it won’t reach these goals, I’m just reflecting on the period of 2022-23, and which lessons we can take from previous failures so that we can actually make this happen.

 

4.1. Re-igniting the youth mass movement

I think the first “failure” (I don’t think it’s a failure as such, it’s a risk we took – in that sense, it’s a smart failure or a failing forward) is pretty obvious: End Fossil didn’t produce the same effect as the 2019 strikes in terms of popularity and mass organizing. Until today, I’m not completely sure why: Was society still recovering from the pandemic? Did we need more central (vs. peripheral countries) to have big momentum?

On a more personal note, after the end of the first wave of occupations in mid November 2022, I got pretty depressed and demoralized because it didn’t have the effect I expected. There had been around 50 occupations in more than 10 countries spread out through Europe, the United States and Africa. Even though there were truly spectacular moments, it had not been like a wildfire. People outside the movement didn’t really knew about it while and after it was happening. Looking back, this was actually a great start, but I guess I had pretty high expectations for the first wave, expecting too much of a spontaneous uprising would happen – when at this time maybe I should have been looking a bit more into mass agitation. I think that at the time I was struggling to see how valuable this experiment was – suddenly, we had groups from over 10 countries in several continents who actually wanted to coordinate their strategies. I was expecting everything to “explode”, and when that didn’t happen I was both frustrated and sad. 

This a lesson at both personal and movement level for organizers: don’t look at failure with a framework of “everything or nothing” (or, as in the book, as a 90 minute match between two teams where there’s a winner and that’s it). Celebrate what was achieved and built, and analyze with a “cold head” the context around you to be able to strategize.

The reason it didn’t catch on was definitely not lack of outreach (as in, work from our end). So, what could have been different?

4.1.1. The external communication apparatus was pretty precarious.

I think things would have been different if we had a better external communication apparatus and we would have gained more momentum from the start. This is more of an observation on the importance of good international external communication than a failure itself, because we truly did everything we could with what we had. We tried to use NGO’s resources (press contacts, social media sharing, etc), seeing their resources as complementary to our ruptural strategy. Being inexperienced in international communications, we improvised what we could do – and that’s perfectly fine, sometimes you just have to move forward with what you have. (This, by the way, is why we need a solid and radical communications infrastructure that supports and sustains the ruptural movement). In the following occupation waves, we applied for funds to have a paid communications team in the occupation period so they could do back-office full time. This actually made a difference in the press and social media visibility, as well as communicative coherence we were able to pull off.

4.1.2. Central vs. Peripheral countries

Even though groups from quite a few diverse countries in Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, UK, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Belgium), a university in the U.S. (Philadelphia), and two groups from Africa (Uganda and Zambia), End Fossil didn’t have a big takeoff in major countries. In capitalism, there’s a center and there’s a periphery. Sometimes – but not always – you need it to seriously take-off in countries of the capitalist center so it can have big influence media coverage and repercussions (for example, the pro-Palestine occupations led by students in U.S. campus). This is especially true when you’re talking about ending the fossil economy by 2030: you must shake the core of fossil capital. However, even though a lot of truly remarkable and radical things happened at most occupations, in some key countries like Germany or the UK the occupations weren’t big enough to make it an European or international phenomena – either there were too few occupied places with not many people (UK), or an impressive number of places but that didn’t escalate or had masses (Germany). In the U.S., having just one college in a city that’s not that central made it hard to spread it out. My take is that perhaps if the actions in key fossil-capital countries were more threatening to power, it could have been more internationally visible.

Although End Fossil didn’t replace the role of FFF (because it wasn’t big enough), there hasn’t been any big international FFF strike since after the first wave of End Fossil. Moreover, a lot of End Fossil groups in Europe agreed that only marching wasn’t enough. So maybe one could say that, at least in Europe, End Fossil could be seen as the first thing that appeared after the death of FFF, although something new still needs to appear that is truly massive, popular and international.

 

4.2. Building international coordination towards rupture

The point is here was not that the climate strikes are useless – I think demonstrations are still a part of the plan. The point is also not in purely tactical terms. It’s not that merely substituting marching for occupying would solve our strategy issues, as was later clear. The point here was to articulate student movements in several different countries that, united by the demand of End Fossil, would occupy their schools as a step further and, after that step, take another one even further; creating a strategical pathway towards a ruptural mass movement for climate justice that would start with the students as a vanguard and ignite all of society. This student movement, most likely fulfilling a narrative and disruptive capability and somewhere between mass agitation and spontaneous uprising, would then need to be internally coordinated with other parts of the movement for system change within climate deadlines to be able to make smart decisions. However, after 2 waves of occupations, the momentum seemed to be going down and conflict started to emerge (and then there was a 3^rd wave of occupations in November 2023 which was not as successful as the previous ones). After I had already left the organization of the student movement, a student uprising coming from the U.S. spread to Europe and to all over the world and we saw a radical, anti-imperialist student uprising taking place under the banner of Free Palestine in 2024. Many End Fossil groups were in solidarity with Palestine and spontaneously participated and organized this uprising in their own universities, some of them combining demands to both end the genocide in Gaza and end fossil fuels by 2030. Despite that, the months following the uprising were marked by extreme tiredness and, once again, no sense of strategy of where to go. The international coordination had slowly withered away. So, what did we learn and how can we do better at building these international coordination structures?

4.2.1. Politicization at international level

One of the things that could have been done better from the start was the politicization of groups at the international level. First of all, it was never really that explicit (only implicit) that End Fossil meant until 2030. This caused some serious strategical debates on urgency and deadlines down the line. I think we could have invested more in trainings, skill-sharing and, above all, in politicizing the demand of End Fossil 2030 and creating more political work around it. That could have helped many groups to exit the tactical-thinking loop and would have made strategies clearer further ahead. In the summer of 2023, there was a disagreement on how to move forward from the occupations and keep escalating. Among other things, there was disagreement on the need for 2030 as a deadline. That created a big problem, because suddenly there were different anchors in the room and system change itself was at stake. A lot of the discussions, though, could have been spared if we had the right anchor: “how are we going to reach the end of the fossil economy by 2030, and how can the plans we’re making right now be aligned with this task”? My analysis is that it seemed we had a more tactical rather than political agreement – groups agreed to escalate towards occupying institutions in November 2023, but it wasn’t very consolidated what was the escalation for.

4.2.2. Lack of escalation plans

One of the debates inside End Fossil was on the role of disruption at the local occupations. In a few places (Germany, Philadelphia, etc) there was some reluctance on using disruption at the occupations. One of the arguments often used was that disruption would draw students away because they’d be repelled by it, and that we should rather focus on doing talks, events and political education with the goal of organizing them. However, most of the times what ended up happening was that the occupation didn’t really interrupt the university’s business-as-usual, thus people were able to keep on with their normal lives as if nothing (neither the occupation, nor the climate crisis) was happening, and it also didn’t allow for a massive growth in the organization nor mass-media attention. It’s important to say that you can’t also just disrupt for the sake of disrupting: you must disrupt to be able to organize and consolidate more people into the organization, and then do it all over again with a more ambitious escalation plan. I guess the point is: of course you need to be organizing towards a clearly defined goal (system change; end fossil 2030; etc), but in order to organize the thousands and millions of students we need to win, we’re gonna have to disrupt “business-as-usual” in the schools and universities so we can have more students joining the organization, polarize and create a debate at the schools and in society through media, and ultimately making the revolt leave the school and into the streets with millions of other workers. By disrupting, you’re making the protest leave the school/university and enter the public sphere (which is what we want), while at the same time truly radicalizing the students who are impacted by your disruption.

4.2.3. Organize in schools and universities, for what? A take on the demand debate and a note on cooptation

The above debate has an underlying one: why are we doing actions at schools and universities? There were two types of local chapters: those who had structural demands to the government, and those who had demands to their universities. The approach that the occupations in Portugal, Germany and Czech Republic (for example) were following was to have structural demands. This approach allowed for a focus on the bigger systemic picture but, on the down side, it was harder to create the sensation of “small victories” by the movement (that, for example, they built so well in the Netherlands with demands to kick Shell out of the universities in brilliant occupations that combined disruption with organizing). The logic in the former was to use schools and universities as “battle fields” for bigger struggles, taking them “hostage” and creating a big disruption power in the system via the interruption of education. This was something that at first was weird to accept, because it wasn’t super obvious why we were protesting in our schools and why didn’t we negotiate with the deans. I still think this logic of disruption is brilliant. Want to stop normality? Lock down half the schools of the country and get the students to don’t allow for their re-opening. It also allowed for an interesting perspective: we were telling deans we didn’t care about their carbon neutrality pledges, we wanted them to state publicly they agreed to our demands; but, most of all, we wanted to organize students and get climate justice in the center of the debate in our schools and in society.

One lesson we learned from the mistakes we made in Portugal was: don’t have minor demands that deviate from the focus. There were a couple of university occupations universities that had demands directed at their principals, besides the main “end fossil by 2030 in Portugal” that glued them all together. In one of those universities, FLUL, one of the extra demands was gender-neutral bathrooms. And of course we want gender-neutral bathrooms in our universities, but suddenly the debate in the media and often times with the dean was about that and not about the climate crisis and the need to end the fossil economy. On another occupation in Lisbon, at IST, we made another mistake: the students abandoned the occupation (thus not following the “occupy until we win” principle”) because the principal vowed to make the university “carbon neutral” by 2030. We had let irrelevant demands be accepted as “wins”, the students demobilized, and the principal got exactly what he wanted: to restore business-as-usual in the university. On the next round of occupations in the Spring of 2023 we abolished local demands from the call-out, which proved to be an effective step in keeping the focus.

However, cooptation can happen in other ways. In Liceu Camões – a famously progressive high school in Lisbon – after very successful, massive, and disruptive occupations, the dean proposed a deal in which the school would commit itself to organize activities related to climate justice, including a sit-in protest action together. The tiredness of the students, as well as the pressure from parents and the psychological games from school management, resulted in the acceptance of this deal. This led to, basically, the slaughter of the existing student movement in the school because suddenly they were in the hands of a dean with a different agenda other than “end fossil 2030”. Barcelona is another interesting case to analyze, as the group was also coopted by institutionalism. After a very powerful first round of occupations where they demanded that the university cut the ties with Repsol and created a mandatory course on climate justice, Universitat de Barcelona (UB) agreed to create the course. The news immediately came out in the Guardian as a major success and a big win for both the student movement and the university. Still, they didn’t demobilize: in the spring of 2023, they occupied again to make sure that UB didn’t get away with having Repsol inside the university. Soon after, the group started being overflowed by the work of creating the course. UB’s strategy was to make sure the students would get distracted by the immense workload needed to launch a course. And it worked. At the end of the day, UB might have agreed to have a course on climate justice and to cut the ties and that’s great, but the fossil economy is still standing and the student movement’s mission doesn’t end there.

I think we return to the same page: by lacking the deeper political agreement of “end fossil 2030” and of system change as our broader and most important goal, some discrepancies in country’s demands ended up being wider strategical disagreements.

4.2.4. Organizational issues: structuring coordination for victory

“End Fossil: Occupy!” is an international campaign. It was intended an international coordination space for the radical youth movement. However, organizationally, there were a couple of issues.

First of all, there was a lack of clarity around layers of organization. People thought End Fossil was a “movement”, an “organization” itself, when it was none of that. And that confused the processes and the way we interacted with it. The vision was for End Fossil to be an open campaign and a coordinating space for groups that followed the principles and the main demand. But because the layers of organizing were so confuse, the campaign “closed” itself, it stopped its growing and its outreaching of new groups, and viewed itself as an organization per se.

Building coordination structure since the beginning. When you’re testing a new thing, you don’t have to have a super strict and elaborated structure. However, I think it’d have made the difference if we had cultivated more the culture of discipline, transparency, accountability and mandate-building to work at international level among the participating groups. And, more importantly, being able to better transmit, discuss, and engage this vision of a ruptural youth movement coordination to others.

 

5. Final notes

After two years of being involved in End Fossil, what are the conclusions and lessons I suggest that the next student movement leaders should take with them?

• At the tactical level, keep schools (and universities) as your base. That’s where you’ll be able to actually organize student power in an open way that allows for massively growing.
• Failing forward: the importance of learning together. We failed at creating structures that to learn from each other and take lessons together. At organizational level the student movement needs to invest in coordination capacity, skill-sharing, sharing knowledge and political analysis. It needs to be sharing skills and lessons regularly with each other.
• At leadership level, it needs leaders who have a high sense of strategy, are coordinated with other parts of the movement in order to make the smartest decisions, are connected and know other student leaders in other countries, and that are not afraid to lead. Always take initiative in moving things further. Don’t let be too many blank spaces: they often degenerate into existential questions or thinking loops that are just not useful for building next steps. And never postpone what you can do now. If at times I wasn’t so afraid to lead, I would have taken more risks with End Fossil and see where that took us.

The youth climate justice movement took a step forward two years ago. It engaged in civil disobedience and radicalized students all over Europe, slowly then losing momentum and coordination capability, then rocketing it up with the Free Palestine occupations, but ultimately currently with no coordination structure in place. From a movement-wide perspective, we’ve made a long way since 2019. And there are many young students out there taking bold risks and fiercely organizing for system change and defying systems of oppression, colonization and exploitation. But compared to what the task this crisis demands of us – dismantling capitalism in this decade – we’re still far from the power we need to build.

After marching and organizing school occupations, it’s clear that the system won’t give young people the future (and present) we so desperately are fighting for. Capitalism won’t solve the crisis it itself has created. On the contrary, it keeps lighting our houses on fire, stealing the land, killing us of heat, and smashing all hopes for a stable and just future. We need to have young students everywhere fucking angry about this. Similarly to what happened in many of the historical examples mentioned earlier, the student movement must take the historical responsibility of igniting society-wide mass mobilizations and being a vanguard of the movement that will execute system change by 2030. This means being able to make the ending of fossil capital by 2030 a truly popular demand.

That’s why the “End Fossil: Occupy!” campaign has launched in late 2024 the next step for the student climate justice movement: the student’s letter to end fossil 2030. Through a climate justice, internationalist and radical framework, the students are calling-out for an internationally coordinated two weeks school shutdown in response to the failure of Global North countries not committing to ending fossil fuels by 2030. And, in a brave statement, “We understand this as a legitimate and necessary action in order to meet this demand. We also understand that if you choose to continue to fail us, this will only be the beginning.”

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I want to deeply thank my comrades at FFF Lisbon, because without such a strong and brave collective that dedicated its energy to organizing bad-ass occupations in Portugal none of this would have been possible. I want to thank Alice Gato, for the conceptualizing and international launching work would not have been possible without her. All the mistakes I made are mine, but the “End Fossil: Occupy!” campaign was a collective work made of dozens of organizers and brave students world-wide. I leave the student movement knowing it’s in good hands. Lastly, I want to thank Alice for reviewing this text.