Students around the world have risen up to draw attention to climate change, a dire issue that plays a big role in the growing intensity of the western U.S. wildfires and the increase in extreme weather around the nation.
Greta Thunberg started arguably the most famous school climate strikes in August of 2018, when the Swedish teenager protested outside of her county’s parliament during school hours. Alexandria Villaseñor, a 15-year-old climate activist, was inspired by Thunberg and followed her lead by skipping school and striking for climate change action in front of the UN headquarters in New York City last year.
Now, young activists everywhere are taking up the mantle to defend their generation against climate change’s disastrous effects. We spoke with a few, all of whom organized protests for last fall’s Global Climate Strike, to learn what steps you can take to start your own school climate strike.
“Climate change had become something that was not ignorable in my community,” says Vidya Muthupillai, a high school student we spoke with from Pearland, a suburb south of Houston. The area leans conservative, so it wasn’t easy for Muthupillai to convince her school administration to let her hold a climate strike on campus. It took several contentious meetings, but Muthupillai says she would do it again.
“We know that climate change is something that is extremely intangible for a lot of people,” she says. “Climate striking is one of the few ways that provides that very visual, tangible collection of people [to] show there’s a lot of popular support for climate action.”
Ready to get started? Here’s what we learned.
1. Solidify your demands
Before you announce to the world that you’re planning to hold a climate strike, take a beat and figure out what you want its ultimate goal to be.
“It sounds like [a] ‘duh’ thing, but there are a lot of different things you can call for in a climate strike, whether that is for your school administration to be more environmentally conscious or if you’re calling for action on a national, state, or municipal level,” says Muthupillai.
Once you figure that out, nail down why you think a climate strike is important. This can keep you going, even when things get tough.
Muthupillai wanted hers to start a conversation about climate change in her community.
“We had been pretending for so long that climate change didn’t impact us when it very literally wrote the narrative that we had lived growing up,” she says. “Back to back years of flooding as far back as middle school for me.”
2. Plan out logistics
Once you figure out the point of your climate strike, plan how you’ll implement your strike and its structure.
You don’t have to go it alone. It can be overwhelming to pull together a climate strike by yourself — especially if you have little or zero organizing experience, says Rachel Serna-Brown, a junior at Oberlin College in Ohio who also does communications work for the climate change organization Zero Hour.
Reach out to groups like Sunrise Movement, which has over 400 hubs throughout the country, to help you start your climate strike. Muthupillai, Serna-Brown, and Michigan high school student Heather Chen all relied on the youth-led movement to organize their strikes.
Decide when students will walk out of school and if you’ll have additional elements like teach-ins, like Serna-Brown, who taught students about environmental racism during her school strike at Oberlin College). Additionally, if you choose to have speakers, Serna-Brown recommends remembering to tap students to speak if you also bring in outside participants, given that your audience will likely be comprised of students.
While Chen was not successful in holding her climate strike on campus (she says her school had liability concerns about the strike), she organized carpooling students to an alternate strike location. Keep in mind any transportation needs and how you’ll coordinate them. She recommends allowing for one month or more to plan the strike.
Heather Chen speaks at her school’s climate strike off campus on Sept. 20, 2019.
Image: Niranjan Anantharaman
If you have a good relationship with your school administration and you think they’d be receptive to a climate strike on campus, Muthupillai suggests looping them in at this step if you want them to help you plan.
3. Talk with school administration
You can’t keep the higher-ups at your school in the dark; you’ll need their permission to use school property for the strike.
For Serna-Brown, this was easy. Although her school’s actual strike was off-campus at a public park, the teach-ins were at Oberlin. She describes her campus as liberal and the administration was receptive to the event.
Muthupillai, on the other hand, had an uphill battle. She met with the school four times and they threatened her with increasingly harsh disciplinary actions (like suspension and arrest) if she held the strike. They ultimately allowed the strike to take place on campus in the morning before school and after classes let out in the afternoon.
She says went into the meetings with a “this is what’s going to happen” mentality. “A lot of times if you ask for permission, you give other people power over you and they say ‘we can shut it down whenever we want,'” says Muthupillai. She says she remained persistent when she met with her school administration, even though they were adamantly against the idea.
Although Muthupillai didn’t have anyone with her, it can help to bring in another student or two for support so you’re not alone during these talks. Muthupillai says she wishes she had done so during her meetings.
While you might not encounter an unfriendly administration, you’ll still want to prepare with facts on climate change and a detailed plan for the strike to present to your school.
4. Engage students
You need to spread the word about your upcoming strike to get as many people as possible to attend.
Muthupillai suggests talking with students one-on-one, informing your classes about the strike by coordinating these announcements with teachers, and publicizing it online. Chen chose teachers who she knew would be supportive of the strike and spoke to their classes.
Individual conversations with fellow classmates can be quick and painless. Tell each why you think a climate strike is important. You can do this in person if you’re physically at school or set up a video call or send an online message.
Chen says to end each talk with a request like “I want you to come to the strike. Can I send you a message about it?” She kept an eye on what her classmates posted on social media and if it was related to politics or the environment, she reached out. But this doesn’t mean you should limit your outreach.
“Never underestimate the power of recruiting people person-to-person,” says Muthupillai.
Additionally, set up an email address and online platform where people can contact you if they have questions and to access information about the strike as details could change. This platform can be as simple as a chat group, posting the strike on the online organizing tool Action Network, or creating a website.
Don’t forget to inform the media so it can cover your event. Serna-Brown and her fellow college students reached out to both the campus and local newspapers.
5. Implement a plan beyond the strike
Climate strikes can only accomplish so much, says Muthupillai.
“I think a lot of people will have a climate strike and then never talk about it again,” she says. “There has to be a follow-up action.”
You can start an environmental club if your school doesn’t already have one, commit to regular conversations about climate change, or advocate for a specific climate change policy.
“It can’t be a one and done because climate change is not a one and done issue,” says Muthupillai.
Muthupillai formed the Pearland Youth Movement as a follow-up action to the strike to create a space for young people in her area to organize for issues they care about, not just climate change.
But this doesn’t mean her climate strike didn’t have an immediate effect.
“It was one of the only times in my life where I heard people talking about climate change [in my school],” says Muthupillai.