Fridays for Future
Fridays for Future, also known as the School Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.
Publicity and widespread organising began after Swedish pupil Greta Thunberg staged a protest in August 2018 outside of the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, holding a sign that read "Skolstrejk för klimatet".
A global strike on 15 March 2019 gathered more than one million strikers in 2,200 strikes organised in 125 countries. On 24 May 2019, in the second global strike, 1,600 protests across 150 countries drew hundreds of thousands of strikers. The May protests were timed to coincide with the 2019 European Parliament election.
The 2019 Global Week for Future was a series of 4,500 strikes across over 150 countries, focused around Friday 20 September and Friday 27 September. Likely the largest climate strikes in world history, the 20 September strikes gathered roughly 4 million protesters, many of them schoolchildren, including 1.4 million in Germany. On 27 September, an estimated two million people participated in demonstrations worldwide, including over one million protesters in Italy and several hundred thousand protesters in Canada.
Earlier school climate strikes
In November 2006 the Australian Youth Climate Coalition was formed to organise climate change actions involving youth and school children. In 2010 in England there were school walkouts over climate change, linked to a Climate Camp. In late-November 2015, an independent group of students invited other students around the world to skip school on the first day of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. On 30 November, the first day of the conference, a "Climate strike" was organised in over 100 countries; over 50,000 people participated. The movement focused on three demands: 100% clean energy; keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and helping climate refugees.Greta Thunberg and beginnings, 2018
On 20 August 2018, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, then in ninth grade, decided to not attend school until the 2018 Sweden general election on 9 September after heat waves and wildfires in Sweden. She has said she was inspired by the teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who organised the March for Our Lives. Thunberg protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day during school hours with a sign that read "Skolstrejk för klimatet". Among her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions per the Paris Agreement. On 7 September, just before the general elections, she announced that she would continue to strike every Friday until Sweden aligns with the Paris Agreement. She coined the slogan Fridays for Future, which gained worldwide attention, and inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.School strikes for climate began to be organised around the world, inspired by Thunberg. The first strike to number more than one person took place in The Hague in September outside the Dutch parliament, led by Sandor van Gessel, Anne-Laure Stroek, Ianthe Minnaert and Ellis van der Borgh. In the days that followed, in Australia, thousands of students began to strike on Fridays, ignoring Prime Minister Scott Morrison's call for "more learning in schools and less activism". Galvanised by the COP24 Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, strikes continued at least in 270 cities in December in countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Growing movement, 2019
In 2019, strikes were organised again in the countries listed above and in other countries, among them Colombia, New Zealand, and Uganda. Mass strikes took place on 17 and 18 January 2019, when at least students protested in Switzerland and Germany alone, against insufficient policies on global warming. In several countries, including Germany and the UK, pupils demanded the change of laws to reduce the voting age to 16 so that they could influence public elections in favour of the youth.In August 2019 Thunberg travelled to New York City on a two-week journey by sailboat to continue calling attention to the work needed to address the climate crisis. She participated in school strikes being planned in the United States on 20 September, and soon after she spoke at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September 2019, in New York City.
In Germany, regional groups were organised, communicating autonomously within WhatsApp groups and spreading their messages using flyers and social media. By February 2019, more than 155 local groups were counted by the movement.
In United States, organizers coordinated on a state-by-state level and communicated autonomously within Slack groups and spreading their messages using flyers and social media. By February 2019, more than 134 groups were counted by the movement. The organizations Sunrise Movement, 350.org, OneMillionOfUs, Earth Uprising, Future Coalition, Earth Guardians, Zero Hour, and Extinction Rebellion helped to coordinate.
The Belgian environment minister for Flanders, Joke Schauvliege, resigned on 5 February 2019 after falsely claiming the state security agency had evidence that the school strikes in Belgium were a "set‑up".
In the United Kingdom, on 13 February 2019, following open letters in support of the socio-political movement Extinction Rebellion in 2018, 224 academics signed an open letter giving their "full support to the students" attending the School Strike for Climate action. On Friday 15 February, more than 60 actions in towns and cities within the United Kingdom took place, with an estimated strikers taking part.
Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, addressed a Fridays for Future climate strike in Potsdam, Germany that same day. On 21 February 2019, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated his intent to spend hundreds of billions of euros on climate-change mitigation, amounting to a fourth of the EU budget. He announced this in a speech next to Greta Thunberg, and media credited the school-strike movement with provoking the announcement.
On 5 March 2019, 700 German-speaking researchers signed a statement in support of the school strikes in that country. Other researchers were invited to support the statement and it has been signed by over scientists from mainly Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
On 9 May 2019, during a European Union summit in Sibiu, representatives of the movement from all over Europe met with several national leaders of European countries and handed them an open letter, which was signed by over European climate strikers and their supporters.
Global Climate Strike for Future of 15 March 2019
On 15 March 2019, a series of school strikes took place, urging adults to take responsibility and stop climate change. More than a million people demonstrated in about events worldwide across 125 countries.On 1 March 2019, 150 students from the global coordination group of the youth-led climate strike, including Thunberg, issued an open letter in The Guardian, saying:
In Scotland, city councils of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Highland and Fife gave permission for children to attend the strikes. In Finland parental consent letters were sent to schools and in the Finnish city of Turku the school board proclaimed that children had a constitutional right to take part in the strikes.
On the morning of 15 March in a Guardian guest editorial, titled "Think we should be at school? Today's climate strike is the biggest lesson of all", school-climate-strikers Thunberg, Anna Taylor, Luisa Neubauer, Kyra Gantois, Anuna De Wever, Adélaïde Charlier, Holly Gillibrand and Alexandria Villaseñor, reiterated their reasons for striking.
In Germany, more than pupils demonstrated in 230 cities with more than in Berlin alone. The striking students were supported by newly-founded initiative Parents for Future. In Italy more than students demonstrated. In Montreal more than attended; Stockholm to, Melbourne, Brussels, and Munich. Other cities included Paris, London, Washington, Reykjavík, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Tokyo. In Antarctica, at least seven scientists held a supportive rally at the Neumayer Station III of Alfred Wegener Institute.
In New Zealand, the strikes were quickly overshadowed by Christchurch mosque shootings which took place the same day. The strike in Christchurch was abandoned for safety reasons, with students told to go home or otherwise shelter-in-place. The strikes continued in other New Zealand centres, many strikers oblivious to the shootings. One striker only learned of the shootings when she turned on the evening television news expecting to see the strikes as the top story.
Second Global Climate Strike on 24 May 2019
A second wave of global climate strikes began with actions in New Zealand and Australia on 24 May 2019. Hundreds of thousands of school students around the world struck in more than 1600 towns in at least 125 countries. Thunberg, one of the organizers, said that the strike took place on the second day of the four-day 2019 European Parliament election in order to affect it. Polls conducted at the time show that climate change was an important issue for voters in the election—the most important issue for German voters.International climate strike in Aachen on 21 June 2019
Fridays for Future Deutschland called for a major climate strike under the motto "Climate justice without borders – United for a future" also inviting people from 17 countries to come to Aachen on 21 June 2019. Protesters gathered at several points all over the city representing different chapters of the movement. Accompanied by several musical groups, they then walked or drove with bicycles through the streets to the main event at the Tivoli, thereby blocking larger parts of the traffic infrastructure for hours. Some protesters occupied a house, a bridge and several poles to raise large posters. A number of to people was anticipated. According to the organizers, with eventually protesters this peaceful event turned out to be the largest single FFF climate strike in a German city that far. The police acknowledged the originally anticipated numbers. Among the many speakers were Cyril Dion, Karen Raymond, Tetet Nera-Lauron and Jesse, Milan Schwarze and Sina Chom, as well as activists from the Hambach Forest, Pacific Climate Warriors, Alle Dörfer bleiben! and All In for Climate Action. Artists participating in the event included Brass Riot, Culcha Candela,, Moop Mama, Ruslana Lyzhychko, KingzCorner, Leo Holldack and Davide Martello. Among the protesters were Rezo and Anton Hofreiter.In parallel to this event, a group of Ende Gelände 2019 activists started protests at the nearby Garzweiler II open-pit lignite mine, blocking various mining infrastructure over the weekend. FFFD had recently declared its solidarity with this movement, stating that under the circumstances civil disobedience would be a legitimate form of protest to save the future, but, organizing another demonstration on 22 June 2019 in Hochneukirch/Jüchen in the direct neighborhood of the open-pit mine, that Fridays for Future would remain on the legal side.
On 19 June 2019, shortly before the events, the city of Aachen had followed several other German cities and declared a "climate emergency" state.