September 30, 2022
Around the World, Students Are Ready to Occupy Campuses for Climate Action
By Lisa Herforth-Hebbert
Between now and December, activists will form encampments at dozens of schools to demand solutions for the climate crisis.
By Mira Sydow
A few months ago, Omar Elsakhawy was finishing up high school in Orlando, Fla. He hadn’t heard of Fossil Free Penn, and he certainly hadn’t anticipated spending hours tabling, speechwriting, and occupying the central green space at his new school to demand action against the climate crisis. Now, he takes the helm at a press conference with vigor, pointing his megaphone in the face of tight-lipped administrators standing at the edge of the encampment at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Community control! Not oil, not coal!” Elsakhawy shouts into a megaphone. He paces back and forth across a growing circle of students and spectators framed by painted cardboard signs, a half dozen tents, and a banner with the words “FOSSIL FREE PENN” under bright orange X. “When we are under attack, what do we do?” Elsakhawy cries. “Stand up fight back!” the crowd echoes.
Fossil Free Penn is far from alone—it is just the first of dozens of youth-led organizations occupying college campuses to demand an end of universities’ investment in fossil fuels. Over the summer, students across the globe connected under End Fossil, an organization coordinating indefinite occupations of educational institutions beginning this fall. The expected pushback will ensure that the students are in for a long semester. Fossil Free Penn members have already faced intimidation by school administrators and campus security, reinforced by the crushing weight of the fossil fuel industry. But the movement spans four continents and hundreds of student organizers, each with their own school-specific demands to advance climate justice.
