Students occupying schools vow to escalate climate protests next week

Students who have been holding climate change protests at several schools since Wednesday will attract more schools from next Tuesday and make the protests “more confrontational.”

Young people are demanding to stop using fossil fuels by 2030 and switch to 100% renewable and affordable electricity by 2025, demands identical to last year’s protests with the closure of some schools in Lisbon.

The young environmental activists have been working since Wednesday in educational institutions in Lisbon and the Algarve, occupying the Faculty of Literature, the Faculty of Psychology and the Higher Technical Institute, the Dona Luisa de Gusmão High School in Lisbon and the Tomás Cabreira High School in Faro.

Starting next Tuesday, young people at the initiative of the End of the Fossil: Occupy! will also occupy the Camões Lyceum, the António Arroyo School, the Faculty of Fine Arts, the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the University. Universidade Nova, all in Lisbon, Faculty of Arts in Coimbra and Faculty of Arts in Porto.

Teresa Nunsio, a spokeswoman for the movement, told Lusa that students at Rainha Dona Leonor High School also staged solidarity protests, but the principal threatened the youth with expulsion and added that the protest would continue next week.

At the Faculty of Literature, young people sleep on the street, as they are prevented from sleeping inside the institution, and in protest they are going to stay all weekend.

According to him, at Dona Luisa de Gusmao High School, young people set up a tent at the entrance from Wednesday, which was then removed by the police. And in Faro, young people who had overslept at school were picked up by the police, who, according to a spokesman, identified them at the police station and seized their materials.

Teresa Nunsio told Lusa that after a weekend of no action from next Tuesday, the protests will reach more schools and that they will increase the “destruction rate”, even for goals and demands reaching the public.

“We are expecting very confrontational classes,” he said, explaining that in these early days there was a “repressive attitude” in schools towards protests based on lectures, debates, fun and gatherings.

This Friday, at the University of Lisbon Institute of Education’s conference on “The Future Starts Today”, activists put up a banner asking “What Future Starts Today?”.

“No matter how much repression, we do it knowing that there is conflict and that it is worth it, because the threat of climate change is much greater,” the spokeswoman said, emphasizing that young people are not prone to violence and that they simply “create little shocks” to draw attention to the threat of climate change.

Asked about the commitment of students from the schools where the actions are taking place, Teresa Nunzio said the message is well received, but students are sometimes hesitant about disruptive action. He added: “The point is to make people feel uncomfortable because the climate reality is uncomfortable.”

Activists say they will stop the protests only when they collect 1,500 signatures from people who pledge to participate in a civil disobedience action at the Sines gas terminal on May 13. More than 100 signatures have been received so far, but according to the person in charge, Fossil’s End activists will be present in Sines supporting the Stop Gas movement, with or without 1,500 signatures.