13 April 20
Dear Joe Biden, Here Is How You Can Earn Our Support
Alliance for Youth Action, IfNotNow, Justice Democrats, March for Our Lives, NextGen America, Student Action, Sunrise Movement and United We Dream, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "We need you to champion the bold ideas that have galvanized our generation and given us hope in the political process."
Alliance for Youth Action, IfNotNow, Justice Democrats, March for Our Lives, NextGen America, Student Action, Sunrise Movement and United We Dream, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "We need you to champion the bold ideas that have galvanized our generation and given us hope in the political process."
Anti-Trump messaging won’t be enough to lead any candidate to victory. Young people need someone who will champion bold ideas
ear Vice-President Joe Biden,
We write to you as leaders from a diverse array of organizations building political power for young people in the United States. We are all deeply committed to ending a presidency that has set the clock back on all of the issues that impact our lives.
While you are now the presumptive Democratic nominee, it is clear that you were unable to win the votes of the vast majority of voters under 45 years old during the primary. With young people poised to play a critical role deciding the next president, you need to have more young people enthusiastically supporting and campaigning with you to defeat Donald Trump. This division must be reconciled so we can unite the party to defeat Trump.
Messaging around a “return to normalcy” does not and has not earned the support and trust of voters from our generation. For so many young people, going back to the way things were “before Trump” isn’t a motivating enough reason to cast a ballot in November. And now, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed not only the failure of Trump, but how decades of policymaking has failed to create a robust social safety net for the vast majority of Americans.
The views of younger Americans are the result of a series of crises that took hold when we came of political age, and flow from bad decisions made by those in power from both major parties. For millions of young people, our path to a safe and secure middle-class life is far more out-of-reach than it was for our parents or grandparents. We grew up in a world where “doing better than the generation before us” was not a foregone conclusion.
Instead, we grew up with endless war, skyrocketing inequality, crushing student loan debt, mass deportations, police murders of black Americans and mass incarceration, schools which have become killing fields, and knowing that the political leaders of today are choking the planet we will live on long after they are gone. We’ve spent our whole lives witnessing our political leaders prioritize the voices of wealthy lobbyists and big corporations over our needs. From this hardship, we’ve powered a resurgence of social movements demanding fundamental change. Why would we want a return to normalcy? We need a vision for the future, not a return to the past.
New leadership in November is an imperative for everything our movements are fighting for. But in order to win up and down the ballot in November, the Democratic party needs the energy and enthusiasm of our generation. The victorious “Obama coalition” included millions of energized young people fighting for change. But the Democratic party’s last presidential nominee failed to mobilize our enthusiasm where it mattered. We can’t afford to see those mistakes repeated.
Young people are issues-first voters. Fewer identify with a political party than any other generation. Exclusively anti-Trump messaging won’t be enough to lead any candidate to victory. We need you to champion the bold ideas that have galvanized our generation and given us hope in the political process. As the party’s nominee, the following commitments are needed to earn the support of our generation and unite the party for a general election against Donald Trump:
Policy:
Climate change: Adopt the frameworks of the Green New Deal and make specific commitments around achieving a just transition to 100% clean energy by 2030 for electricity, buildings and transportation; restart the economy by committing to mobilizing $10tn in green stimulus and infrastructure investments over 10 years that will create tens of millions of good jobs of the future; and commit to take on and prosecute the fossil fuel executives and lobbyists who have criminally jeopardized our generation.
Gun violence prevention: Take an intersectional, comprehensive approach to preventing gun violence with the goal of reducing gun deaths by 50% in 10 years. In addition to the policies laid out in your plan, you should also include the following from the Peace Plan for a Safer America: call for a federal licensing program; hold the gun industry accountable by directing the IRS to probe the NRA’s not-for-profit status. Expand federal funding and resources for community-based violence intervention programs. Adopt Julián Castro’s People First Policing Plan and acknowledge that police brutality is gun violence.
Immigration: Commit to immediate executive actions to expand Daca and other policies to protect people from deportation and hold Ice and CBP accountable. Executive actions must also close the vast and cruel web of detention camps and not replace it with a practice of tagging people with electronic monitors or surveillance sold by big-money corporations. Commit to ending the collaboration between local police and Ice and the use of racial profiling by deportation agents and local police that pulls people into the deportation pipeline. Commit to providing guaranteed access to counsel for all while making immigration courts independent and free of political manipulation. Commit to repealing the 1996 immigration reform laws and creating citizenship pathways for all undocumented people without harmful provisions. Amid the current Covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that all people, including undocumented immigrants, must be included in any healthcare reform as viruses do not discriminate on the basis of immigration status.
Healthcare: Support the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act to allow the government to manufacture generic versions of drugs and dramatically lower prescription drug prices. Support Medicare for All, especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Champion the repeal of the Hyde amendment and people’s ability to access abortion care regardless of their income or zip code.
Criminalization: Champion comprehensive reform of our criminal legal system. Incentivize states to cut their incarcerated population by 50% while supporting massive investment in housing, drug treatment, diversion, education and health programs. End the war on drugs and support the equitable legalization of marijuana based on proposals laid out by Senator Booker, Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, Secretary Castro and others.
Education: Support free undergraduate tuition for public colleges, universities and vocational schools for all students, regardless of income, citizenship status or criminal record. Provide economic relief to 45 million Americans and stimulate the economy by addressing the student debt crisis and canceling the entire $1.7tn in student loan debt.
Wealth tax: Support an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the wealthiest 180,000 households in America who are in the top 0.1% based on proposals laid out by Senator Sanders, Senator Warren and Tom Steyer.
Foreign policy: Commit to seek congressional approval on any authorization of war and support repeal of 2001 and 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Democracy: Support the elimination of the filibuster and the expanding of the supreme court. Call for the adoption of strong anti-corruption reforms laid out by Senator Warren and Senator Sanders. Champion a voting system that works for all Americans. Every citizen should be automatically registered to vote, get to cast their ballot in a secure, accessible way that fits their needs, and never have their right to vote taken away for any reason. Get big money out of politics and make the passage of HR 1 a top priority.
Personnel and future administration:
Commit to appointing progressive elected officials who endorsed Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as transition co-chairs, such as representatives Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Ayanna Pressley or Katie Porter.
Pledge to appoint zero current or former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists, or people affiliated with the fossil fuel, health insurance or private prison corporations, to your transition team, adviser roles or cabinet.
Appoint a trusted progressive to lead the White House presidential personnel office to ensure that the entire administration is free of corruption and staffed with public servants committed to advancing a progressive agenda.
Commit to put trusted voices on issues of importance to our generation on your campaign and transition team’s policy working groups, such as Governor Inslee’s policy team on climate; Senator Warren’s policy team on financial regulation; Aramis Ayala, Bryan Stevenson and Larry Krasner on criminal justice; Bonnie Castillo of National Nurses United and Dr Abdul El-Sayed on healthcare; and Mary-Kay Henry, Sara Nelson and Senator Sanders’ policy team on jobs and the economy.
Commit to appointing advisers, such as Joseph Stiglitz, to your national economic council and office of management and budget who believe in the principles of the Green New Deal and a rapid transition to a 100% clean and renewable energy economy.
Appoint a national director of gun violence prevention in the White House who will oversee the policy platform, coordinate across agencies and incorporate a survivor-centered approach. Commit to appointing an attorney general who will re-examine the Heller decision.
Appoint a DHS secretary committed to holding Ice and CBP agents accountable and dismantling Ice and CBP as we know them.
Create a White House commission to represent the voices and needs of immigrants who can work together to ensure that executive actions and legislative solutions address the needs of immigrant communities.
Create a taskforce on young Americans at the White House focused on the many issues unique to the next generation’s health, wellbeing and economic stability. The leadership of the office should directly report to the president and work regularly with the domestic policy council, national economic council and office of public engagement. Taskforce representatives from each agency should be appointed by and report to respective secretaries and taskforce leadership and focus on policy and administrative action that directly affects every aspect of young people’s lives. This office should engage directly with young people across the country and ensure representation from youth movement leaders in its ranks.
In addition to these policy and personnel commitments, you and your campaign must demonstrate a real passion and enthusiasm for engaging with our generation and its leaders. It’s not just about the policies and issues, but also about how you prioritize them, how you talk about them and how you demonstrate real passion for addressing them. You must demonstrate, authentically, that you empathize with our generation’s struggles.
Calling for solutions that match the scale, scope and urgency of the problems we are facing is not radical. If nothing else, this moment of crisis should show that it is the pragmatic thing to do. We want results and we’re leading some of the movements that will help deliver them.
The organizations below will spend more than $100m communicating with more than 10 million young members, supporters and potential voters this election cycle. We are uniquely suited to help mobilize our communities, but we need help ensuring our efforts will be backed up by a campaign that speaks to our generation. Our generation is the future of this country. If you aim to motivate, mobilize and welcome us in, we will work tirelessly to align this nation with its highest ideals.
Signed,
Signed,
'Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion,' President Trump said last month. He has repeatedly said that no one could have seen the effects of the coronavirus coming. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT)
He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump's Failure on the Virus
Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes, The New York Times
Excerpt: "The shortcomings of Mr. Trump's performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation."
READ MORE
Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes, The New York Times
Excerpt: "The shortcomings of Mr. Trump's performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation."
READ MORE
Writer and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich awarded the 2018 Erasmus Prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation on November 27, 2018, in Amsterdam. (photo: Getty Images)
Barbara Ehrenreich's Powerful Lessons for a Stronger Post-Coronavirus America
Florina Rodov, YES! Magazine
Rodov writes: "Straddling the space between journalist and activist, Ehrenreich confronts the indignities in low-wage work, the bright-siding of breast cancer, and the criminalization of poverty. More importantly, she prophetically condemns our broken social, medical, and economic infrastructure, which the COVID-19 pandemic has blown wide open."
READ MORE
Florina Rodov, YES! Magazine
Rodov writes: "Straddling the space between journalist and activist, Ehrenreich confronts the indignities in low-wage work, the bright-siding of breast cancer, and the criminalization of poverty. More importantly, she prophetically condemns our broken social, medical, and economic infrastructure, which the COVID-19 pandemic has blown wide open."
READ MORE
Governor Ralph Northam. (photo: Mark Warner)
Virginia Governor's Slew of Bills Heralds Progressive New Direction for State
Richard Luscombe, Guardian UK
Luscombe writes: "Virginia governor Ralph Northam has signed into law new measures on gun control and abortion rights and outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexuality and gender identity, establishing a progressive new direction for a traditionally conservative state where Democrats won the legislature in November for the first time in almost 25 years."
READ MORE
Richard Luscombe, Guardian UK
Luscombe writes: "Virginia governor Ralph Northam has signed into law new measures on gun control and abortion rights and outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexuality and gender identity, establishing a progressive new direction for a traditionally conservative state where Democrats won the legislature in November for the first time in almost 25 years."
READ MORE
A woman waiting to file unemployment. (photo: AP)
Coronavirus Is Crashing America's Joke of an Unemployment System
Paul Blest, VICE
Blest writes: "In the last week of March, Floridians trying to file unemployment claims made over 864,000 calls to the state's unemployment call center, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Just one percent of those calls were answered."
READ MORE
Paul Blest, VICE
Blest writes: "In the last week of March, Floridians trying to file unemployment claims made over 864,000 calls to the state's unemployment call center, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Just one percent of those calls were answered."
READ MORE
Ecuador. (photo: Daily Beast)
Bodies Rotting in the Street: COVID-19 Chaos Grips Ecuador
Jeremy Kryt, The Daily Beast
Kryt writes: "Images coming out of Guayaquil, a port city on Ecuador's Pacific coast, are as grim as anything the world has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic began."
Jeremy Kryt, The Daily Beast
Kryt writes: "Images coming out of Guayaquil, a port city on Ecuador's Pacific coast, are as grim as anything the world has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic began."
Latin America’s worst outbreak is a gruesome harbinger of what’s to come when poverty meets pandemic.
mages coming out of Guayaquil, a port city on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, are as grim as anything the world has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
As the death toll has overwhelmed hospitals and morgues, bodies have been abandoned in the streets or left to decay in houses, cargo trailers, and parking lots. The smell of the exposed corpses sticks like bile in the throat, and flocks of vultures wheel above the city waiting their chance to feed on human carrion.
Cemeteries are far beyond capacity, so some of the dead are now buried in unmarked graves in outlying fields. Other cadavers are secreted out of the city by loved ones, disguised as sleeping passengers to slip through military checkpoints trying to stop the spread of the contagion.
Lacking the advanced technology and robust infrastructure of their First World counterparts, hospitals and health centers in Guayaquil have been swamped by climbing infection rates since late March, often leaving ordinary citizens to deal as best they can with dead and dying family members.
Videos allegedly showing bodies being burned in the streets are now widespread on social media and reproduced by news outlets across Latin America—although the provenance of those public cremation clips remains controversial, and journalists in Guayaquil say they are not what they seem. Fires were lit to draw attention to bodies, not to incinerate them.
There is no doubt that on Monday of this week the Ecuadorian government began issuing makeshift cardboard caskets, because traditional, more durable models have run out. And two new cemeteries with an estimated 10,000 graves are under construction, as experts predict the worst is yet to come, with the death toll likely to peak in late April.
“We are living in hell,” Blanca Moncada, a journalist with El Diario Expreso in Guayaquil, tells The Daily Beast. Moncada describes local medical facilities as resembling “war hospitals.” Such descriptions have been used in almost every hard-hit region, including New York City, but in Guayaquil the situation is still more grotesque.
“There are bodies stacked in freezers, corpses lining the corridors, even piled up outside the hospital,” she says. Reporters covering the crisis in Guayaquil have been particularly hard hit, with at least 14 infections and four deaths, including Moncada’s close friend and mentor at El Diario, who died a few days ago. She says she knows there are many in the city who are much worse off than white-collar workers like herself.
“At least we can lock down and work from home,” she says. “Many in the barrios don’t have that choice. For them it’s either go out to work or starve.”
Guayaquil, which is Ecuador’s largest city, has become the epicenter for COVID-19 in Latin America. As such, it has been described as a kind of bellwether for how the virus might impact other developing countries in the region—a gruesome harbinger of what’s to come when poverty meets pandemic.
As the crisis unfolds, U.S. citizens have been fleeing Guayaquil and surrounding areas, with special charter flights been arranged for them, according to a State Department spokesperson who declined to be named. “Overall, over 3,000 Americans have departed Ecuador since March 19, through 26 flights the Embassy facilitated through commercial airlines and State Department-chartered aircraft.”
Because embassy workers are already in quarantine, “only emergency consular services are available” in Guayaquil at this time, the spokesperson said. If conditions continue to worsen: “The consulate has a strong contingency plan for any necessary emergency evacuation.”
‘POOR VIGILANCE’
The original contagion is thought to have been brought by travelers returning from Spain and Italy in late winter. The Guayaquil airport is a major travel hub for surrounding districts, and early screening for the virus was marked by “poor epidemiological vigilance,” says Dr. Esteban Ortiz-Prado, an infectious disease expert at the University of the Americas in Quito.
Because passengers were only tested for high temperatures, many asymptomatic carriers slipped through. A lack of self-isolation protocols followed, failures which were in turn compounded by poverty, urban overcrowding, and a high number of senior citizens in vulnerable communities.
“When you add up all those factors together—Boom!—you get an explosion of infections,” Ortiz-Prado says. And that explosion eventually led to what he calls the “definitive collapse” of the public health system in the city.
Demographics and a lack of preparedness aside, some in Guayaquil feel the national government’s inadequate response has directly contributed to the scale of the outbreak. Critics say President Lenín Moreno is basing policy decisions on infection statistics that are unrealistically low, while also failing to call for a general lockdown, even as the outbreak escalates.
Here’s a quick rundown of the numbers:
As of Thursday, April 9, the official tally was 4,965 total cases and 272 deaths nationwide. However, government records in Guayaquil show at least 1,350 bodies were collected from streets and private homes in that city between March 23 and April 5, dwarfing the official stats for the entire country. The nation’s public health director also confirmed 150 coronavirus-related deaths in Guayaquil on April 8 alone.
Some of the discrepancy in numbers could be attributed to a lack of test kits and diagnostic equipment. But a deliberate willingness to look the other way as the body count rises might also be a way for President Moreno to delay implementing the kind of full quarantine measures that have proven effective—although sometimes politically unpopular—in other countries.
“We have a partial quarantine right now,” says epidemiologist Ortiz-Prado, with businesses open and people allowed out on the streets from five in the morning until two in the afternoon each weekday.
The lockdown “definitely needs to be stronger in Guayaquil and elsewhere,” he says. “We need to keep people from going out except to buy necessities.”
But keeping people under strict quarantine is easier said than done in the many poverty-stricken barrios around Guayaquil, where daily existence remains a hand-to-mouth struggle. Indeed, such precarious living conditions are common throughout Latin America, and will pose grave challenges to public health officials as the pandemic unfolds.
To its credit, Moreno’s government has already begun to distribute a stipend of $60 per month to workers in the informal economy, but Moncada says that’s not nearly enough to feed married couples and families.
“The people keep going out,” says Guayaquil mayor Cynthia Viteri Jiménez in a recent interview with Univision. “People chase the police with stones and knives [when they try to enforce the curfew]. In some sectors they just don’t want to realize the magnitude of what is happening in Ecuador.”
RISK FACTORS
One of the lessons other countries might want to learn from Ecuador’s unfortunate example is to prevent “the rapid spread of disinformation,” says Ortiz-Prado.
“Countries must control dangerous messages that circulate in social media in relation to the quarantine. Here in Ecuador, for example, there are people with millions of followers on Instagram who say: ‘Nothing is happening, go out into the streets. Nothing will happen to you,’” he says. “This has to be considered a major risk factor.”
While some in Guayaquil mislead the public by denying actual dangers, others have erred on the other side of the truth—sensationalizing human suffering by failing to fact check in order to generate click bait.
“There have been news outlets everywhere saying they were burning corpses in the street, but this did not happen,” says El Diario’s Moncada. Instead of funeral pyres, she says, the viral videos actually show signal fires.
“What they did was burn the furniture, the coffin, or the belongings of the deceased. Those were desperate acts to get the authorities to come quickly to remove the bodies. They left the corpses outside their houses and they burned tires and furniture hoping to get a response. To get help,” she says.
Other forms of deception and intimidation indicate just how severe the breakdown of society has become. For example, workers in a Guayaquil morgue are now being investigated for extorting grieving families, demanding bribes in exchange for returning their loved ones’ bodies.
Nor has the medical community been spared. At least 10 doctors in the city have died, and an estimated 1,600 more health-care workers have become infected, largely due to the lack of masks, gloves, and gowns. Yet those who speak publicly about shortages say they’re being threatened by superiors who want them silenced.
“The doctors I’ve interviewed are desperate due to the lack of supplies,” Moncada says. “But if they complain they know they risk getting fined, or even permanently fired, by the hospitals.”
Ortiz-Prado says he also worried about dwindling stockpiles, and he hopes eventually “developed countries like the U.S. could support us by sending resources like test kits, medical experts, and personal protection equipment.”
Above all he stresses the need for developing nations in Latin America to adopt a unilateral approach and work together to prevent the outbreak from spreading.
“The region is very permeable to the infection and with a high morbidity rate,” he says, by way of advocating for a comprehensive, region-wide strategy.
“We can’t just try to control the outbreak in one country and leave people to die in another.”
Climate march. (photo: Axel Heimken/Getty Images)
Hockenos writes: "Thunberg's tweets don't hint at it, but the virus and the public lockdowns have thrown the movement - already struggling to build on its spectacular protests of 2019 - into confusion. How can it pressure governments or businesses when gatherings are banned?"
or more than a year, just about every Friday at noon, Invaliden Park in downtown Berlin was transformed into a vivacious, noisy, swarming hubbub with teenage speakers, bands, and live dance acts — as well as Germany’s top climate scientists — all sharing a makeshift stage and a microphone. Several thousand mostly school-age pupils waved banners and placards proclaiming “There is no Planet B,” “School Strike for Climate,” and “We’re on strike until you act!” Their chants against fossil fuels and for swift, decisive action on global warming echoed against the granite facades of the federal ministries for economy and transportation, both adjacent to the square.
The happening was the weekly “school strike” in Berlin of Fridays for Future (FFF), the climate crisis movement that began in 2018 with the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg skipping school once a week to protest her country’s half-hearted response to climate change. The movement then ricocheted across the globe, mobilizing school-age young people — in wealthy countries as well as poor — as never before. Last year, the campaign culminated in international demonstrations of millions in cities and towns from Cape Town, South Africa to Anchorage, Alaska, all with the same goal: to force their nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon-neutral by 2050.
“There was a brilliant logic to the school strikes that drew people in,” explains Bill McKibben, author and cofounder of the climate action group 350.org. “If [the adult world] can’t be bothered to prepare a liveable world for me, why should I be bothered to sit in school and prepare for that future? That basic idea really hit home.”
Fridays for Future can claim some significant achievements, including strongly moving public opinion in favor of climate action and helping Green parties in Europe make major gains in elections. Still, even before the coronavirus outbreak and the banning worldwide of gatherings and demonstrations, the momentum of Fridays for Future had slowed. Fewer young people were attending the weekly protests, and the movement was recalibrating its strategy and tactics, shifting to stepped-up election activities and direct-action campaigns against fossil fuel interests, with mixed success.
Now, the worsening coronavirus pandemic is forcing Thunberg and other leaders of FFF to further alter tactics. Fridays for Future in Germany and other countries has suspended all public demonstrations — until now the movement’s mainspring and source of its high-profile media image, as well as donations. “In a crisis we change our behavior,” Thunberg tweeted earlier this month, “and adapt to the new circumstances for the greater good of society.” The Global Climate Strike, an international demonstration scheduled for April 24, has been called off. Thunberg proposed that FFF go digital by blanketing the internet and social media with the movement’s message.
Thunberg’s tweets don’t hint at it, but the virus and the public lockdowns have thrown the movement — already struggling to build on its spectacular protests of 2019 — into confusion. How can it pressure governments or businesses when gatherings are banned? How can the movement attract media coverage in the midst of a global pandemic? Will ordinary people faced with children at home or sick relatives or no jobs care about the climate when the COVID-19 crisis has turned their lives upside down? And will countries now sideline climate protection in order to put all of their energy and money into fighting the pandemic?
“Last year climate change was topic No. 1,” says Volker Quaschning, a professor of renewable energy systems at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, and one of the German scientists who had lobbied officials to take decisive steps to curb climate change. “Today it’s corona.”
“They had an incredible media presence last year,” says Moritz Sommer, a sociologist at the Institute for Social Movement Studies in Berlin. “Now there’s next to nothing in the media, and I don’t see this changing this year.”
Luisa Neubauer, the 23-year-old face of FFF in Germany, was a constant presence on talk and news shows during the height of the protests in 2019. Neubauer, who is often referred to as “Germany’s Greta,” told Yale e360 that the movement is in transition, adding, “We’re trying to figure things out now. Beating the coronavirus is the first thing we have to do, but the fight to save the climate can’t stop. It will continue in other ways and when this crisis is over the climate crisis will look different. We may even have a better chance. We know that political will, when it is there, can move mountains. We are experiencing this right now in the corona crisis.”
As for Thunberg’s call for digital activism, Neubauer admits that it can’t replace what FFF had accomplished on the streets. “But our generation and the climate movement are already digital,” she says, “and there are things we can do.” Already, the German branches of FFF have an internet learning program on YouTube for the millions of children not attending school.
FFF has unquestionably enjoyed major successes over the past year-and-a-half. The protests struck a chord with people who until then hadn’t taken climate change seriously enough to have it impact their vote or lifestyle. The movement was strongest in Europe, but even in the United States the protests caught on and helped propel the Green New Deal, a proposal for tackling the climate crisis in the U.S., high on the agenda of Democratic presidential candidates. Last September, 250,000 people across the U.S. marched in the FFF’s Global Climate Strike — the largest number ever to turn out for a U.S. climate protest.
Outside of the U.S., the numbers of those prioritizing global warming shot up dramatically in the wake of the FFF demonstrations, opinion polls and elections showed. Before the coronavirus, people in Europe and in China identified climate change as the foremost challenge. And many European Green parties, which had campaigned for rigorous climate policies for years, have doubled their vote tallies in local, national, and European Union elections — a result also of the extreme weather in 2018 and 2019 that brought record droughts, heat, and floods.
The FFF demonstrations “changed the whole landscape of the climate movement and the way ordinary people think about the climate crisis,” says Insa Vries of the German anti-coal group Ende Gelände, which had been occupying coal production facilities since 2015. “They were able to get through to much larger swaths of the population than we ever could, including unions, established NGOs, older people, and the world of pop culture.”
“The Fridays’ activists accomplished in just months what we had been trying to do in the halls of power for 10 years,” explains Quaschning. “The school kids were able to jolt the government into action. A year ago Germany wasn’t close to coming up with a CO2 tax, now we have one.”
Despite these achievements, the outbreak of the coronavirus has found Fridays for Future in a period of soul searching and experimentation. The group’s leaders were growing disappointed with FFF’s concrete results, most notably that the protests had not prodded governments to respond with the resolute, far-reaching measures that would enable them to meet the goals of the 2015 UN Paris Agreement, which would hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial levels.
A seminal moment for the German FFF movement came on September 20, 2019, when in the largest climate demonstration of the year, tens of thousands of protestors clogged Berlin’s city center, and more than a million more took to the streets in 500 other German cities and towns. As the Berlin demonstration unfolded, just a stone’s throw away at the offices of German Chancellor Angela Merkel the government announced its long-awaited climate policies package. But the proposals fell far short of the students’ demands, which were that Germany set policies that would end coal use by 2030 and generate 100 percent of the country’s electricity with renewable energy by 2035. The activists had also demanded a tax as high as 180 euros-per-ton of CO2.
“It was bizarre, scandalous, how bad it was,” says Neubauer about the German climate protection package, which proposed a mere 10 euros-a-ton tax on CO2. “Despite all of the demonstrations and lobbying, what came out wasn’t even an attempt to meet the Paris Agreement. We had to explain to our supporters why we had expected results and didn’t get them. There was a shift in spirit [in FFF circles]: from hopefulness to outrage.”
The Germans weren’t the only climate activists rethinking things in the face of tepid government action. “We concluded that school strikes alone aren’t going to make governments change anything,” explains Vipulan Puvaneswaran of France’s Youth for Climate, the French ally of Fridays for Future. “We need a more radical change — the system has to change — and for that we need more radical protest forms.” In February, the group briefly occupied the Paris offices of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, covering its walls with graffiti.
The Germans, too, shifted course, moving away from school strikes to the targeting of businesses and intervening in election campaigns. “Businesses are more flexible, they can change faster than states,” says Neubauer. “They have to step up and help us make governments change.”
FFF Germany set its sights on the multinational giant Siemens, which had recently invested in a new Australian coal mine — a small investment for Siemens, but a tempting target for the climate activists. In January, FFF demonstrators besieged the company’s headquarters in Munich and other of its offices, delivering a petition with 57,000 signatures to Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser, who met one-on-one with Neubauer. Media coverage was intensive for a week, but in the end Siemens opted to proceed with the project.
“FFF has managed to mobilize enormous numbers of people and create a big buzz,” says Vries of Ende Gelände, “but we come out in the end empty-handed. Maybe we have to rethink how we pick our fights.”
FFF has enjoyed more success in targeting elections, which has greatly benefitted Europe’s Green parties. “Green parties across Northern Europe have been given an unbelievable push,” says Ellen Ueberschär of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, a German foundation close to the Green Party. In polls, Germany’s Greens have tripled their tally since the 2017 general election, turning the Greens into the country’s second-largest party.
Now, however, FFF’s path forward is unclear. If the movement is denied street demonstrations for months, it may find its resources drying up and activists demoralized. “I’m worried that their anger and frustration, which had generated so much positive energy, will turn into hopelessness,” says Ueberschär.
“At best, what can happen,” says Neubauer, “is that we turn the crisis experience into a crisis management experience. Because we are now tackling [the coronavirus] collectively, in solidarity and sustainably, we can learn how to cope with others. This can be helpful for the climate crisis.”
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