On Monday, January 23rd, within Donald Trump’s first 100 hours as President of the United States, students across the country will walk-out of class in protest of the Trump administration. This will be the first and largest youth-led mobilization under this new administration. Students will call on their colleges and universities to reject and resist Trump’s climate denial by divesting from fossil fuels and reinvesting in solutions to the climate crisis. Students, in the face of Trump and his cabinet of fossil fuel CEOs and climate deniers, will make history.
What it means to make history has changed for me over time. As a kid, I had this sense that there was a barrier between the kinds of things that happened in history books, and what would happen in my lifetime. History seemed like something that happened to us, rather than something we ourselves could create.
In my textbooks, social movements were powerful and purposeful -- I understood that the Civil Rights Movement had made history. But movements like these were written about in a way that felt so distant, so firmly located in a time that was not our own.
As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to understand that social movements don’t just live in the pages of history. That’s why I joined the fossil fuel divestment movement four years ago. This movement, launched by students and young people, has pushed institutions worth trillions of dollars to commit to divest from the fossil fuel industry. It has stigmatized this industry around the world. Young people have been a driving force of that -- together we have built a powerful movement.
But this election makes clear that the arc of history does not simply bend toward justice. We must continue building the movements that make it so.
In the early hours of November 9, 2016, something important happened for me and my generation. We had to decide the kind of people we would be under a President Trump. Despite the fact that young people overwhelmingly voted against him, Trump will pick up his pen this week and do his best to re-write the realities of all of our lives, regressing on progress and foreclosing on our futures. But he does not write this history alone.
As Donald Trump takes office, students will follow in the path of past movements by pushing all of us toward the right side of history. We will walk out of class to resist Trump’s hate and climate denial. We will continue calling on our administrations to divest from the fossil fuel industry that is knowingly endangering life on this planet. We will push for our institutions to reinvest in our collective future. And with all of our hands, we will bend the arc of history towards justice.
Join us by organizing or joining a walkout, and follow us on Facebook and twitter with the hashtag #ResistRejectDenial.
Greta Neubauer is the Director of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network.
The DSN is building a powerful student movement for a just transition in the face of the climate crisis. We train, mentor, and coordinate students running nonviolent direct action campaigns for fossil fuel divestment and community reinvestment. Our organization is committed to racial and economic justice and supporting students to become lifelong organizers. www.studentsdivest.org
