Reflecting on the 2024 West Coast College Climate Gathering

Reflections from Cori Lopez, West Coast College Climate Gathering Organizer at CCN

From October 25-27th, 2024, 67 student organizers from 23 schools convened at UC Berkeley for the West Coast College Climate Gathering. A weekend of workshops, trainings, and panels was the end result of 4 months of planning by a team of dedicated student volunteers. We brought together students from public schools, private schools, and community colleges, representing 6 US states and one Canadian province.s. The goal of the gathering, one year after the first East Coast College Climate Gathering, was straightforward: increase movement cohesion across campuses and train student organizations to take on their campus administrators and win their campaigns against fossil fuels.

From the very beginning of the planning process, we had a strong contender for where the gathering would take place. We chose UC Berkeley, a school with an extensive, rich history of activism and radical student movements that still inspire the college climate movement today. We aspire to build a student movement representative of a diversity of school types as well as racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds.  This meant we had to focus our outreach efforts on a range of different schools, including many that may have never gotten the chance to participate in our network before. 

Logistics planning for the weekend was a success, from housing all 67 attendees to feeding everyone to finding the perfect space to gather everyone for group activities. This success can be attributed to the Berkeley student volunteers knowing their campus well and their incredible hospitality that allowed us to get rooms for our trainings and let other attendees stay in their dorms during the weekend. The gathering happened to fall on the (first) weekend of Halloween, which gave students the opportunity to experience Berkeley’s culture and have fun with the new people they met. 

The topics of the trainings, chosen by the Programming working group, included offerings for new and experienced organizers alike. We ran trainings on picking a powerful campaign, base building, power analysis,  and effective 1:1s. We also organized a panel discussion on the intersections of the climate and labor on campus, featuring panelists with a breadth of experience on both issue areas.  Next, we made space for a conversation about the student movement for a free Palestine. We began with a grounding presentation by Palestinian student leaders on the intersections of environmental justice and anti-colonialism followed by small group discussions.  

Then we took action. We marched  to the UC system President’s residence calling for him to take bold climate action. We worked closely with the UC Green New Deal Coalition, which had been running a multi year cross campus decarbonization. October of 2024 was a critical moment of their campaign. The UC system president was on the cusp of resignation, meaning he was running out of time to leave behind a legacy of standing up for climate. After a weekend of learning the steps to form a campaign, the students got to put their new skills to work by participating in this action on the last day of the gathering. 

Although everyone was exhausted after the action, the students’ energy was revitalized as attendees began traveling home and saying goodbyes to the new people they had met. The planning team, resting in our makeshift HQ in Berkeley’s Eco Office, was inevitably tired after a job well done. We quantified the success of the West Coast College Climate Gathering by all of the positive feedback we got from groups after the weekend, and as a result of the gathering, multiple new groups joined CCN. Based on the success of these College Climate Gatherings, we can conclude  that in-person gatherings are a valuable way of strengthening our movement.