Society

Tens of thousands of pupils across Germany are expected to boycott the classroom and take to the streets in a nationwide protest organisers say is to stop the government’s rearmament policy turning young people into “cannon fodder”.

Despite threats from teachers’ associations and education ministries, which have said anyone who demonstrates during school hours could risk penalties and even expulsion, organisers say they expect the number of participants at Friday’s school strike to be at least as high as the estimated 50,000 who attended each of the first two.

So, perhaps the spread of pessimism has been a deliberated project, but if it has been, you can’t weather it on your own. “One of the beautiful, profound things I’ve seen over and over,” Solnit says, “is those moments of uprisings, anti-war protests, No Kings demonstrations, Occupy Wall Street bring a sense of power and belonging that is transformative. The solidarity, the sense of purpose and interconnectedness, is so meaningful.” In her book A Paradise Built in Hell (2009), Solnit describes the intensity of communities forged by natural disasters – the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, a savage explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina. She sees the same unbreakable bonds being forged in activism: the friendships, the energy, the self-awareness and the ambition created by political action stay with you for the rest of your life; they often define your life.