When the São Paulo government proposed closing over 100 public schools in October 2015, high school students rose up in rebellion against the state. After tagging a series of hostile street protests they took it to the next level. Over the next three months, they organised occupations of the schools themselves – climbing over school walls, breaking the locks, barricading the doors, and declaring: “the school is ours.”
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“The reorganization project was so absurd that it felt like everyone was against it; the community, intellectuals, students and teachers,” says Brazilian photographer Alicia Esteves.
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Soon a booklet – translated into Portuguese from a Chilean leaflet made by students who occupied their schools in 2006 – began to circulate through the hands of students in São Paulo. “Suddenly the first school was occupied, and then another one,” Esteves remembers. “10 schools were occupied, and then more than 100 schools. At the end over 250 schools were occupied. I had just got my first digital camera around this time and thought I could help the occupation by photographing it.”
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