Climate Defiance is a DC-based collective of climate activists advocating for an end to fossil fuel leasing, exploration, and extraction on federal lands. The group has launched a campaign of disruptive action to raise pressure around its demand and force the Biden Administration to take critical steps to start winding down fossil fuel extraction. Many of its actions directly confronting fossil fuel enabling elites have gone viral, and their protests have led to several high-level resignations. The group also played a key role in Biden's January 2024 decision to halt approvals for new LNG export facilities on the Gulf Coast. By working to make support for fossil fuels socially and politically unacceptable, the group is building critical support for a holistic government phase out of fossil fuel development.

Since its founding in 2018, the New York City chapter of the global Extinction Rebellion movement has been at the forefront of the fight for climate justice in the US. The Group has executed many highly impactful disruptive protests, including blockading Times Square with a bright green sailboat, disrupting distribution of the New York Times to demand better coverage of the climate crisis, and most recently interrupting the US Open for over an hour calling on President Biden to end fossil fuels. In 2024, XRNYC plans to build on this momentum, grow its base, and keep pushing the climate crisis to the top of the political conversation.

Assemble UK is a new project, closely allied with Just Stop Oil UK, attempting to move beyond disruptive protests that simply say “no” to fossil fuels into a project that can say “yes” to positive demands and begin moving toward truly systemic political change. Assemble UK organizes citizens’ assemblies across the UK to formulate popular and progressive climate demands, then backs up those demands with nonviolent protests if governments fail to respond. By combining popular demands generated democratically with direct action, Assemble UK hopes to build unprecedented power for the movement and win transformational victories.

Climate Families NYC organizes parents with young children to take action on the climate crisis. The group believes that babies, children, and their caregivers have a special role to play in the climate movement.  By bringing the youngest victims of the climate crisis into the halls of power, the group throws the moral stakes of the crisis into stark relief and they pierce through the noise to build narrative power. The group is currently focused on winning progressive climate policy at the New York State Assembly. Climate Families NYC will continue to escalate with powerful, kid-friendly protests through the 2025 legislative session.

Scientist Rebellion is an international network of scientists who have concluded that disruptive civil resistance is the only way to force elected leaders to take action at the scale and speed demanded by the climate science. They achieved breakthrough success in Spring 2022, generating hundreds of news articles and tens of millions of views on social media. In the Fall of 2022, they generated international headlines with their protests at COP27 in Egypt and their blockades of private jets at airports across the globe. Scientist Rebellion plays a critical role within the global climate movement by normalizing and legitimizing disruptive protest as the most rational response to climate breakdown and government inaction.

The A22 Network launched in April 2022 with its Spring Uprising, and has achieved major success across the globe. Eleven groups, including Just Stop Oil UK, Letzte Generation in Germany, and Restore Wetlands in Sweden, took coordinated disruptive action and made major narrative interventions in their home countries. This mobilization laid the foundation for the A22 Network, allowing it to continue recruiting and building momentum. Three groups, Derniere Renovation in France, Just Stop Oil in the UK, and Restore Wetlands in Sweden, have declared victory on their demands. The network continues to execute high profile disruptions, grow its capacity, and push toward major policy breakthroughs.

Students Against EACOP Uganda has spent more than a year organizing against the massive East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which would release hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and displace 100,000 people along the construction route. The group has faced major repression throughout its campaign, with many members beaten by police and sentenced to egregious jail sentences. But their organizing efforts have already paid off - dozens of major insurers and financiers have ended their involvement with the project. With CEF support, Students Against EACOP plans to continue its protest efforts through 2024.

Axe Drax is organizing against the Drax Power Station in Yorkshire, a large-scale biomass power plant that is the largest single source of carbon emissions in the UK. The power station depends on fuel generated by cutting down millions of trees each year, primarily in the US Southeast. The power station is only economically viable because it receives hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies from the UK government each year. Axe Drax is demanding an end to subsidies for the Drax Power Station and a just transition for workers at the power station after its closure. The group plans to use disruptive protests to keep building public opposition to the station's continued operation.

Debt for Climate is an international collective of climate activists demanding that Global North countries cancel debt for countries in the Global South, allowing those countries to devote more resources toward climate crisis mitigation and adaptation. The group’s powerful, internationally coordinated protests have fundamentally changed the narrative around debt cancellation, playing a role in the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund at COP28. In 2024, Debt for Climate will continue to build momentum for debt cancellation by scaling up its protests against international financial institutions.

Rich City Rays is a grassroots partnership of community groups in Richmond, California and climate justice activists who are using kayaktivism as a force for addressing the climate crisis and environmental injustice through community-led non-violent direct action on the water. They work to empower the communities most harmed by fossil fuel operations in the Bay Area to stand up to corporate polluters. In May 2024, the group executed a major water-based blockade of Chevron's oil refining infrastructure in Richmond, delaying oil tankers from entering and exiting the refineries. The group is aiming to keep scaling up its resistance in 2024 and beyond.

Utah Youth Environmental Solutions (UYES) is a primarily youth-of-color-led organization that empowers young people in Utah to mobilize around climate and environmental issues through education and direct action. The group has already successfully pushed several school districts in and around Salt Lake City to fully transition to renewable energy by 2030. With CEF support, UYES is expanding its training programs for youth climate organizers, bolstering its campaign to reverse the decline of the Great Salt Lake.

After the Atlanta city council’s 2021 approval of a plan to bulldoze 300+ acres of urban forest in Atlanta to build a $90 million police training facility, a fierce resistance movement quickly emerged to oppose the project. Dubbed “Stop Cop City'', this movement has been using direct action in an attempt to stop the destruction of the forest, citing concerns about environmental justice as well as overpolicing and racial injustice. Despite intense police repression, including the killing a nonviolent protester and community organizer within the forest, the community continues to fight back, and national support for the movement continues to grow.

The Oil and Gas Action Network (OGAN) is a collective of California-based organizers with an extensive track record organizing against fossil fuel infrastructure. In 2023, the group launched an an advanced, nation-wide direct action training program, aiming to turn experienced organizers into experts. Once trained, OGAN will organize a network of “rapid responders” who can be deployed to hotspots of resistance to quickly scale up the movement’s capacity. OGAN also plays a critical role bringing the climate movement together for large-scale disruptive actions.

Stay Grounded organizes a global network of over 220 groups campaigning for reduced emissions from planes and private jets. Aviation emissions are a major driver of the climate crisis, and they also epitomize the injustice of climate breakdown: 80% of the world's population will never set foot on an airplane, and the wealthiest 1% of the global population is responsible for around 50% of aviation emissions. Stay Grounded provides crucial infrastructure and support for protest campaigns, and they have played a key role in many of the major disruptive protests at airports over the last few years.

The Social Change Lab is a leader in rigorous research on the mechanics and impact of protest movements, especially climate movements. They published cutting edge analyses of the outcomes of many of the most prominent protests in 2022, such as their analysis of the Radical Flank Effect with respect to Just Stop Oil UK. With CEF support, Social Change Lab is currently working on a quantitative study of the impacts of various protest tactics.

All for Climate is a non-profit association based in Belgium that provides critical financial infrastructure services to climate protesters in Europe and beyond. They operate a transparent and distributed financial infrastructure system that allows them to charge very low fees for their services. All for Climate currently provides fiscal sponsorship services to more than 200 climate protest campaigns.

Beautiful Trouble is a US-based collective of direct action trainers, containing some of the most experienced direct action practitioners in the United States. The group makes micro-grants to disruptive campaigns in the Global South that organize to protect their communities from economic and ecological harm. Beautiful Trouble also provides training and other forms of support for these campaigns to help them maximize their chances of success.