Abstract Contrary to the conventional belief that social movements cannot engage the state without becoming co-opted and demobilized, this study shows how movements can advance their struggles by strategically working with, in, through, and outside of state institutions. The success of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) in occupying land, winning land rights, and developing alternative economic enterprises for over a million landless workers has made it an inspiration for progressive organizations globally. The MST’s educational initiatives, which are less well known but equally as important, teach students about participatory democracy, collective work, agroecological farming, and other practices that support its socialist vision. This study details how MST activists have pressured municipalities, states, and the federal government to implement their educational proposal in public schools and universities, affecting hundreds of thousands of students. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land documents the potentials, constraints, failures, and contradictions of the MST’s educational struggle. A major lesson is that participating in the contentious co-governance of public education can help movements recruit new activists, diversify their membership, increase practical and technical knowledge, and garner political power. Activists are most effective when combining disruption, persuasion, negotiation, and co-governance into their tactical repertoires. Through expansive leadership development, the MST implemented its educational program in local schools, even under conservative governments. Such gains demonstrate the potential of schools as sites for activists to prefigure, enact, and develop the social and economic practices they hope to use in the future.
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