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This article looks back at the Jerada hirak (2017–2018), a local social protest whose demands aimed at addressing the poor development and the economic domination experienced by a large proportion of young people in this medium-sized city in eastern Morocco. The Jerada hirak mobilized all generations and social groups throughout the city. It is perceived as a social protest led by the inhabitants, foremost among whom were the city’s coal miners, young men extracting in informal conditions and at high risk to their health the remaining coal left by a now-closed industrial mining company. Through an ethnography of the mobilized groups, particularly the young people at the forefront of the protest, the article highlights the role of a group of leaders raised in student unionism in Morocco. The article highlights how the group of activists reinvested their activist skills and symbolic capital in the movement, including devalued university degrees. Experiences of past struggles in which they may have been involved or simply witnessed were put to use in a protest movement that challenged the local economic and political order.