Friends,
This is wonderful. First, the women, and now
the scientists. And hopefully we can organize an antiwar march which will be
bigger than the one in NYC 6-12-82.
Kagiso, Max
Anti-Trump protesters in D.C. (photo: Twitter)
Scientists
Are Planning the Next Big Washington March
By Brian Kahn, Scientific
American
26 January 17
In just two days, more than 300,000 people join a Facebook
planning group
Last
weekend, a massive milieu of women in pink hats descended on Washington, D.C.
for the Women’s March. The next big protest being planned for the nation’s
capital could involve a sea of lab coats (and likely a few pink hats as well).
A
group of researchers have proposed a March
for Science. What started as a discussion on Reddit has quickly blossomed
into a movement.
Organizers
started a private
Facebook group and Twitter account on Monday. By Wednesday afternoon,
the former boasted more than 300,000 members and the latter had nearly 55,000
followers. A public Facebook page had more than 11,000
likes just five hours after going online. The explosion of support caught
organizers off guard, but they’re meeting this weekend to discuss details about
the date and full mission statement.
The
march would be the latest in a string of actions taken by scientists following
Donald Trump’s election and his inauguration as president. His administration
has been widely viewed as hostile to science — from the transition period through hearings for his cabinet nominees through silencing
key federal science agencies and freezing grants.
“This
is not a partisan issue. People from all parts of the political spectrum should
be alarmed by these efforts to deny scientific progress,” Caroline Weinberg, a
medical researcher who is helping organize the march, said. “Scientific
research moves us forward and we should not allow asinine policies to thwart
it.”
Researchers
have been getting more vocal about the value of science and evidence-based
policymaking in recent months. Earth scientists took to the streets in San Francisco last
December during the annual American Geophysical Union meeting. Researchers and
librarians are also racing to save climate data from federal websites.
And more recently, scientists flooded Twitter during Friday’s
inauguration with updates about how science impacts everyday people.
The
March for Science represents a next step, with a groundswell of support behind
it and the potential to dwarf the December San Francisco rally of a few hundred
earth science researchers. While details are forthcoming, Weinberg underscored
that scientists and science lovers of all disciplines and backgrounds will be
welcome.
“Diversity
in science, both in the researchers who participate and the topics we are
focused on, is a critically neglected area,” she said. “We fully intend to
emphasize diversity in both the planning of and mission statement for this
march.”
Whatever
becomes of the march, it won’t be the first time scientists have turned out to
protest what they view as federal policies ungrounded in science. The 2014 People’s Climate March turned out an estimated
310,000 people in New York, including a large number of climate scientists.
Naomi
Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard, said that looking further into
the past reveals another telling example of scientists organizing.
“It is
the scientists who mobilized against the arms race in the late 1950s and
1960s,” she said. “So that tells you how scientists feel now. This is an
existential threat.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.
Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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