And now I’m back from the Morris Science March!


We had a good turnout of about 220 people (or 4.4% of the population of Morris). Percentage-wise, we probably had more representation than the big march in Washington DC.

We’d also coupled the march to our Undergraduate Research Symposium, which was also a major success.

Now all we have to do is keep pushing forward to get the Denialist-in-Chief out of office.

Comments

  1. chigau (違う) says

    I don’t know how many people were there, I’ll guess 300.
    It was +1°C with blowing snow, so not bad.

  2. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Not official count, my impression of Boston attendance was at least a few thousand (include grains of salt as desired). Only listened to one of the several speakers. One of the cosmologists working a MIT, who searches for the oldest stars. She is also an immigrant from Germany and spoke eloquently about how imports are important: imports of people, imports of ideas, etc, We are all imports fundamentally, so there is absolutely no reason to inhibit imports from occurring. (with strong silent implications of the recent travel bans).
    There were many clever protest signs to accompany the event. one was in equation form “m a sqrt(16) (delta symbol)” translates to “force for change” [smart alek] also “alternative facts are sqrt(-1)” meaning “imaginary”
    all in all, quite a fun day.
    warning: do not reed 45’s tweet referring to Earth Day, liable to cause vomiting.

  3. says

    Just got back from the Houston march; I’m not good at estimating crowd sizes but it was huge (or maybe a should say “yuge”. Bigly.) Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get many pictures of the signs but some of my favorites were “Because you can’t pray this shit into space” (next to a picture of a rocket) and “Girls just want to have fun(ding for their research.)” Also a couple that I really identified with personally:”I hate misinformation more than I hate crowds” and “The situation is so dire even the introverts are marching.”

  4. KG says

    The march in Edinburgh was attended by at least 1,000 people (my estimate). There was a very welcome empnhsis on diversity, inclusiveness, and international collaboration. (Among other threats to science, in the UK, Brexit looms large, because of threats to make it harder for foreigners – EU or not – to work here, and the threat of losing EU funding.) Pictures here.
    Good placards:
    “What do we want?”
    “Evidence-based policy!”
    “When do we want it?”
    “After peer review!”
    and

    When life gives you lemons,
    Construct a crude electrochemical battery

    as well as the more obvious “Evidence Trumps Lies”, etc.

  5. antigone10 says

    The St. Paul one was a pretty healthy size (10K according to Star Tribune, 50K according to Fox). I only stayed for the march (big crowds put me on edge) but I do think it was probably more than 10K. There was also the “Kids for Climate Change” march that morning.

    I was a little surprised by the number of families that came. It seemed like a parade more than a march.

  6. Pierce R. Butler says

    Several hundred turned out for the march in Gainesville (home of Univ of Florida); I never got to a vantage point suitable for counting.

    Since the event was organized by students, they apparently had little choice but to give the first and longest speaking spot to UF’s anti-environmentalist – and boring – veep for research. He got 15 minutes; the local school board member who spoke got 2.

    Some of my favorite signs: “Defiance for Science” and (worn by a dog): “Got Parvo? Me neither. Thanks, science!” Several marchers wore pink & yellow-gray knitted brain caps.

    Hemant Mehta also has a nice anthology of M4S signs.

  7. Kevin Karplus says

    Santa Cruz, CA had about 4000 marchers (about 7% of the population of the city). There were not as many college students as one might expect, but more children and retired people than most marches get.