The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Scientists, feeling under siege, march
Activists hope U.S. policies match scientific findings.
WASHINGTON — Thousands of scientists and their supporters, feeling increasingly threatened by the policies of President Donald Trump, gathered in Washington on Saturday for what they called the March for Science, abandoning a tradition of keeping the sciences out of politics and calling on the public to stand up for scientific enterprise.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped expose lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., and who addressed a rally before the march, called the protest the beginning of a movement to ensure that governments do not dismiss or deny science.
“If we want to prevent future Flints, we need to embrace what we’ve learned and how far we’ve come in terms of science and technology,” Hanna-Attisha said in an interview.
The demonstration in Washington was echoed by protests in hundreds of other cities across the United States and around the world, including marches in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.
The Washington rally started on Saturday morning, with thousands of people packing into the National Mall, some wearing white lab coats and ponchos on a day that got only rainier as speakers motivated participants to march.
Protesters carried signs calling for funding for scientific research — “science is not an alternative fact,” some said. Others noted pointedly that Albert Einstein was a refugee.
The March for Science evolved from a social media campaign into an effort to get people onto the streets for the cause of science. Its organizers were motivated by Trump, who as a presidential candidate disparaged climate change as a hoax and cast suspicions on the safety of vaccines.
Their resolve deepened, they said, when the president appointed Cabinet members who seemed hostile to the sciences.
He also proposed a budget with severe cuts for agencies like the National Institutes of Health — which would lose 18 percent of its funding in his blueprint — and the Environmental Protection Agency, which faces a 31 percent budget cut and the elimination of a quarter of the agency’s 15,000 employees.
While traveling by motorcade to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday, Trump passed dozens of demonstrators from the march holding signs, including one that said, “Stop denying the earth is dying.” Moments before, the White House had released a statement from Trump for Earth Day that did not mention the March for Science by name, but appeared directed at its participants.
Calling science critical to economic growth and environmental protection, Trump said, “My administration is committed to advancing scientific research that leads to a better understanding of our environment and of environmental risks. As we do so, we should remember that rigorous science depends not on ideology, but on a spirit of honest inquiry and robust debate.”
Organizers said they hoped the day’s demonstrations result in sustained, coordinated action aimed at persuading elected officials to adopt policies consistent with the scientific consensus on climate change, vaccines and other issues.
“This has been a living laboratory as scientists and science institutions are willing to take a step outside their comfort zone, outside of the labs and into the public spheres,” said Beka Economopoulos, co-founder of the pop-up Natural History Museum and an organizer of the march.
In New York, demonstrators stretched for 10 blocks along Central Park West, wedged between the park and a line of buildings on a gray and dreary day.