Chicago Science March 2017

My daughter and I participated in the science march on Saturday with three of our friends. There were a lot of people, mostly young and white, quite a few baby strollers and a few dogs. Everyone was pretty quiet- scientists aren’t chanters? At one point someone even chanted “Somebody start a chant!”

So we tried, “Who speaks for the trees? WE SPEAK FOR THE TREES!”

and  “Who speaks for the bees? WE SPEAK FOR THE BEES!”

and “Any thing you do SCIENCE AFFECTS YOU!”

and “GET UP, GET DOWN, CHICAGO IS A SCIENCE TOWN!”

and “TURTLE! TURTLE! TURTLE!” which was in response to a “Yertle the Turtle” sign with the heads of the turtles as Trump and his advisers, with “GRAVITY” written on the back.

There were a lot of signs, but many I expect will be recycled to next week’s “People for Climate” march next week, examples “There is no Planet B”, and a picture of the earth with an arrow pointing to the planet saying, “I’m with her!”

I couldn’t get an idea of how many people there were because where we were marching (along Columbus Ave) was flat. There were a few helicopters overhead. Afterwards, when I tried to find footage from the Chicago march, all they would show was the helicopter footage of the  marchers for Chicago. There were marches all over the world, but since we were walking through a big park (three city blocks long) and they could get the helicopters in to film us, that was all that was shown for Chicago. I am one of those blips down there. The police estimated there were 40,000 who marched. I don’t think anyone was arrested. We were described as “cheerful”.

These are some pictures from the march at the STREET level:

Some additional signage that didn’t take good pictures:

“So bad even the introverts are here.”

“There is no vaccine for stupidity.”

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate”

“I’m just here to study the effects of clever signs on the science community.”

And our sign: