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I marched for science
Apr. 23rd, 2017 12:02 pmI was planning to attend the Science March anyway (more on my reasons in a different post on another day), but this march was unusual in that my employer was also participating as an official Partner. So I got to join my coworkers on the march. The weather cooperated, and it was a beautiful day. The count of how many people attended is under dispute. Even the earlier Kids' March had over 800 RSVPs, so you'd expect the main march to be heavily attended. The count showing up in local newspapers is only 10K people (with some great photos at that article). The march organizers, however, are estimating 48K people. If they were the ones operating the drone at the march staging area, they should have some good evidence for their estimate.
I made a sign to carry on the march. It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't be able to easily take photos. That oversight has consequences: fewer photos, poor quality photos/videos, and getting separated from my group for a long time so I could steal "a moment" to take photos.
Here's the pre-crowd assembling early for the march.
We even had a band playing appropriate Earth Day music.
(embedded video is breaking the post, so here is the YouTube link)
I joined my coworkers for the march, and I even made it into their Twitter posts. These 3 photos are not my own, of course.
I eventually left my group to climb a bridge wall to try to get a video of the massive crowd. I never could see all of it at once, so the attendance was much higher than what you can see here. After I took these photos, it probably took me 20 minutes to find my group again, even with multiple phone calls and texts. I had the same disorganization leter while trying to find my former landlord and his group amongst the throng.
(embedded video is breaking the post, so here is the YouTube link)
Then I got down from the fence that I was standing on. I'm a klutz, though, even on a good day, and I was wearing new glasses from 2 days earlier, so my depth perception is very bad. I ended up meeting the pavement harshly. Much later, I made my way to the Nurse station at the rally. They said I was their biggest accident so far. Typing this post on Sunday, my leg is still bleeding a bit. I won't be doing the gardening today that I had planned.
The rally was attended quite well. I could never get close enough to the capitol steps to hear the speakers well. I never did spot a single news station van or camera (although local stations did have coverage on the 10pm news). I also never saw one of the portable overhead 360 cameras that the police use. It was the state capitol, after all, so maybe they already have plenty of security cameras everywhere. It seemed like every third person carried a sign, so the crowd was very engaged. It was also unusually "pale", even for Minnesota. Where are we losing our minority kids in the science classrooms?
The woolly mammoth was an impressive mechanical contraption.
(embedded video is breaking the post, so here is the YouTube link to video 1 and video 2)
And, in no particular order, a collection of the few posters that I was able to capture on my sunscreen-smudged cell phone camera.
I think it was an Earth Day well spent.
#ScienceMarch #ScienceMarchMN #MarchForScience #NatureUnitesUs
I made a sign to carry on the march. It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't be able to easily take photos. That oversight has consequences: fewer photos, poor quality photos/videos, and getting separated from my group for a long time so I could steal "a moment" to take photos.
Here's the pre-crowd assembling early for the march.
We even had a band playing appropriate Earth Day music.
(embedded video is breaking the post, so here is the YouTube link)
I joined my coworkers for the march, and I even made it into their Twitter posts. These 3 photos are not my own, of course.
I eventually left my group to climb a bridge wall to try to get a video of the massive crowd. I never could see all of it at once, so the attendance was much higher than what you can see here. After I took these photos, it probably took me 20 minutes to find my group again, even with multiple phone calls and texts. I had the same disorganization leter while trying to find my former landlord and his group amongst the throng.
(embedded video is breaking the post, so here is the YouTube link)
Then I got down from the fence that I was standing on. I'm a klutz, though, even on a good day, and I was wearing new glasses from 2 days earlier, so my depth perception is very bad. I ended up meeting the pavement harshly. Much later, I made my way to the Nurse station at the rally. They said I was their biggest accident so far. Typing this post on Sunday, my leg is still bleeding a bit. I won't be doing the gardening today that I had planned.
The rally was attended quite well. I could never get close enough to the capitol steps to hear the speakers well. I never did spot a single news station van or camera (although local stations did have coverage on the 10pm news). I also never saw one of the portable overhead 360 cameras that the police use. It was the state capitol, after all, so maybe they already have plenty of security cameras everywhere. It seemed like every third person carried a sign, so the crowd was very engaged. It was also unusually "pale", even for Minnesota. Where are we losing our minority kids in the science classrooms?
The woolly mammoth was an impressive mechanical contraption.
(embedded video is breaking the post, so here is the YouTube link to video 1 and video 2)
And, in no particular order, a collection of the few posters that I was able to capture on my sunscreen-smudged cell phone camera.
I think it was an Earth Day well spent.
#ScienceMarch #ScienceMarchMN #MarchForScience #NatureUnitesUs
