Since Inauguration Day, Nashville has seen marches for women, for taxes, and this weekend, for science. Organizers and participants are protesting what they say is the Trump Administration’s disregard for evidence-based policy.
Planning of Nashville’s March for Science began just days after President Trump was sworn into office.
Lori Kersey said she’d never been compelled to organize a protest march before. But the electrical engineer who now runs a secular home schooling program says she felt the threat to science was urgent.
“One of the first things that happened with the new administration was an immediate shutdown and muzzling of scientists,” she says. “And I think a lot of people were very shocked about that.”
Kersey is referring to the Trump Administration telling employees at several government agencies not to communicate with the public. And asking those at the EPA to list all the recent climate change conferences they’ve attended.
Vanderbilt University’s Cynthia Paschal says she feels many lawmakers are ignoring scientific data and reasoning when creating policy.
“The assault on intellectual approaches to solving problems is so frustrating,” she says. “Science and the application of it is just fundamental to our safety, to our health, to our productivity, to our production of food…You name it.”
The Associate Dean of Engineering says tomorrow will be her second time ever marching for a cause. 500 rallies have been scheduled around the country tomorrow, parallel to a large march in Washington DC.
Nashville organizers joined the local event with the Climate Change March, originally slated for the following weekend.
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