As cars zipped along West University Avenue on Saturday, a crowd of about 500 UF faculty members, students and community members started their Earth Day off with a march.
They trekked two miles — from UF’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium to downtown Gainesville — in a show of support for science in the face of a president who some worry will endanger scientific progress.
Bruce Ferndahl, a Gainesville retiree, said he hopes President Donald Trump gets the message.
“He doesn’t really believe in the value of science,” the 64-year-old said. “Open your eyes and see what’s really happening in the world, to our planet.”
Echoed by more than 500 similar marches across the world, about 900 participants of the March for Science Gainesville convened on Bo Diddley Community Plaza, where faculty members and others took turns speaking into a microphone about the value of scientific discovery and the harm that could be done if that discovery were to stop.
Creative — and pointed — protest signs dotted the plaza, some borrowing Hillary Clinton’s “I’m with her” campaign slogan, with an arrow pointed at Mother Earth. Others modified Trump’s slogan, hoisting “Make America Smart Again” signs.
As Jane Lu and Sorin Pascu rested in the shade, overlooking Bo Diddley Plaza’s center, they kept their homemade signs raised upright.
Lu’s read, “Stand Up For Science.”
Pascu’s read, “Global Warming Is Real.”
The 39-year-old researcher at UF’s Institute of Aging and the 59-year-old UF IT systems engineer, respectively, said they worry about their president and country.
“I think we have to make (America) smart first before we can make it great,” Pascu said.
Trump signed an executive order March 28 to roll back one of former President Barack Obama’s signature climate policies, the Clean Power Plan, and has proposed plans to cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, according to The New York Times.
Juan Zapata, the March for Science Gainesville’s lead organizer, said the goal of the West University Avenue march and Bo Diddley Plaza rally was to not only bridge the scientific community with the general public and young kids, but to keep policymakers accountable.
“Their purpose is to represent us in office,” the 20-year-old UF electrical engineering junior said. “We need to actually start seeing our ideas represented as opposed to private agendas being pushed.”
The Gainesville branch of the nationwide group March for Science began organizing the rally in late January in solidarity with the Washington D.C. rally, Zapata said. The event’s cost, including setup, organizing costs and acquiring permits, totalled about $2,500, he said.
For Chloe Winant, the science rally was all about the youth.
The 36-year-old sixth-grade earth science teacher at Howard W. Bishop Middle School paraded her white-and-green-striped cape and large sign that read, “Some People Only Dream Of Meeting Their Fav Scientists — I Teach Mine!” across the plaza.
Winant said the politics around science and STEM make her very concerned about cuts.
“The fact that we’re cutting education, and we’re cutting science education, and we’re cutting science research,” she said. “That’s going to make our country suffer.”
But Winant, a former UF oceanography researcher and teacher’s assistant, said she was encouraged by the sense of community at Saturday’s rally.
“I’ve seen so many of my students (here),” she said, as well as her fellow teachers and former research colleagues. “Locally, that’s where it matters.”
The March for Science Gainesville hosted about 20 official tabling sites, Zapata said, where some organizations held political outreach. The League of Women Voters, partnered with the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections, offered voter registration services, he said, and the Citizens’ Climate Lobby offered written forms for demonstrators to submit their concerns to local officials.
Other organizations tabled to bring science to kids.
Hands on Gainesville, a youth and science oriented nonprofit, brought bike-powered light bulbs to their tent. When kids hopped on the stationary bike, which were electrically wired to three light bulbs, and pushed the pedals, light appeared before them.
“The purpose of this is to get the kids into science, (to) show them what they can do,” said Barbara Beck, a co-founder of Hands on Gainesville.
As Ferndahl, a UF alumnus who graduated from the School of Architecture in the early ‘70s, took a break from Saturday’s heat under the shade and watched the demonstration, he said he wants everyone, especially young people, to reach out to local officials.
“They need to hear from all of us,” he said. “Otherwise they do what they already want.”
Contact David Hoffman at dhoffman@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter at @hoffdavid123
