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After the Women's March: Forward

Conservatives believe free speech includes $$$ and incendiary speech. Liberals don't.
 
PhDeac said:
Conservatives believe free speech includes $$$ and incendiary speech. Liberals don't.
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in·cen·di·ar·y
adjective
(of a device or attack) designed to cause fires.



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PhDeac said:
Sounds like people who wanted to be anti-Trump vs people who wanted to be pro-science.
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I may be able to speak to this a little bit. I'm trying to keep my Tunnels posting mostly to issues of science and health policy.

I work for a cancer research nonprofit. Our annual conference is happening right now in DC, and the big theme this year is advocacy. As the oldest cancer research organization in the country, we've essentially never taken any editorial or political stance in the last 100+ years on anything except anti-tobacco. But both our CEO and our President have taken firm stances against the proposed NIH cuts. Still, we haven't come out in support of the science march in Washington.

My guess is, and this is only water cooler speculation at work, that it's for some of the same reasons birdman talks about. We have a pretty specific niche, biomedical research funding, that we spend a ton of money lobbying and organizing for. It's generally very effective. Were that the sole message of the march, I think our organization would be a signatory alongside other major associations like AAAS and PNAS. But we have to work closely with Washington (Congress, NIH/NCI) and with private industry (pharma/biotech) and don't want to make this an anti-Trump stance or a pro-climate change stance or anything other than our stated purpose.

Personally, I think science at large is under attack from one of our major political parties. But I understand why there are fractures within advocacy groups that don't want their name broadly attached to something where they have no say in the messaging. It's not to say I think marches are worthless or too broad, as some will criticize. Rather, I think different advocacy channels serve different purposes.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
What was the nature of the disagreement?
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We convened a group to organize a joint local science and climate change march. One of the women is a stay at home mom and since she had more time than the rest of she took a leadership role. However she wanted the theme to be climate change education and she did not want to call in a march or a protest in any form. She started getting sponsors and told them all it was climate change awareness event on earth day and never mentioned that we were planning to affiliate with the national science march, and when we did affiliate, like we planned all along, she lost her shit, said we betrayed her after all her hard work and then the sponsors started dropping out. The location where we were starting and ending our march, a park on the university campus administered by the biology department, revoked our permit. Most of that is just bad communication but when she started accusing some members of the organizing team of betraying her and the core mission of the event, it got pretty fucked up. Fuck that, I am going back to doing actual conservation science at my job.
 
So it was one busybody who ruined things for everybody. That can happen on both sides.
 
PhDeac said:
So it was one busybody who ruined things for everybody. That can happen on both sides.
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I disagree, she had her own vision for what this even should be about and she got her self involved and imposed that vision. And when people continued to work towards the original vision of the event she got pissed and blew the whole thing up. I think it was personal for her...her husband is an pre-tenure climate change faculty with Mexican citizenship living and working in Alabama. I think she was fearful of repercussions for him if she was involved with a protest. But there was a philosophical difference in the purpose of the event and that led to disputes and it undermined the entire effort.
 
Maybe, but we also all needed to accept that both missions are valid and worth while and plan an even that had both elements. We also needed to be transparent about the nature of the event to these cosponsors from the get go. Either that or we need to have two events, each with a specific purpose and the folks who did not want to be associated with a protest should have bowed out rather than take over and assert their own vision. That's is my thesis here, progressives each have their independent visions for what issues are paramount and they have a very hard time making room for other issues or visions.
 
sailordeac said:
your view of conservatism is a left-liberal polemical caricature

seems like you could do better but you prefer not to
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Ph, Sailor, Sailor, Ph. He doesn't know any conservatives. He works on a college campus. They don't hire a second opinion where he works.
 
TexasDeac10 said:
Lol. Trump wants to "open up" the libel laws.

Try again.
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You know the difference. Conflating free speech and libel is lazy. Any activist has a right to say almost whatever they want as does anyone with an unpopular ideology or belief. The great thing about a marketplace of ideas is that truly hateful/bad ones are relegated to basically a hidden existence.
 
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