...instead of going directly to the source, which is aimed at people in academia and the STEM community instead of the general public.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-and-others-stage-a-strike4blacklives/
Policy & Ethics
Scientists and Others Stage a #Strike4BlackLives
June 10 is a day off from “business as usual” for non-Black academics and a day of rest for Black students, staff and faculty
By Gary Stix on June 9, 2020
When the noted particle theorist Alessandro Strumia gave a talk at CERN near Geneva in 2018, he raised a storm of protest by suggesting that women in his discipline were somehow less capable than men. In response, a collection of physicists who gave themselves the endearing name Particles for Justice came together to issue a statement condemning Strumia’s remarks.
Last week, members of the group (who had remained in close touch after the Strumia incident) had a virtual meeting and decided to mount a light-speed response to the current global wave of pushback against racism following the death of George Floyd. They created the hashtag #Strike4BlackLives and designated Wednesday, June 10, as a day when academics should stop all they are doing—whether it be conducting research, holding seminars or writing papers—to highlight the racism facing Black students and faculty in higher education and throughout society.
The group also aligned with another informal effort—under the hashtags #ShutDownStem and #ShutDownAcademia—that is backing the strike. More than 4,600 people have pledged to participate.
Scientific American spoke with Nausheen Shah, one of the organizers of #Strike4BlackLives. She is a theoretical particle physicist at Wayne State University who does research on the Higgs boson and dark matter.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
How did #Strike4BlackLives get started?
Everything that happened during the past few weeks was distressing to say the least. And it kind of brings to a head all of the problems not just in society as a whole but also in academia, which doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The effort [was] spearheaded by Chanda [Prescod-Weinstein, an assistant professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire] and Brian [Nord, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Chicago and an associate scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill.].
The idea was that there was a need to be doing something other than just organizing seminars and workshops and sitting in the back and saying, “Oh, yes, I attended this diversity and inclusion seminar. So, you know, I’m all done, right?’” But nothing’s really changed.
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