More than 58 Marches in the European Union

Now, less than one month before Earth Day, close to the final number of Marches organised in European cities are engaged in doing their practical courses. According to the EuroScientist’s list based on teams having a Facebook or a Twitter account, a minimum of 58 cities will host a March or a Stand-up event. Some cities should still be missing either because we did not catch the information, or because the concerned organisers are still waiting for formalising the event.

Repartition across the EU is quite heterogeneous. An interesting point is that more Marches flourished in Central and Northern compared to Southern and Eastern Europe, when 3-4 years ago science activism was highly present in France and UK, but first in the Southern Europe. We can count now 14 cities in France, 13 in Germany, 6 in UK, 4 in Croatia and Norway, 3 in Denmark (including Greenland), 2 in Sweden and Swiss, 1 in Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Montenegro, Portugal, Italy and Spain. 3 are pending in Spain with Madrid now ready to prepare its March.

In several cities, a Stand-up event will be organised with debate and entertainment instead of a March. Obviously, where no events are planned, some individuals will also march in the streets of their cities due to their wishes for solidarity. To be visible, they will need at least to hold symbols like T shirts.

Hopefully, several teams will publish soon their comments about the adventure that is absorbing them in a continuous way until Earth Day. There is also now a coordinating team of all the European Marches that starts its action with our support. More news soon!

The T shirts’ war

March for Science has opened its own shop to collect some participatory funding for their US-organisation, while they are giving the opportunity for the Marchers to be visible in the street either during the March or as individuals. The German and Dutch coordination’s teams are doing the same with their marchers. Many opportunist people have also spread their customised T shirts through the social networks to attract the marchers, but for their own profit outside of any organisations engaged in the March.

In the case of the Hse webshop, we promote a win-win model according to a cooperative attitude and a long-term approach. It will give support to our mother-association EuroScience and to our partners directly engaged in the March for Science and in the post-March perspective. Have a look here to our last model with Moebius by Moebius. We will present within the following day Tshirts from several organising teams. 4-5 days are required once ordered to be delivered at your home.

The 2^nd Homo scientificus europaeus Meeting

The first post-March that will benefit from this participatory support is scheduled on May 16: the 2nd Homo scientificus europaeus (Hse) meeting in Barcelona, also visible with a direct YouTube video-transmission. Its aim will be to constitute the Hse cloud as the converging community of many grassroots associations including the new ones issued from the March, with close to 20 invited representatives coming from more than 10 EU-state members. This should lead to a new pan-european perspective supported by EuroScience and its webzine EuroScientist for the way science should be driven closer to the society, an important issue for ESOF 2018 Toulouse. This event will be officially launched in the following days.