LYNYRD SKYNYRD'S “Sweet Home Alabama” is a strange choice of song to open a rally of scientists. Written in 1973, the southern anthem was a response to Neil Young’s critique of the barbaric treatment of African-Americans in the South—it tells the Canadian songwriter to mind his own business. Ronnie Van Zant, the lead singer, addresses him directly, singing: “I hope Neil Young will remember, a southern man don't need him around anyhow”. On the afternoon of February 19th, in Boston’s Copley Square, hundreds of heads, adorned in the pink hats of the women’s marches that followed Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, bobbed along to the beat.
Your blogger suspects that it was the “so blue” Alabaman skies of the chorus, rather than issues of race, that the rally organisers were aiming to evoke. “We want to protect the people and places and things you love,” said Beka Economopoulos, one of the organisers, who works for The Natural History Museum, an activist group which is not a museum at all. “Science is what makes sure that the fishing hole is still something you can enjoy when you’re old.”
The tone of the rally was set the...Continue reading
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