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Posted by: Malcolm on May 19, 2003 - 10:33 PM
Politics
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Dear friends:
I am very pleased to see the initiative you have taken and hope that I
may be of some use to you and the cause for which you have started an
organization and the web site, which someone on the Science for the
People List Serve posted. The SftP List Serve is the remnant of the
once well known and potent Science for the People organization and of
the magazine it spawned and published for about twenty years. I was a
founder in 1969-70 of Science for the People. It originated in the
coming together of the then one-year old Scientists and Engineers for
Social and Political Action (SESPA) and a group of Harvard and MIT
students who had been invited to participate in a session of the AAAS
annual meeting. SESPA itself was formed in the aftermath of a struggle
in the American Physical Society lead by Charlie Schwartz and Martin
Perl and others to get the APS to take a stand against the Vietnam war.
SftP's disruptive tactics at the AAAS meeting and at many scientific
meetings thereafter increased its exposure and the participation of the
younger and more militant anong scientists and science students. The
first issue of Science for the People (1970) was produced and edited by
me with a comrade who is now my wife. Subsequent issues were produced
by ever changing editorial collectives. Over its first few years
differing views arose on what SftP should be. One group wanted Science
for the People to assume a supportive role in the class struggle with
special attention to the issues of science. Another group wanted to
work towards "A Science for the People." Most wanted to be the voice of
critical consciousness from within the scientific community exposing
science against the people and the dangers of the misuse of science.
The struggle was painful and disruptive and not carried on with great
clarity. Eventually those who were more interested in third world and
workers struggles etc. than in science itself left the organization.
Over the ensuing years the organization became primarily identified
with its magazine which became an outlet for critical discussion of the
misuse of science. In the process it became identified with well known
critical academic scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard
Lewontin. Today the list serve is mainly devoted to exposing the
destructive use of science and discussion of related issues.
I was among those who, swept along by the larger movement, left and
eventually left science (I had been an industrially employed physicist)
to become a factory worker and left wing union activist. At age 55
after an injury I left the factory and became a high-school physics
teacher, was elected president of the local teachers union and continued
left political activity. I subsequently returned to physics but never
gave up political activity. I am now 72 and nominally retired but ever
active in the anti-war movement and with a group of young persons who
use the urban forms of art under the slogan "urban expressions for
social change."
Seeing the iniiative that you have taken is gratifying to one like me,
especially because you are consciously part of the Anti-Capitalist
Movement. I want you to know in case you were not aware that you have
taken on the name of a once vibrant movement. Hopefully we can convey
to you some of what we learned and of what we continue to learn as you
take up the struggle. The SftP list serve is at
SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE@LIST.UVM.EDU
Herb Fox
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