Science teacher Jackie Scott will be in the streets this Saturday in Little Rock, Arkansas. “I march because my middle school students deserve to have a better world,” she wrote. “They deserve to see what real research looks like and sounds like when it is communicated.”

From Oklahoma to Greenland, scientists and their champions will gather on April 22 for the much anticipated March for Science. And in many ways, the event is already a success: because thousands of scientists are speaking up, millions of people are considering how science actually matters to our lives.

We talk about how the government collects critical data to set air pollution standards. We discuss how investments in science have prevented pandemics. We examine how a physician helped expose the lead poisoning crisis in Flint, Michigan, and how a failure to collect data and ask the right questions made it worse.

The March for Science has started conversations within many families about scientists as public servants, my own included. My father’s cousin Barbara will march with me and other family to honor her late husband (and occasional scientific collaborator) Marvin, a renowned computational chemist.

It also brings visibility to other underrepresented groups in science. “I march to show that even a small town gay boy from Montana can become one badass inked astrochemist,” wrote Montana native Jay Kroll.

Sadly, the march also laments the collective failure of our politics to use science to address the grand challenges of our time. Ford Foundation president Darren Walker recently spoke of the poverty of imagination:

“It’s a poverty of imagination that diminishes our discourse, curtails curiosity, and makes our interactions petty and small. A poverty of imagination that breeds distrust for institutions and, increasingly, for information. A poverty of imagination that breeds distrust of other people who do not look or think like us. A poverty of imagination that shrinks our sense of self and our sense of a lofty and inspiring common purpose, luring us to the extremes rather than leading us towards the extraordinary.”

Science provides us with one essential tool to escape this quagmire. And in labs, schools, and businesses around the world, researchers are redefining their rightful role in society. Organizing, and demonstrating when necessary, has entered the scientific mainstream.

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No longer are we simply debating whether experts should engage in public life because of an unsupported fear that science will be further politicized. Instead, scientists are exploring how they can best push back on actions that undermine the collection of data and development of independent analysis and, in turn, weaken our collective ability to address tough challenges. “We are a driving force across the entire planet for health and safety and reducing costs and reducing risk,” said University of Washington ocean scientist Sarah Mhyre.

This time, it feels different. When the administration of President George W. Bush censored scientists who studied agricultural pollution, and Vice-President Dick Cheney personally pressured scientists to change endangered species analyses, it took nearly three years for the scientific community to identify a problem and muster any kind of response.

During the Obama administration, scientists were quicker to call out abuses of science, castigating the president for failing to set a science-based ozone standard and politicizing the science on emergency contraception. After the latest election, scientists began organizing before Inauguration Day, issuing a statement setting expectations for the Trump administration and Congress and scrambling to protect critical government data.

And as they march to combat outside threats, some scientists are attempting to address the significant diversity and inclusion problems within science that the march organizing process made all too clear. “This pulling back of the veil is a chance to have hard but necessary discussions, and to do better, individually and collectively,” wrote marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

“I march for science to bring visibility to women of color, particularly black women, in engineering and technology,” wrote systems engineer and St. Louis march co-organizer LaShana Lewis.

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As with any political gambit, there are critics. Roger Pielke, Jr. is right to argue that invoking facts as an opposition strategy can backfire, and to caution that attacks on President Trump without any alternative solutions will likely fall flat.

Some fret that a march without a single, well-defined theme will fail. It’s certainly challenging to coordinate any group around a consistent message, and doubly so in the science community, where dissention is cherished. There will be many signs that are poignant, and some that miss the mark.

In some ways, that’s okay. Decentralized, bottom-up organizing can be extremely effective. Scientists who will be marching in Indianapolis have meetings scheduled with their congressional representatives the following week. The St. Louis March will register people to vote. To support local advocacy work, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Union of Concerned Scientists are both webcasting training sessions for scientists to explore how they can engage in the weeks and months ahead.

The March for Science is spawning a new generation of scientists who see public engagement as a responsibility. “Striving to understand the world leads us to new innovations which improve our lives, such as more efficient agricultural practices, better medical procedures, and technologies that allows us to connect in new ways,” explained University of Wyoming graduate student Abigail Hoffman about her decision to march. A movement is building, and there may be no stopping it.

Michael Halpern (@halpsci) is deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

This post was amended on 19th April to correct a typo that implied Dick Cheney is a former President rather than Vice-President of the United States.