A First Ever Dixie Citizen Panel Is About to Happen
Vannevar Bush was a cousin of two of the past three Presidents. He was also a gung-ho supporter of all that is establishment in America. He was also, however, a proponent of science, and he recognized that science without democracy inevitably creates a contradiction in terms. He said, when he was in the midst of chairing the first Presidential commission to examine national science policy, that everyone---rich and poor, sophisticated and simple---longs to know how the world works, what the causes are that determine our fates, essentialy all that is knowable.
He went on to say: “It is the privilege of man to learn to understand; this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being.” Anyone paying attention to science practices today knows that---at the corporate, or governmental policy, level---proponents of the practice of this vision now are few and far between.
I have the privilege---as one of the projects for which I am writing, hacking away at PR, and doing some planning and development---to be part of a group of folks who are doing something to empower science for the people. We’re doing this in the South, too,where socially repressive science is much more common than socially inclusive work. Military and corporate technology activities in the region are particularly likely to foul our nests with pollution and danger. Community Based Participatory Research is most difficult where communities lack basic capacities to act on their own behalf.
A Citizen Panel Demonstration Project is going to be happening in Atlanta in June, nonetheless, a sort of people’s jury to look at development issues here in ‘Hotlanta,’ where gentrification and the dollar are almighty. Primarily African American neighborhood activists are, week-by-week, learning some of the tools of science and analysis, as well as how to find evidence and witnesses to speak in favor of what they know to be in the best interests of their neighborhoods, their communities, and their children.
This Community Classroom process is happening on a shoestring, of course, and we need more people “pulling on the rope,” in order to make our event upcoming powerful. But that it is coming to pass at all is just so unbelievably cool. This application of “social technology” is something that, literally, has never taken place in Dixie before. I’ll keep folks apprised and relate any particularly cool positive things, as well as report on some of the perfidy that activates this work at the grassroots level.