April 22nd, 2017
It was Earth Day.
In Washington D.C., fifteen of my classmates had joined the March for Science. They, and forty thousand others, had gathered to celebrate the role science plays in everyday life, and call for evidenced-based public policy.
2,669.4 miles west of the White House, a woman lifted her iPhone and took a photo. Men in Saturday afternoon suits didn’t break stride. They merely stepped around her: she was a baseball-hatted oddity parting a sea of navy jackets. Her green shirt read “There is no Planet B.”
We both stood below the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel’s gold fresco ceiling, but she and I existed in different worlds. My charcoal grey suit struck a sharp contrast to her spring-green shirt and bright blue baseball cap. She looked at her watch, I checked my phone. Our schedules, separate but momentarily in sync, moved us both outside into the 90° morning. She crossed the street to Pershing Square, home to part of the LA March for Science. I turned left and walked to a meeting.
Get Landon Marchant’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
This woman and I never spoke. But her shirt has stayed on my mind. The DC March for Science — and its 610 satellite marches — has inspired articles and conversations. Google returns 216,000,000 results in less than one second. There is international momentum, energy, and conversation. But Twitter’s algorithms focused my feed on one city. Facebook sandwiched a trending topic suggestion about “Marches for Science” between dog memes. According to the predictive algorithms feeding me information, the blue-hatted green-shirted woman — and the Los Angeles March for Science — did not exist.
If not for the blue-hatted green-shirted woman in the Biltmore Hotel lobby, I would have never noticed this silence. I would have checked my iPhone for the time and rushed to a meeting, too focused on being early to notice Pershing Square. I had created my own echo chamber.
2,669.4 miles west of the White House, a woman paused beside me and pulled out her iPhone to take a picture. Her shirt said “There Is No Planet B.”
My Twitter was focused on Washington D.C.
Written 4/24/17 for GEOS 108: Observing Writing. Professor Ronadh Cox organized a class trip to the March for Science. Our post-March assignment was to write a short reflection on the experience. Due to a pressing personal obligation that could not be rescheduled, I was unable to attend the March. This was my contribution to the class memoir.
