Once again, as with the women’s march, the signs were the best thing about the science march.

Hard to say which one was my favorite, but “97 percent of scientists say Donald Trump is a dumbass” made me laugh every time I saw it. The knit hats that looked like brains were also nifty, but you didn’t really need them on a sunny April day. In Chicago I was one of an estimated 40,000 people who walked and waved mostly homemade signs. The one my heart supported urged: Make America Smart Again – Support Public Education. It’s truly not normal when people have to make a statement in support of real facts as opposed to alternative ones. At least alternative facts have inspired many a satirist.

The Chicago crowd was very family-friendly. My friend Kate and I stood behind a family of four with two boys, one stroller-age, and there were plenty of young scientists among the marchers. Also people wearing lab coats, and I overheard science teachers talking shop. My guess is the crowd was a mix of professionals and tree-huggers. My son is a scientist; I wrote that on the back of my sign, a picture of Mother Earth. Science saves medical patients and keeps the air we breathe and the water we drink clean (except when it doesn’t, as the people of Flint know). We take this for granted. The proposed funding cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency means we shouldn’t continue to assume this. No one seems to have pointed out to the current occupant in the White House that jobs will be lost if he has his way. Research employs people as well as makes lives healthier. I know this; my son works as a research assistant.

The speakers – whom we actually heard this time – were diverse, and I especially appreciated hearing the African-American neuroscience PhD Garry Cooper. African American boys have a graduation rate of 57 percent from Chicago public schools, according to CPS figures. That’s in the overall context of improving graduation rates in the system. That rate is dismal. We can and must do better. I happened to be reading Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited on the train ride to the city. What Thurman says (he wrote in the 1950s) about the responses of people without social power is relevant to understanding this structural discouragement and disadvantage.

Make America Smart Again – Support Public Education.