Leading up to the 2006 election, I heard about and joined a group called Scientists and Engineers for America. Today, they sent me an email with some information about how they impacted the election.
They had a Speaker Series at some universities, used internet banner ads, held a commercial contest, and garnered some press coverage. One of the press pieces they shared was from the Denver Post in early October.
The Post article, appropriately titled, "Finally, scientists are fighting mad" talks more about the Colorado Evolutionary Response Team (CERT) than Scientists and Engineers for America. This Team, according to their website was created for the following reason: "Coloradan scientists have organized ... to respond to inaccurate attacks on evolutionary theory and to oppose attempts to introduce religiously-motivated curricular changes into science classes in Colorado public schools or to weaken the teaching of evolution."
I'm sure we all remember hearing about the Kansas school board decision to try to elevate creationism into biology classroom material alongside evolution. Oh, and the Dover, PA school district's effort to do the same resulted in a rejection of creationist material because, gasp, it wasn’t science. Who’da thunk?
Colorado has a national reputation as being the base of the right’s evangelical movement. Combined with a variety of think-tanks and solid infrastructure, this movement presents a real threat to public education in general and subjects like evolution more specifically. Thus, SEA and CERT couldn’t have formed too soon.
CERT is looking for members that can actively fight against the efforts to keep American students ignorant of one of the foundations of modern science. While I’m unsure whether I could be an effective media contact, I’d sure like to help out with LTEs and letting others know when the media gives a hand to the evangelical’s Operation Willful Ignorance. I highly encourage dissemination of these projects.
Previous discussion of SEA can be found here, here, and here.