Organizing Reports

Organizing Reports

Volume 27, no. 2, Political Economy of Science

You can find previous organizing reports here. Contact secretary@sciencefothepeople.org to get involved!

Boston

In 2024 and 2025, the Boston chapter members have been using our time and capacity towards planning activities that support students in their organizing efforts. 

In the fall of 2024, we worked with the New Haven chapter and a few engineering students to do a counter-recruitment activity at a career fair in Harvard Square. The aim of this event was to increase awareness among the attendees about the military involvement of the companies present at the career fair, and to show them to what ends their scientific labor would be directed towards supporting the military industrial complex. At the event, we distributed pamphlets with more details about these companies and spoke with attendees. We included our Linktree in the materials so that attendees could learn more about anti-militarism, labor, and Science for the People. 

In the spring of 2025, we organized a small-scale workshop in collaboration with two researchers who work at the intersection of ethics, technology, and workspace organizing who have been vocal about the complicity of big tech with militarism. The workshop was called “What Can You Do if You Realize Your Work is Causing Harm” and was designed for people working or applying for jobs at technology companies. The goal of the workshop was to educate the participants about the history of labor organizing in the technology sector, and to use case studies to generate stepwise guidance about what they can do at their workplace if they realize their work is causing harm. It was attended by 15-20 people. We aim to organize more workshops like these annually.

In the summer and fall of 2025, there was a desire among chapter members to learn more about the history of student organizing, and we leaned into writings about the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) to educate ourselves. Some members of other SftP chapters also expressed interest in joining us in these readings. We are currently reading Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: a Radical Democratic Vision by Dr. Barbara Ransby. Our next book will be Dr. Charles M Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. 

In the fall of 2025, we are collaborating with the New Haven chapter to organize a counter-recruitment event at a planned career fair in November hosted by major universities. The Boston chapter has been in the process of revitalization, thanks to some new members who decided to join us in the spring of 2024 and give their time and energy to keep the chapter going. As we continue our work as a chapter, we also hope to build new connections and relationships with local community networks to support their efforts towards new ways of being and our collective struggle for liberation. 

United Kingdom

The UK chapter of Science for the People has existed for over two years now, but this is our first chapter report for the magazine, so we’ll share a little about our origins as well as more recent updates. Following some initial discussions and meetings over the summer of 2023, the UK chapter coalesced in autumn of that year, bringing together a wide range of science workers and students with a shared goal of building a space for radical science that we felt this country was so sorely lacking. Much of our activity has so far been concentrated in London and Edinburgh, but we have members across the UK, and are keen to develop a stronger local presence in other cities.

We held our first public event in April 2024 at Bookmarks, Britain’s largest socialist bookshop. This launch event for our chapter also doubled as a magazine launch for the Beyond Binaries issue of SftP Magazine, which was especially timely given the publication of the Cass Review that same month, a state-sanctioned report on trans healthcare for young people which made a number of deeply harmful recommendations. We talked about the dangers of this report being cloaked in the language of scientific “neutrality,” despite its total exclusion of trans voices, and condemned its use by anti-trans lobbyists to claim scientific justification for their bigotry.

Many of our members have been actively engaged in Palestine solidarity organizing over the last two years, both within the context of SftP and through other activist movements. Most recently, some of our members produced a zine on scholasticide in Gaza, and organised a livestreamed online event and fundraiser with Haitham Juma, a primary school teacher from Gaza who shared his experiences (through a live translator) of providing education in the midst of a genocide. We have also led several radical science zine-making workshops at UK universities including Imperial College and Loughborough University, and one of our members participated in a teach-out in solidarity with students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) facing disciplinary action for their Palestine activism, delivering a session on the history of anti-militarism in SftP.

Our chapter has organized a number of reading groups since our formation on topics including the role of personal genomics in settler colonialism, ecological imperialism, gender performance and queer biology, and anti-racist scholar-activism. All of our reading groups are hybrid events, so anyone is welcome to join online regardless of location.

In the coming months, we plan to organise a launch event for the Palestine issue of SftP magazine, as well as running more reading groups. We are also looking for ways to engage in radical science organizing based more directly within our local communities, and are discussing how to support existing groups and movements in cities where we have an active presence. Another of our goals is to develop a stronger relationship with labour organising in the UK, and find ways to bolster the efforts of unions of science workers and educators. We are constantly welcoming new members to our chapter, and would love to hear from you if you’re UK-based and interested in joining this movement—just fill in the onboarding form on our website https://sftp-uk.org/ and we’ll reach out to you.

 

Zurich

The SftP Zurich chapter was born as a reaction to the utter silence around the inhumane violence against the Palestinian population by the israeli state. In an environment where few voices calling for justice were lonely and unheard, the aim of creating such a group–with the support of the wider SftP organization–was to mobilize the local scientific community in critically analyzing and shaping its impact on society.

The first set of activities we organized were monthly get-togethers to attend scientific seminars advertised by Scientists for Palestine (Bisan Lecture Series).1 With time, like-minded groups began emerging. Our activities and memberships merged together with those of Students for Palestine and Science is Political. The former organized pro-Palestine protests in Zurich, whereas the latter is a student-led group aimed at contrasting the rhetoric promoted within academia that science is apolitical and that political debate should be discouraged within its boundaries.2

In June 2024, we were able to organize what was, to our knowledge, the first official event in a Zurich campus highlighting the situation in Palestine. The event took place in the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, and was called “The Palestinian-Israeli conflict: a Water Perspective.” The event was highly attended and it helped other organizations make arguments in favour of similar initiatives in a university setting. In the following months, our main activities consisted of attending rallies together, and organising monthly meetings at homes or in community centers. One event was a house party for the presentation of the SftP magazine issue on Palestine. Another activity consisted of organizing seminars on radical topics at scientific conferences. We were able to organize highly-attended talks titled “Gender Bias in Research,” “Decolonizing science: dignity before all else,” “Is Science Apolitical?”, and “The Social Conditioning of Science: taking a look at its history.” More recently, our SftP members collectively attended the Organizing For Power (O4P) course on setting up grassroots movements, and an online course on radical teaching, both organized by the wider SftP organization.3 Our most recent activity has been initiating a petition–an open letter from members of the scientific community–in support of students who are being legally charged by ETH Zurich for participating in a peaceful sit-in on campus premises.4

The future plans of our chapter revolve around increasing our colleagues’ awareness of the political aspects of scientific research and funding decisions, as well as closely following the process regarding the charges pressed by ETH against the protesting students and striving to provide support when needed. Finally, we are actively working on establishing further connections with other aligned groups to gather the critical mass needed to challenge the prevailing culture of non-engagement in political discourse in Zurich’s universities and research institutes. Please visit our website (https://sftp-zuerich.github.io/) to learn more about our chapter and email zurich@scienceforthepeople.org to get involved.

Notes

  1. Scientists for Palestine, “Bisan Lecture Series,” accessed October 28, 2025, https://www.scientists4palestine.org/bisan-lecture-series/.
  2. Von Xenia Klaus, “ETH, Gaza and freedom of speech,” WOZ De Wochenzeitung, no. 36, September 4, 2025, https://www.woz.ch/2536/proteste-an-der-hochschule/die-eth-gaza-und-die-redefreiheit/!73FVR0K0KJM9.
  3. “Organizing for Power”, accessed October 28, 2025, https://organizing4power.org/.
  4. “Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich” or “Federal Institute of Technology Zurich” in English.