9 Walden Street, Jamaica Plain, Boston
Science for the People (SftP) first emerged in 1969-1970 as an expression of moral outrage regarding the role of science in the U.S. war in Vietnam, one realized through the national organization, Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA).
With the infusion of activist-oriented graduate students from Harvard and MIT and Boston-area scientists and others, the organization began to disrupt scientific meetings and transformed the SESPA Newsletter into a magazine, Science for the People. The actions and the magazine resulted in media exposure and rapid growth. Soon the organization took on the magazine’s name and active chapters arose in dozens of U.S. cities and towns—typically ones with large university communities—and eventually in other countries as well. The organization’s members were not limited to academics, but included workers from various sectors and others concerned with the use of science for the narrow ends of war, militarism, and capitalist profit.
First published in 1970, the magazine became an important intellectual and political organ for left-leaning activists and scientists; it endured until 1989. In issues of the magazine in the mid- and late 1970s, it presented its parent organization as one that “opposes the ideologies of sexism, racism, elitism and their practice, and holds an anti-imperialist world-view” while seeking to expose “the class control of science and technology.” The publication explored myriad issues over the year—ranging from nuclear power, U.S. imperialism, and toxic waste to women in science, biotechnology, and race and racism—while its politics, reflecting shifts within SftP, evolved from radical and revolutionary to broadly progressive.
Because the Boston chapter initiated the magazine, continued its publication, and put out calls for actions and organizing, the Boston-Cambridge area became the epicenter of SftP’s activities. In 1971, Britta Fischer, who with Herb Fox put out the first issue of Science for the People, purchased a house on 9 Walden Street, across from the Bromley-Heath public housing project (today known as the Mildred C. Hailey Apartments) to house the Helen Keller Collective, a small group of like-minded radical activists. The Collective members lived on the top two floors of the house, while the ground floor became the SftP office, giving the organization and its flagship publication their first dedicated space.
The Collective lasted until 1975, at which point its members gave the house to a family from Bromley-Heath. SftP then briefly had an office at 16 Union Square in Somerville before moving to 897 Main Street in Cambridge, where it stayed until its demise as a national organization.
An April 2014 conference at UMass Amherst on SftP’s history and impact catalyzed a revitalization effort that has resulted in new chapters in the United States, including one based at MIT, and one in Mexico.
Getting there:
Orange Line to Jackson Square Station. 0.4 mile (nine-minute) walk.
To learn more:
Henig, Robin Marantz. “Radical Group 10 Years Later… Science for the People: Revolution’s Evolution,” BioScience, 29, no. 6 (1979): 341-344.
Schmalzer, Sigrid, Daniel S. Chard, and Alyssa Botelho, Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
Image: Cover of Science for the People’s first issue. Cover by Elizabeth Fox-Wolfe (a.k.a. Alphabet), image in public domain.