It’s been a little while since we’ve sent an update, so I wanted to let you know where things stand with Science in Solidarity.

A few weeks ago, we paused all of our events and recurring commitments—including Action Hours, trainings, coaching, and recurring leader meetings.

Part of that was practical: I just started a new job, and I realized I don't have the capacity to keep holding SIS in the way I have been. But it was also prompted by something bigger: we've had really low signups for our recent events.

That made me wonder whether what we're offering right now is actually what people need—or whether everyone is just too crispy and burnt out to participate in another recurring thing.

So instead of pushing ahead with the plan we'd made earlier this year, we decided to stop and ask: What do we actually want Science in Solidarity to be right now?

Last week, our all-leader group met to talk about that.

Honestly, I walked into that meeting fully prepared to close SIS down.

If we didn't have the capacity to sustain it, and if it wasn't meeting the needs of the people we'd built it for, I didn't want us to keep going just because we'd already put so much into it. We talked explicitly about both possibilities: continuing in some form or closing this chapter.

We spent some time talking about what we're proud of and what SIS has made possible. People talked about finding a community that sees the people behind science, not just science itself. About knowing that we're not alone in our fears and hopes. About finding people who want to build something better, rather than just reacting to the latest crisis.

We also talked pretty honestly about what hasn't worked.

We've tried to do too much at once. People are stretched thin. It's hard to get a bunch of busy people to show up at the same time every week or every other week. And too much of the work has ended up depending on a few people.

So we're not going back to business as usual.

What we're dropping

For now, we're pausing all SIS events and recurring commitments.

That means no Action Hours, trainings, etc.

We'll likely be back with some kind of recurring offering, but it'll match our capacity.

What we're keeping

There are a bunch of things that people were really clear they want to hold onto:

• The feeling of not being alone
• The community we've built
• Mutual aid and supporting the people who make science possible
• Skilling up and learning how to organize together
• Having a bigger structure that people can plug into
• Focusing on systems and infrastructure, not just reacting to the latest crisis
• The possibility of building something better together (not just fighting against what we don't want)

And that's where we've landed for now:

We're going to try something smaller.

Everyone in the room still wanted SIS to exist in some form. But our capacity is limited. So rather than pretending otherwise, we're going to see if we can build a version of SIS that is actually sustainable for the people involved.

We're calling it an experiment because we don't know what it's going to look like yet.

Maybe it will be some kind of mutual aid infrastructure. Maybe it's organizing and training a small group of people. Maybe it's something we haven't thought of yet. We don't need to figure out the whole thing right now.

What we do know is that we want to take smaller bites, be more flexible, make roles clearer, and let the pace be determined by what people actually have capacity for.

And we want to hear from you.

If you're interested in helping shape this next version of SIS, reply to this. We'd love to have you involved.