Episode 15 – The Big March
FADE IN: DAY – DC MARCH IN
EARLY DAY & LATER IN FRONT OF LINCOLN MEMORIAL – 2.2 MILLION US CITIZENS
GATHER.
September 18th, 2068. A
record setting 2 million plus citizens from all over the country shows up for
the Citizens Restore Democracy (CRD) march/protest. We begin in the early day
as people streamed in to the starting point, a mile and a half outside of DC
center. The positive energy in the air was palpable. As the march peacefully
began however, there were two small militia groups assembled illegally (no
permits) along the route – obviously to disrupt the march. There is a brief but
intense confrontation between the MARCHERS and the White Nationalists MILITIAS.
The angry Militia people hurl insults, shoot red paint bullets at the marchers
and then some even start to hit them with clubs and bats.
The MARCHERS go into
militant disobedience defense mode, receive the insults and paint bullet
attacks in-group formations and begin to chant planned slogans. The entire
event is being broadcasted live around the world via several media networks and
camera journalists have honed in on the disturbance. Then things get crazy with
several militia members breaking out clubs and they start to beat the marchers
at will. But the marchers take the beating with determined courage and many get
knocked down with real blood streaming down their faces while the world
watches…
MILITIA GUY 1
Hey you Socialist radical
scum – have a taste of this paint in your mouth! (shoots paint gun)
MILITIA GUY 2
Yeah - you little commie
pinkos’ – We’re protecting the motherland from you fucking freaks!
MARCHER 1
Tuck and cover fellow
citizens! These Nazi bastards will not deter us!
MARCHER 2
The People United – Will
Never be Defeated!
Others MARCHERS join in –
The People united – Will…
MILITIA GUY 3
Time for some real vengeance
on these mixed mongrel leftist bitches!
Several MILITIA guys
proceed to bust out clubs and bats and hit MARCHERS.
MARCHER 4
Take cover! They are using
weapons! Hold your positions marchers! Fuck these violent assholes!
A news REPORTER starts to
comment while his cameraperson films the mayhem.
REPORTER 1
An altercation that
started with paint guns has now escalated into outright violence. White
Nationalist Militias that were obviously not part of this planned CRD march
initiated the confrontation. But the CRD marchers thus far have not fought back
and are using non-violent protest techniques not seen since the Civil Rights
era in the 1960s. They are taking quite a beating though – some are down on the
ground bleeding, while others march bravely forward and take their places.
Homeland Security Police squads are approaching in the distance. What will
happen with the march is anybody’s guess at this point.
HSP 1 (talking onto walkie-talkie)
Yeah – Roger, Roger – we
got a 1059 in progress near the start point of march – HSP group C going in to
try to defuse situation.
HSP CAPTAIN (on walkie-talkie)
Copy that C Group leader –
approach with caution, start with shields and gas to disperse crowd engaged in
illegal action. Only use rubber bullets as last resort and no lethal force
unless absolutely necessary!
The two sections in the
march where the mayhem between the militia, marchers and now the police is
occurring are quickly the focus of the media coverage. Many expected this
confrontation, but millions of viewers are shocked by the ugly violence perpetrated
upon the peaceful marchers by the militias and now even the police who are
beating and
even shooting rubber
bullets indiscriminately into the crowds. The social media landscape is
exploding with live posted comments mostly condemning the militias and police
and expressing support and solidarity with the CRD marchers.
PRESIDENT FAICE and
members of his STAFF are watching it all go down live from the White House. The
president makes a call to HSP headquarters.
STAFF 1
Mr. President – the social
media is on fire with most comments against the militias and our police,
probably because the marchers are not fighting back and are being beaten up by
the militias and now shot at with rubber bullets by Homeland Security for all
to see!
FAICE
My God – this not good!
Not good at all! The election is just a few weeks away! We can’t have this! Get
HSP on the red line quickly!
STAFF 2
Yes sir!
HSP CAPTAIN
Yes Mr. President? We are
on top of the situation and…
FAICE
Be quiet and listen! Disregard
any former orders and protocols! These marchers are not fighting back and are
sticking to their hippie protest techniques! The public is appalled as am I
seeing this chaotic, bloody travesty play out on the live streams. The plan for
shutting down the march based on violent actions from the marchers is not
happening Captain, so I want you to focus on shutting down the stupid militias
- who are doing all the violence and stop your homeland security people from
blindly shooting citizens with your God Damn rubber bullets - for Christ sakes!
HSP CAPTAIN
But Mr. President sir –
we…
FAICE
No if, ands or buts
Captain! Just do what I said – RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
HSP CAPTAIN
YES SIR – MR. PRESIDENT
SIR!
The HSP receives the order
and breaks up the militia mobs, captures, cuffs them and puts them all in
military trucks and brings them to jail. The injured protesters are taken away
by ambulances and brought to the nearest hospital. The CRD March recovers itself;
as two million citizen demonstrators united pour into the nation’s capitol mall
in front of the Lincoln Memorial, as the morning sun rises in a blue cloudless
sky, positive vibrations rule the day.
JOE PALENTI gives the
first speech of the day. Here we hear his wrap up. Then we jump past many great
speeches and musical performances by various civic leaders and artists
throughout the day to SENATOR JONES final speech in front of the Lincoln
Memorial.
JOE
Finally, my fellow
citizens, the reason I helped start this amazing CRD movement and organized
this march, along with my co-chairs is the same reason I served my country over
seas. It’s because I believe the Constitution is the greatest secular social
contract ever written. (applause) We are a nation of laws and as our country
evolves, so does our Constitution with new amendments. Our founders created a
brilliantly structured three-tier government with equal powers. They built in these
checks and balances to assure that liberty and justice prevails, and that no
one is above the law. (applause) When I was young and ignorant, I went overseas
and fought in what were and are unjust wars and I killed many human beings –
some bad guys as well as some innocents. I did it all thinking I was fighting
for the country that my parents raised me to love but not to question. I will
carry the guilt for the rest of my life of both seeing my fellow soldiers die
next to me on the battle field and the spiritual burden of knowing I killed
innocent human beings caught up in the cross fire of evil war. I think most mature,
intelligent people agree that killing is the worse sin or act one can commit.
Killing and death is final. There’s no remedying the situation – no chance of
reconciliation or forgiveness. Yet we humans continue to primitively slaughter
one another to resolve issues and disagreements. I made a pledge to myself a
few years ago to talk publicly about my personal experience of the hell that is
war so as to raise awareness that it is evil and that there are other, better, proven
peaceful methods to solve problems. Today, this glorious and successful record setting,
non-violent protest march in 2068 is a testament to this fact. I don’t want to
see anymore poor young men with little economic options and testosterone
flowing through their veins and developing brains to sign up to be soldiers
because they are desperate to get out of poverty and make a living and raise a
family. I can tell you from personal experience it is not worth it. Defending
the homeland from invaders is one thing but dropping bombs on innocent people all
over the world for resources, money and power is not right and must end forever.
I am now a militant pacifist adherent practicing Gandhi’s Satyagraha truth
force philosophy. (applause) We the people shall regain our basic inalienable
rights and freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights! (applause)
We will move forward and progress getting back on the clean energy green track
and make quality of life improvements and rapid relocation plans for the millions
of us living in the tent cities - after we elect Senator Letisha Jones as our
next president of the United States of America! God bless you all and God bless
the USA! Our best days are yet to come! (applause)
We now jump ahead to the
end of the civic leader speakers and artists with SENATOR JONES ending the day’s
CRD March events with an election stump style speech just a few weeks before
the presidential election of 2068 in November. She wheels herself out top the
podium to huge applause and using her bionic backbone device stands up to speak.
JONES
Good Day to you all! What
a tremendous success! Congratulations! A record setting two million plus from
all over the country attending our Citizens Restore Democracy March! First, I
would like to thank the leaders of the CRD organization, Mr. Joe Palenti,
Leslie Topp and all the Tent City Co-Chairs that made this event possible!
(applause) Next, let’s hear it for all the inspiring speeches and performances
today! (applause) We did however, have a couple of small altercations early in
the day with white nationalist militias looking to spoil our march but they
failed miserably because of your movement’s inner strength, conviction and
adherence to non-violent protesting!(applause) Unfortunately,
some people were injured but thank God the latest reports say that none are in
serious
life threatening condition
and all should recover soon. (applause) It is dumbfounding to me that these
white separatists have had a small resurgence here in the late 21st
century. Let me repeat the word small. These people, who live in fear, somehow
think that this country is theirs. This was BS around three to four hundred
years ago when our country was taken by force from the native populations and was
founded by yes – educated, upper class white men originally from Britain, but was
built upon the backs and sweat equity of people of color who had to fight for
their rights for hundreds of years afterword. Mr. Jefferson’s inspired
Declaration of Independence where he wrote, “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator
certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness”. These were Enlightenment ideals but were not part of our
Constitution, and thus carried no legal weight. It also did not include women
or people of color. People of color and women had to suffer slavery and second
class citizenship until after the Civil War in the late 1860s and early 1870s when
the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were added
to our Constitution, first freeing the slaves and then guaranteeing the rights
of all natural born citizen persons regardless of color or gender, yet women
still did not have the right to vote until 1920, around fifty years later. The
Civil War was a dark period of reckoning for our country after 200 plus years
of slavery, with huge losses and sacrifices on both sides of the conflict,
including the gentlemen behind me – President Abraham Lincoln who paid the
ultimate price for leading this nation forward toward the light, guided by his
inner moral compass. Mr. Lincoln was not only on the right side of history - he
was on the right side of the mystery. Yes, I am a spiritual person, but I
respect and adhere to the separation of church and state the founders so
intelligently built into our constitution. The sacred and secular are very
different realms but neither are they mutually exclusive, because one can and
does influence the other if one is being honest. The 14th Amendment made the
progressive ideal a reality - that all persons are created equal and all will
have equal protection under the law as pertains to life, liberty and property
etc. This 14th and all the other added amendments and acts that followed over
the next 100 years finally gave black people and women the right to vote, ended
segregation, and protected black people’s Civil and voting rights and more recently
finally gave blacks official apologies and reparations for slavery, which
allowed me to attend an Ivy League Law school. And so, the glorious intuitive
vision and ideal that all people are created equal that Mr. Jefferson declared
at our country’s infancy has come to fruition hundreds of years later.
(applause) And yet economic based inequalities, some related to racism, still
plague our society today even in the late 21st century! The recent Green
Revolution era was the most progressive and prosperous period for a majority of
American citizens ever in our country’s history! The data and facts speak for
themselves - low unemployment, but with decent living wages, which is different
from earlier economic boom times that mostly benefited people in the top 1 to
10% elite. The one exception being the post World War II manufacturing boom
period. Yet, the original New Deal and later GI Bill that gave birth to a solid
middle class – favored white people. So, it was not necessarily a golden age
for people of color. Before the Green New Deal era egalitarianism, there was decades
of stagnant wages in the late 20th and early 21st century, even though
the USA’s economy was strong and worker productivity was always moving upwards.
Citizens’ anger at this gross injustice and inequality of working hard full
time and barely surviving is partly what led to the Green New Deal. Social
Scientists figured out long ago that greed, Global Warming, poverty, and
environmentally caused illness were all interconnected. The GND created
millions of good paying jobs - installing solar panels, building windmills,
retrofitting buildings, building the new electric super grid infrastructure and
high-speed maglev mass transit systems to provide fast and affordable clean
energy alternatives to heavy carbon footprint flying. These Green New Deal jobs
could not be shipped overseas to exploit cheap labor in poor countries and
allowed our country to pull back from the brink of Global Warming disaster. It
was a rare win-win legislative victory. We avoided the worst effects of Global
Warming via less extreme weather events, halting the temperature rise and
stopping more arctic Ice melting by reducing fossil fuel use by half over a few
decades. Not as green or as fast as we hoped based on entrenched and deep
pocketed special interest influencers in DC, but the Green Revolution did keep
us from going over the Global Warming cliff. That is until our current
president and his lackey administration of fossil fuel puppets turned back the
clock with massive deregulations and huge tax breaks for the rich. The USA,
being a global leader – other countries soon followed suit and broke from
international agreements that had held firm for decades. The new fossil fuel
extractions around the world created a sudden and rapid 2-degree increase in
temperatures in just two years. Our worst fears here in America and elsewhere
around the world were manifested in the Great Flood Disasters caused by the
melting of huge sections of the arctic ice caps. These great floods that
happened a little under two years ago caused our panicked president to enact Draconian
measures to deal with the humanitarian crisis, the likes of which have never
existed in our country before. All US citizens’ basic rights and freedoms have
been curbed and twenty five million displaced citizens from the flood disasters
are now living in cramped Tent Cities around the country! And I know from
speaking to you in person that you are fed up with the quality of life issues
in your camps and the snail’s pace of the relocation process – as you should
be! (massive applause) If I am elected president, I would make dealing with these
top issues affecting so many millions my top priority and pass major legislation
in my first 100 days. First – to bring back habeas corpus – the cornerstone of
justice and democracy and secondly - get rid of all curfews and any
restrictions on movement. (applause) These are unconstitutional and un-American
limits on our rights and freedoms and are issues that all Americans from all
parties and backgrounds are fed up with! (applause) I promise to allocate
resources immediately to make living in these tent cities as comfortable as
possible during this transition period and create federal legally binding
deadlines for relocation for the 25 million displaced citizens within 5-7
years! A similar timeline promised by the current president who lied and has
not delivered! (applause) His priorities lie elsewhere with corrupt big
business elites, many of whom are trying to undo all the progress of the last
40 years just to get richer! (applause) Switching gears - I must be frank and honest
with you about jobs – something that President Dick Faice and his party are in
denial about or are just straight up lying to the American public. Their big
tax breaks for corporations will no longer create any trickle down job flow and
prosperity for the masses – not that it ever has. Part of what got us this conservative
reactionary, backwards reality TV star president was the fact that jobs are
disappearing faster than ever before because of Artificial Intelligence and
robots taking millions and millions of blue and white collar jobs over the last
few decades. We did not really pay heed or notice until the human based job
boom of the Green New Deal slowed down. Once most of the major green infrastructure
initiatives were finished, people were laid off, spent less money, hence
consumed less, and our economy went into a recession for the first time in
decades in the early 2060s. Millions of people living paycheck-to-paycheck felt
the pinch and lost faith in the green revolution and so voted with their pocket
books in mind. Many swing voters acted out in classic American historical
amnesia, buying into old Republican myths of trickle down economics that never
worked and only put our country into more debt and always leads to Wall Street
over speculation, followed by cyclical crashes that we the people always end up
paying for in bailouts while the rich stayed rich regardless. The Trickle Down
economics concept was always an insult to anyone with common sense. If someone
in your community is thirsty – would you offer them just a trickle of water?
That is inhumane and an insult to people’s dignity! The days of the top 1%
reaping all the wealth from the blood, sweat and tears of the majority 99% of
citizens have to end once and for all if we are truly to progress and evolve as
a nation and as human beings. (big applause) These top corporate executives are
gung-ho religious monopoly capitalists until their companies crash and then
over night, they become socialists by being bailed out with corporate welfare by
we the taxpayers. And while they land gently with golden parachutes, the rest
of us pay the price for their greed and avarice. We have been down this dead
end road too many times before and cannot afford another four years with this ineffectual
and pathetic president! (applause) I will be straight with you America – because
of hi-tech robots, there will be less and less jobs – not more. Therefore, I
have a vision - some new ideas about how to readjust to this new jobless reality
that is already upon us – let’s call it Fair Share Social Economics. As Americans,
historically we derive our sense of identity and purpose from our daily work
routines. This work ethic partly influenced from the first Puritan Pilgrims and
partly from immigrant industriousness and hustle is what has made America one
of the greatest countries on earth. There has been Social Credit concepts
floating around for a long time now but based on the robot job take over
reality – its time has come. It would be a system based on building social
credits that could be used for purchasing goods and bartering services. One
could trade vegetables from their garden for a mechanic to fix their air
conditioning solar unit or electric car. People could create community
organizations and block associations that decide what needs to be done in their
neighborhoods and who can do what, where and how etc. Government encrypted
Super computers would keep track of citizens’ skill data sets and people could build
up social credits to buy things or exchange goods or services. It could all be
done via a safe, encrypted blockchain technology that would be easy to
implement and bring to scale quickly. I have a group of brilliant minds putting
together a great plan right now as I speak to you. Other progressive countries already
are or are planning to do variations of the Social credit system as well. It’s
a solid solution to keep us busy being productive healthy citizens and not
allowing denial of the new robot reality to lead us to chaos because the idle
mind is the devil’s playground. Of course, the Universal Basic Income and
Social Security will have to be increased as well. Many conservatives will try
to derail this new Social Credit Fair Share Economic plan of action. The
naysayers with no imagination will ask how are we going to pay for it the same
way they could not fathom how to dig our way out of the Depression via the New
Deal or how to meet the military needs of World War II within a very short time
frame, or how to fund the Green New Deal – all of which we did because we had
to - because the price to be paid for not taking action would have been much
higher on many levels! (applause) It really is simple - the rich 1% who possess
80% of all wealth on earth are going to pay for it. They made their fortunes in
a safe country with excellent infrastructure and an educated work force paid
for by the average citizen taxpayer. They also often rigged the system to make
more than their fair share of the profits and simultaneously not pay their fair
share of taxes. Thus the name is - Fair Share Social Economic Credit System. The
halcyon days for the greedy 1% hoarders are over. The US and the world’s
citizens’ are fed up with this greed sickness that all major problems can be traced
back to! (applause) The social credit system will be a major change in how we live
and do our daily business, but I really believe it could be a great opportunity
and blessing. There will more quality time to spend with family and friends,
more leisure time to pursue hobbies you have been thinking about for years but never
have the energy or time to do! It will build communities again like once
existed before all the tech gadgets took over our lives and so much work made
us dead tired and often grumpy! A kick the dog scenario has played out for too
many generations in a majority of Western households! Technology will finally
live up to all its hype and free us up to develop ourselves into better human
beings – just being! (applause) People could go to college – just to learn
about all kinds of things – a liberal arts degree will be cool again! We humans
could be on the brink of a quantum leap of consciousness if we go in the right direction.
(applause) The old ways and methods of the status quo capitalist dog-eat-dog economic
system are no longer relevant or sustainable in the late 21st
century AI reality and we the people must come to terms with these facts. We
need a balanced egalitarian economic system that will ensure a decent quality
of life with dignity for all citizens and enable us to reach our full human potentials.
We had a positive and progressive Green era that lasted decades but I still believe
our best years are yet to come, where we as a nation truly live up to the
original Declaration of Independence ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.(applause) As your president I would set the gears in motion to
embrace this potentially fantastic future scenario, but I need you to help me
get elected! We need to kick it up a notch in these last few weeks and get
people out to vote for the progressive party! Progress is the American way! See
you at the polls! God bless you and God bless America! (huge applause)
Two million people at the
march and millions more around the country watching on their home screens/computers
are energized by Senator Jones intelligence, honesty and integrity. The
marchers stand celebrating for a while before starting the slow process of
filtering out of the capital city and heading back home to their tent city
realities around the country with hope in their hearts and determination in
their souls to help Ms. Jones win this very important election.
A month later Senator
Letisha Jones is elected president by a decent margin. The Progressive and
Democratic Socialist parties take both the House and the Senate in congress,
insuring that President elect Jones will have carte blanche to enact all her
campaign promises – at least for another two years.
Huge celebrations are
happening all over the country, especially in the tent cities. Joe Palenti and
his CRD VP Leslie Topps are celebrating not only President Jones big win but
their new relationship as partners in all aspects of life. The future is wide
open.
FADE OUT
