Episode 5 - Satyagraha

Tent City – Satyagraha - Episode 5

FADE IN:

EXT: New New York Tent City - DAY

Montage of scenes of daily hustle and bustle of the residents of NNY Tent City

INT: Community Tent – New New York Tent City – DAY

A 7-way teleconference meeting is happening in the NNY communal tent regarding the planning of the CRD march between the leaders of the six major US Tent Cities, along with LARRY COLEMAN representing segments from the five Recreational Vehicle Parks (around 500,000 out of two million RV residents) and another leader SUSAN JEFFRIES EAGLE CLAW representing the rest of America via a group called the Heartland Freedom Fighters (HFF) that includes both Middle and Working class Americans not displaced by the flood events and Native Americans (15 million active members and 5 million more registered = 20 million). JOE PALENTI, President of the CRD movement and DC march, representing NNY Tent City (5 million residents) is speaking to all the leaders including KATHERN POLENSKA representing New New Jersey and New Virginia (also located in PA w/3.5 million residents), JERRY OGLESTEIN representing New Miami/Florida (located in Georgia with 7.5 million residents), CARL ROGERS representing New New Orleans and Texas (located in Texas with 4.5 million) and LINDA LI representing New Cali (located in Nevada w/4 million residents). Also present with JOE PALENTI is his top council member LESLIE HOPE. That’s 25 million in Tent Cities, half a million reps in RV Parks (out of 2 million) and 15-20 million+ Americans outraged and ready to fight to get back basic rights and freedoms. How many of any citizens will actually organize and participate and support the march is the topic of this meeting.

JOE

I’d like to start by saying how thrilled I am that you all have made so much effort in organizing your groups and citizens around the country. We have half a million pledges from our New New York Tent City and anticipate another 200,000 by the time of the march! I really feel this DC march is going to be a huge success and achieve the three

JOE (CON’T)

main goals we have set for our movement. First, to restore our rights and freedoms as guaranteed in the constitution immediately! Secondly, to allocate the resources necessary to speed up the relocation process for the remaining 25 million Tent City residents and 2 million RV Park citizens as well, and thirdly to support and get the vote out for the Progressive party’s presidential candidate, Senator Latisha Jones! (Confirmation sounds & head nods from leaders) Leslie, could you please put up the graphic showing where we are at as far group tasks involved that have been accomplished and ones yet to be done?

LESLIE

Yes Joe. As you can see we have accomplished a lot so far as related to securing the DC permits and actual march logistics go, but there are still some important tasks that need to be wrapped up ASAP! Namely, the transportation, affordable lodging and the porta-potties issues. As moderator, I just want to remind everyone to push your request-to-speak buttons so we are not all talking over each other. As you know the computer keeps track of the order of requests. I would like to start with Susan Eagle Claw to get an update on how many outside citizens in the Midwest zone have committed to the march so we can update and sync our accommodation data via the super computer.

SUSAN

Thank you Joe and Leslie for all your tireless work to make this march a reality! Yes – well, we did an email survey last week and have around half a million confirmations along with five million in donations to help pay for the transpo and accommodations necessary. Most citizens prefer to come back on the late day busses as other co-chairs had expressed the need for early on. I think by the time the march comes around we should be able to get another 100,000 confirmations and more donations as well!

LESLIE

That’s fantastic Susan! This will be the biggest march on DC in our country’s history by far! As you all know there are also many affiliate organizations that have committed to bringing their contingencies and will speak during the ceremony in front of the Lincoln Memorial. This list now includes DemocracyNow.org, ACLU, AFL-CIO, NAACP, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Moveon.org, Human Right’s Watch, Code Pink, League of Woman Voters, Planned

LESLIE (CON’T)

Parenthood, Asian Americans Against Abuse of Human Rights, Elie Weasel Foundation for Humanity, and several others that are on the list you all have. Now let’s address the elephant in the room – the transportation issue and limited space in DC for potentially millions of citizen protesters. The biggest marches have only been half a million at the Woman’s March after the last horrible reality TV president in the early 2000s and later, the biggest so far, in the late 2020s at 2.5 million marchers demanding the Green Revolution legislation that literally help change the course of world history, steady the climate changes and advert the worst aspects of global warming. That was until the recent great floods caused by our corporate puppet president and his administration setting the clock back along with autocratic leaders around the world lifting the 20 year ban on new fossil fuel extraction - all to line their greedy pockets at our peril! (to self) Okay Leslie – calm down! (takes a breath) Well, you all know the rest and here we are organizing to undo all the damage done and get our country back on the progressive, healthy green track! Okay so, (looks at computer)- Jerry – you have the floor…

JERRY

Well-said Leslie! We all feel your frustration and we all need to take deep breaths – a lot! Great to see everyone again! The New Miami, Florida contingent is very excited to participate in this historical march on our nation’s capital to restore our inalienable rights and repair our democracy through our brilliant checks and balances system that has been hi-jacked by the corporations once again! As you know Florida has the biggest population of displaced citizens and therefore we will make sure that we have the biggest turn out – hopefully around a million! We are concerned however that DC will be so overwhelmed by millions of protesters that the reactionary conservative government will sick Homeland Security on us and chaos could ensue.

JOE

Using my CRD president status to interrupt here, – Jerry – there will be no chaos! You have been training your people in the peaceful civil disobedience tactics like everyone agreed to at the start?

JERRY

Yes, of course Joe, but I hear some of the people saying they will fight back if provoked and they are not as committed to the passive resistance concept as we are.

JOE

We don’t use that term ‘passive’ anymore because it is not passive – it is in your face, brave, militant resistance! It’s very important that citizens not willing to sign the CRD DC March participation pledge are not allowed to go to the protest! This is a very big logistics challenge with potentially millions of marchers. All the Homeland Security needs is an excuse to shut down the march before we even get to the speech section at the Lincoln Memorial, which will be streamed live all over the world. This will be a peaceful and successful march for our cherished rights and freedoms – is that clear to all co-chairs and parties involved? (All members nod and affirm-looks at computer) Good, so Linda – you’re next…

LINDA

Hello to all members of the CRD organization. We citizens of the New Cali Tent City are revved up and getting ready to Rock and Roll! Our young people are excited and have been making cool creative placards for the march. Our trip, being a longer one that requires over night lodging has kept our numbers smaller than hoped for but not surprising. Based on our latest survey and pledge signings we are at around 160,000 and should be able to get another 20-40,000 by the time of the march. Half of our people will use the hi-speed maglev trains from Vegas to DC and the other half will be going on the double-decker self-driving buses. We will bring our own healthy food supplies grown in our tent city hydroponic green houses, but we are concerned that because we and some of the New New Orleans and Texas delegations will require lodgings and a bit more food supplies to get through – the DC area will not have enough resources to support us. We did reach out to Katherine to put her feelers out to all the local East Coast region online home sharing services and of course networking via social media to all the remaining inland residents in the Virginia, Maryland and DC area to rent or volunteer their extra rooms or couches for a night. We now have lodging commitments for around a 140,000 thousand rooms, cots and couches for our marchers but will need at least another 20,000 to accommodate those left who have committed as well at least another 15-30,000 we anticipate will join the march over the next few months.

LESLIE

Yes – accommodations for the overnighters are a big concern but the good news is that only 10-12% or around 300,000 of the estimated three million protest attendees will require lodgings. The other 90% will be returning back to the Eastern, Southern and Central tent cities departing in three shifts late in the day and night to avoid transpo congestion nightmares. As to the New Cali Tent City and other citizen attendees requiring lodgings and extra food stuffs - so far we have saturated the DC regional social media for volunteers and booked almost every home sharing lodging within a 100-mile radius of the event. We are now concentrating on the outlying areas where the suburbs meet the rural zones and have had some interest and bookings, although not as many as we had hoped. Nonetheless, some of the rural farmers have offered their barns and open graze lands to pitch tents as an option if nothing better comes along. We could use some of the donation monies to pay for pop up tents, sleeping bags, cots and other necessary provisions. Another positive development is the commitments to provide free drinks and foodstuffs from many civilian home fronts along the main routes to DC  - all expressing solidarity and looking to help the movement. (looks at computer) Kathy is next…

KATHY

Hello Leslie and fellow CRD co-chairs. I am proud to say that the New New Jersey, Virginia and now Delaware Tent City delegation are on track with 200,000 pledges to attend so far! We’ll all be coming back the night of and have all our transportation figured out, but still need to coordinate with everyone else about the travel logistics to avoid the transportation nightmares mentioned before.

LESLIE

Yes Kathy – all the data is being updated and we can talk later. And finally Carl - We have yet to hear from you – any problems or issues you would like to discuss about the New New Orleans and Texas contingent?

CARL

Well honestly, I am little embarrassed because so far we only have around 100,000 pledges out of 4 million New New Orleans and Texas Tent City residents. It seems most feel this is a Northeastern and coastal Socialist agenda march and even though they are willing to fight and die to have their basic rights and freedoms restored, they don’t

CARL (CON’T)

necessarily buy into the Socialist agenda or the unarmed civil disobedience method. As you may know, more than half are proud, middle and working class, conservative, gun toting, evangelical Republicans, and many of them are members of the old MAGA organization. I know there are many Democrats and Independents as well, but all are southerners share an old distrust of the Northeast since the Civil War two centuries ago. The 100,000 pledges are mostly from our Green and Progressive Party citizens.

JOE

We anticipated that Carl but 100,000 is nothing to sneeze at! Unfortunately, the old animosities between the north and south are still lingering and fed by a lot of hidden greedy agendas in our government and foreign enemies that manifest in partisan failure to lead or legislate. Ironic because during my tours of duty overseas, nearly half of my platoon were southerners, and all those old, petty divisions disappear quickly in the battlefield, because we were all Americans depending on each other for survival. As I get older and hopefully wiser I apply this cooperative team work ethic to include the whole world – we all either sink or swim together – literally if you consider the flooding disasters that have brought us to this critical tipping point in history to counter the dark forces that caused it in the first place.

CARL

Thanks for being understanding Joe. My older brother who served said the exact same thing about people’s differences going out the window in the battlefield. As you all may know, I am part of a sizable and growing number of progressives here in the South that benefited from the Green Revolution with decent paying jobs for decades and the lowest air pollution and asthma rates in our kids in a century. But I have also been somewhat isolated from the general public as a sociology professor living within a liberal college campus environment. During these hard times you see the best and the worst come out of people. People in the camps help each other and reach out to see how you’re doing. Yet prejudices that lie just below the surface rear their ugly heads as people look for scapegoats to the big problems that have complex and deep roots in society. Reasons that they can’t be bothered to really research and learn the truth about. It’s easier not to think, get high, put on the VR headset and just fall back

CARL (cont)

on primitive tribal behaviors. This really amazes and saddens me in the late 21^st century.

JOE

As a college history professor - I hear you Carl. Regrettably, We the people of America have all been used like pawns in a chess game for most of our country’s history. The rare, progressive Green Revolution only happened because the majority of citizens got fed up and organized after decades of increasing global warming pollution and universal stagnant wages stemming from greedy, neoliberal economic practices. Meanwhile, the 1% running the corporations increased their fortunes 10-fold via the system they rigged through puppet politicians that had no integrity, as this current administration does not. These sick, greedy elites only allegiance is to the almighty dollar. Yet their money will be useless when there is no more clean water to drink or air to breathe! As all of you may know, after decades of prosperity and progress, a perfect storm of economic events happened, namely a slow down in the new Green world economy and robots simultaneously eating up million of jobs and the UBI (Universal Basic Income) not enough to live on, which led to the recent recession. Typical historical amnesia led to apathy with many voters staying home and voters who did show up made reactionary choices that swept our current reality TV star president into office along with all his corporate cronies in his administration. (pause) Sorry, I went off on a tangent and am preaching to the choir. I am however, an eternal optimist as were all my past heroes who changed the world without killing anyone. As Theo Parker the abolitionist priest once said, and was quoted later by civil rights giants Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice!” This peaceful march will be the moral high ground that we are taking to fix and restore our precious rights and freedoms through the Democratic process. Civil disobedience has worked in the past and will work again to wake up the moral conscience and unite the majority of citizens of the USA. I know we can do this! We the People will Restore our Democracy!

All Voice their agreement with Enthusiasm and bravado

ALL

YES! Hooray! Hear Hear! - Let’s Do this! - Solidarity! CRD! CRD! CRD!

LESLIE

Thank you CRD President Palenti for that passionate and informed speech that definitely helps motivate our peaceful movement toward success. One last order of business is to remind everyone to get people registered to vote and try to convince them that the best choice for right now is Progressive Party candidate Senator Latisha Jones! To all co-chairs please update your data daily so we can make this whole DC March operation as smooth as possible to insure an awesome and successful protest! Thanks until next time! Signing off.

All Nod, wave and say goodbye. The overhead computer screen goes off. It’s just Joe and Leslie talking now.

LESLIE

Wow – I feel really good about that meeting. We are definitely on track for a successful march Joe!

JOE

Yeah – I hope so.

LESLIE

What’s the matter Joe – something you haven’t told me?

JOE

Yes as a matter of fact because I did not want to bring the vibe down before this meeting and I don’t want anyone else to know.

LESLIE

To know what?

JOE

I was contacted directly by Senator Jones yesterday and she gave me a head’s up about some rich fossil fuel execs looking to stop or mess up our march through various nefarious means. As you may or may not know I worked on some special secret service operations when I served. So I reached out to an old buddy on the inside in DC that did some investigating. He found out some of his conservative colleagues have received orders from higher up in the administration to sabotage our movement before the march so it won’t happen. I already heard that one of the oil tycoons, a Charles White has started a character assassination of me via the corporate and social medias.

LESLIE

Oh No! This is not good, but not surprising. I was amazed how easy it was to get our permits secured. So do you have anything to worry about in your past?

JOE

I really don’t have any major skeletons in my closet other than some drug experimentation when I was young, which most have done at this point and I am not ashamed of because I never touched narcotics or lab drugs. But that won’t stop these creeps from just making stuff up to make me look bad. I kind of expected this as well but it still sucks. What’s worse is that this may be just the preliminary sabotage tactics and if they don’t work I… well let’s just say if history is any indicator I may actually be in some danger - but I started this movement knowing this day would come if we got it off the ground and so here we are.

LESLIE

But you pose no threat to them – we are a peaceful resistance movement for God’s sake!

JOE

Oh yes, I/we are a threat to their bottom line as in dough-re-me because if we are successful with this movement with a 3 million strong solidarity march to demand our rights and get Senator Jones in the White House - they know their days of no regulations and extraction of fossil fuels will end again quickly and most likely for good this time. Although this is what people thought 30 odd years ago! Therefore they have every reason to try to take me down – maybe even literally.

LESLIE

Don’t even go there Joe – character assassination is one thing but actual assassination is another – there is no way they could get away with it. Everyone has a camera ever since smart phones came along in the age of little brother.

JOE

From your mouth to God’s ears! But I would not put anything past these hardcore capitalists. We are all expendable in their brutal game of life. They are desperate because they know this is probably their last hurrah in power based on the diverse demographics of contemporary America. Them winning the elections 4 years ago was a fluke based on fear, voter suppression and an apathetic electorate that fell asleep at the wheel. You are the only one who knows

JOE (Cont)

about this and I expect you to not tell a soul. We cannot jeopardize the momentum we have right now. Over the next few weeks we will do damage control using counter social media campaigns to balance out their attacks.

LESLIE

Yes – of course Joe! Oh my – why are these people willing to tear apart our great country and pollute the world just for some money and power?

JOE

Greed and lust for power is a sickness that has plagued human kind since day one but it has an ebb and flow cycle like all things in nature. Now it’s time for it to go down again, hopefully for good so humanity can finally evolve past this entrenched, fear-based materialism mentality and reach a higher universal spiritual consciousness that truly respects life and the planet. No more empty platitudes!

FADE OUT:

END OF EPISODE 5