#bell riots day

[spocks-husband]

IT'S FINALLY BELL RIOTS DAY YAYYYYYY I did a little drawing to celebrate :3

[cuterefaction]

Happy Bell Riots day to all who celebrate!

[trekkie-polls]

This is about deep space nine two parter “Past tense” (season 3 episode 11 & 12).

If you haven’t seen it go watch it. It was made in 1995, but is extremely relevant still.

[starz-jo]

hell is a teenage girl.

[bethama]

*pounds table* BELL RIOTS BELL RIOTS BELL RIOTS

[scavengedluxury]

[ds9promenade]

Podcast episode discussing DS9 "Past Tense" & "Far Beyond the Stars"!

My friend Laura invited me onto their podcast to unpack Deep Space Nine episodes 3x11 & 12: "Past Tense" and 6x13: "Far Beyond the Stars," using them for a broader discussion on the role of science fiction in dreaming better futures into reality.

In our conversation, we:

compare the 2024 of "Past Tense" to our 2024

share our theories about historical events that may have inspired both episodes, as well as their relationship to other works of speculative/science fiction

point out and offer revisions for parts of "Past Tense" that somewhat undercut the story's intended messages about the evils of capitalism, ableism, police / military violence, and anti-homeless laws

gush about the artistry of the filming and acting in "Far Beyond" (Avery Brooks monologues my beloved)

and more — with a dash of humor as we go!

Give "Sanctified Imagination Far Beyond the Stars" a listen wherever you get podcasts — or read along with the transcript!

(CW: Christianity) — please do go in forewarned that Laura's Autistic Liberation Theology podcast centers around reinterpreting the Bible from a trans & disabled lens. If you skip to 44 minutes in you'll miss most of the religious commentary, except for when it makes sense to bring it up re: Joseph Sisko's 1950s incarnation as a street preacher.

If you are interested the full episode, some of the places we go in our winding conversation are:

Womanist midrash & sanctified imagination, which enact this call to imagine possibilities for the oppressed — to "make a way out of no way"

How Jesus's use of parables to teach about his envisioned "Kingdom of God" —where there's access for all, oppressors reformed and oppressed liberated, all needs met and all gifts celebrated — invites people to engage their sanctified imaginations to join in the work for a more just world, here and now

AutScape's & Crip Camp’s modeled possibilities for a fully accessible, disability-centered world

various directors / show writers who, through writing, discovered something new about themselves (think the Wachowski sisters & The Matrix, Dan Harmon and Community)

If you give it a listen (or read), I'd love to hear what you think! Did you connect with the concept of imagining better futures into reality? Any other Star Trek episodes you think encapsulate that well?

____

Transcript of the above audio clip:

Avery: I definitely think the writers of this episode were thinking about how When Deep Space Nine was coming out, people's response to seeing Sisko was, Yeah, is, you can't have a black space captain. A black man can't be the hero of Star Trek!

Which just shows, like, for the viewers, like, Yeah, we've come a long ways here in the 90s. But we still think it's ridiculous to imagine a black space captain and it's only just becoming possible now.

Laura: yeah the um, , editor of the magazine says "put it in a drawer for like a couple of decades and might be--" it's like, yeah, that's

Avery: Yeah.

Laura: inside joke.

Avery: At the end, when, um, Benny Russell breaks down after being fired and everything, the street preacher comes back and, Benny says, "Tell me, please, who am I?"

Don't you know?" "Tell me." "You're the dreamer and the dream."

Laura: ah, this is so amazing.

Avery: And, like, yeah, that fits on so many different layers with, uh, Benny Russell is dreaming Sisko and dreaming Deep Space nine, and also Sisko is dreaming him, and also breaking the fourth wall,

Laura: yeah, because they're, neither of them are real, they're both fiction and yet they're, yeah. real.

Avery: Yeah. Yeah. Breaking the fourth wall, the writers and Avery Brooks are the dreamers, and the dream. This is, this is what, people have been dreaming of, this even the possibility of this. And they're making it true.

Laura: and at the end, you see him looking out the window and seeing Benny Russell in the reflection of the glass and

Avery: it's such a good shot. It's so good. It like gives me chills

Laura: you Have to cast something into the space you're not there yet to-- that becomes you.

Avery: Yeah. dream yourself into being.

[elodee]

Guess what I watched for the first time ever today

[the-lavender-clown]

Happy Threshold Day everyone

[cultclassic111]

just found god help the girl's movie AND it has cassie from skins so it's my dream movie and of course it's not available in the us

[rose-in-blue]

bro 2024 was supposed to be the bell riots we're LIVING in a ficiton year rn!

feels so wrong that itll be 2025 soon. fake year. science fiction year

[thedocruby]

The time is upon us 😔

[writergeekrhw]

THE BELL RIOTS

This is just to say the Bell Riots don't take place on August 30th. That's the day Sisko, Dax, and Bashir will have been being arrived* in San Francisco. The Riots will be September 1-3, 2024.

That said, instead of rioting, today I honored Gabriel Bell's heroics with a donation to a couple of charities that help the unhoused and the hungry. I've donated to the Hollywood Food Coalition and the SF Marin Food Bank:

Hollywood Food Coalition Building Community since 1987 - Hollywood Food Coalition (hofoco.org)

San Francisco-Marin Food Bank - Every $1 Donated Provides 2 Meals‎ (sfmfoodbank.org)

I made the donations "In Memory of Gabriel Bell." Please consider honoring Gabriel Bell with donations of your own to these or other organizations that helped the unhoused.

Thank you! Stay safe out there. Live long and prosper!

*Tense is tricky for time travel.

[snazzycicada]

Today is the day and Gov Newsome is literally clearing out homeless encampments rn

Benjamin Sisko & Julian Bashir Talk About The Political Climate of the Early 2020′s in Past Tense, Part I

Original Dialogue:

SISKO: Don’t be so sure. One of the main complaints against the Sanctuary Districts was overcrowding. It got to the point where they didn’t care how many people were in here. They just wanted to keep them out of sight. BASHIR: And once they were out of sight, what then? I mean, look at this man. There’s no need for that man to live like that. With the right medication, he could lead a full and normal life. SISKO: Maybe in our time. BASHIR: Not just in our time. There are any number of effective treatments for schizophrenia, even in this day and age. They could cure that man now, today, if they gave a damn. SISKO: It’s not that they don’t give a damn, Doctor. It’s that they’ve given up. The social problems they face seem too enormous to deal with. BASHIR: That only makes things worse. Causing people to suffer because you hate them is terrible, but causing people to suffer because you have forgotten how to care? That’s really hard to understand. SISKO: They’ll remember. It’ll take some time and it won’t be easy, but eventually people in this century will remember how to care.

[ladyylavenderrr]

Julian Bashir, Benjamin Sisko and Jadzia Dax are traveling back in time to today, the 30th of August, 2024, just in time for the bell riots in just 2 days!!! Happy Past Tense Day to all who celebrate!

[angelholme]

V, V, V — Day 7 : Bell

Despite the appalling spelling in my introduction, today’s word is Bell, not Belll — partly because I am not sure that Belll is really a word (although isn’t everything that is written down a word? I mean who gets to decide what a “real word” is? Given every word had to be used for the first time at some point in history, it stands to reason that every word written down must be a real word or has the potential to be so. But — as always — I digress).

In twenty twenty four there was a watershed moment in the history of humanity. The sanctuary district in San Francisco was an overcrowded slum where people who were considered to be the dregs of humanity were sent — they were sent there and were left there to die. There was a pretence that they were looked after — that the government would take care of them, would find them work, would provide them healthcare, would ensure that their needs would be met, but it was bollocks.

They were placed in the sanctuary districts, and they were forgotten. They were the modern day gulags, but they were worse, because everyone knew what they were and everyone rationalised them as being “for the greater good”.

Then, on the 1st of September, a man named Gabriel Bell (no relation) triggered a riot in the San Francisco district that not only got that district shutdown, but got all of them shut down, and ensured a sea change throughout the whole of 21st century America — it ensured that no one, no matter who they were, what their station in life was, or their identity was, would be left behind or forgotten.

It set the stage for a creation of a whole new world, and a brighter future.

But the most interesting part of this is that Gabriel Bell wasn’t even his real name — he accomplished all this under the name of someone else. History remembers him as Gabriel Bell, and his real name was something else.

Which — for me — is the most interesting part. Because being able to do things under a cloak of anonymity is possibly the greatest gift the internet has given me, and the greatest gift it has given a lot of people.

You may have gathered from other things I’ve written that I am not a fan of the free press. As a concept it is a good idea — having a press corps that can question the government and hold them to account is essential in a functional democracy.

However in practice……… the free press we have is truly shitty, and a total waste of space. For a start half of it doesn’t question the government or hold it to account — it has its collective tongues so far up the arses of the government that it wouldn’t know how to question it if its existence depended on it.

And for a second their use of “free speech” seldom, if ever, is used to question or hold the government to account. Instead it is used to persecute and destroy the lives of generally innocent individuals for no other reason than it makes money.

The “gentlemen of the press” are complete waste of spaces — feckless shits who should really either find proper jobs (I believe there is a shortage of bin men and women — it would be a step up for them) or just be honest about what they do and stop calling themselves “journalists” or “newspaper people” and call themselves what they are — “turds in human form”

I do have a point to all this, if you are curious — it is just random abuse for the fun of it (as fun as that would be).

Being able to be anonymous on the web means I can post things like this, and other points of view, without becoming targets of various people.

It also means that other people, other groups of people, can ask questions, or post stories, without their real identities becoming public. Which I realise sounds like they might have something to hide, but there are people in this world who — if parts of their lives become public — would get the shit beaten out of them, or would legitimately be killed. By their family. By their parents. By their friends.

And you might think I’m talking about “honour killings”, but no — I am talking about people in western countries — in the good old US of A.

Anonymity is a cloak that protects people on the web to ensure they can talk about their life without their lives being in danger.

And if Gabriel Bell can use it to create a whole new world, then I think it is only fair we can use it to protect the lives of those who need it in our version of our century.

Wouldn’t you say?