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# A Tour of a Better World I was half-considering publishing this as a whole article, but something about this doesn't sit well with me. It feels a little too preachy, a little too ham-fisted, and frankly I don't want to be accused of co-opting a racial justice movement for change that, while probably addressing the root cause, is also kinda a little too broad and scatter-gunned for right now. Plus also, wow, that would be a looooot of art for me to draw. So instead of letting this waste away on my hard drive I'll just upload it here. --- (EXT: Outside a news station building) Hello! My name is Susan Thompson, news correspondent for WXYZ, and today is June 4, 2032. For this special I'll be guiding you through our city, New Delta. On the surface it looks like nothing special, but compared to what we had even 10 or 20 years ago, I can't help but feel like even the most uninteresting community is full of excitement. We'll start our journey today by taking public transportation from the news station here to downtown. (Susan walks away from station over to the bus stop) The public transit here in New Delta is completely free of charge, as are all public services. You simply walk on and a few minutes later you're at your destination, or at least a lot closer to it. This is far from a new idea, various bus systems back in the 2010s were experimenting with the idea, including Logan, UT and ???. (View of city transit map) Public transportation in New Delta covers the vast majority of people, places, and things. You really can go anywhere. And the busses run very frequently as well, as most of the city depends on them to get from place to place. (Back to street) Of course, cars, trucks, taxis, and other specialist vehicles still exist, along with bicycles and scooters. But that's what they are: specialist. (B-roll of bus maintenance people) Most people find that letting a trained professional take care of driving and maintaining the bus is a much better use of their time and labor than having every house individually own, maintain, and operate their own vehicles. And because the busses go everywhere, and the bikes go everywhere *else*, nobody feels like their freedom is restricted. (https://twitter.com/InvisibleUp/status/1266756414225231872) It's much safer too; statistics from Michigan from 2008-2018 show only *eight* deaths involving busses containing three or more passengers. Compare that to the 300,000 fatalities from privately-owned vehicles during the same timeframe. Why Michigan? They had the best records for the era. (Bus pulls up) Oh hey, here's my ride. (Shot of Susan getting seated) And the busses even come with an overhead compartment for your bags. Very handy! Now, I want to take a minute to talk about the layout of our city. Long ago, our small city used to be covered in what are affectionately called "shroads" - street roads. (Stock shot of downtown street) Streets are areas where people meet up and do things, or where people live, or generally where people are dominant. (Stock shot of cars on highway) Roads, conversely, are where cars dominate. Roads are primarily designed to get people from point A to point B. You're not supposed to be out and walking on a road; it's too dangerous and there's nothing for people out here. (Stock shot of strip mall hell) The shroad was the worst of both worlds. It was a street where cars dominated. A street that was impossible to cross without serious risk of injury or death. A street where nobody roamed. But also, it was a road where people dominated. Where cars were constantly turning in and out and causing many, many traffic jams and accidents. Shroads aren't safe. They aren't efficient. And we decided, a decade or two ago, that we can do better than shroads. (Map view again) Our local city government made the decision to separate streets and roads. Streets are where businesses go, roads are where vehicles go. This wasn't a snap decision; this was phased in. By phasing in public transit, park-and-ride options, and improving the appeal of downtown with public spaces and low-cost mixed-density housing, we were able to move people to living happier and more sustainably. Yes, we lost tax revenue from the strip malls... but considering how much better everyone ended up being off, that was a risk we were willing to take. (Susan gets off bus, is downtown.) Here we are, downtown New Delta! It's a walkable, green, mixed-use *street*. It's where people just hang out. There's no cops here to shoo people off, there's no people haggling for money, there's no cars running people over. People can just go and sit on a bench with their friends and drink tea. Some of the shops we have down here include grocery, bicycle repair, offices, restaurants, hardware stores, library branches, music stores, all things people need and use. How we allocate shops down here is a bit interesting for those not used to the process: we vote! People can submit bids for shops they want to open downtown, and people vote on who gets to occupy any vacancies. We're slowly working on expanding our buildings, so that everyone that can open a shop is able to, but for now this system works fine. Much better than just selling it to the highest bidder. There are no pawn shops or check cashing stores here. Only things that people need. Our community gets a direct say in who gets to occupy our home. (A couple starts arguing at each other, very angrily) Ah, oh, looks like a fight is breaking out. This is a good time to call for emergency services. Now, back before the 2020s, we would have dispatched a police office to arrest the people. But during the 2020 Black Lives Matters riots, we stopped and thought about how that didn't really *fix* the problem. It just silenced it. Nowadays, we use much less barbaric methods. We have trained social workers that de-escalate the situation and find a way for the two parties to compromise and forgive each other, and to think about how to prevent this moving forwards. Perhaps that might involve a therapy appointment, or continued visitations from the social worker. Or it might involve giving a homeless person a stable room in a shelter that they can stay in until they can get on their feet again. (Social worker is seen discussing with the two angry people) And it works very well. Instead of condemning people to a life in prison, we solve problems at their root. We focus on restorative justice instead of revenge fantasies. We help our community heal and strengthen, instead of tearing each other apart over simple misunderstandings. Also, we save a *lot* of out city's budget by cutting out the police. (LA budget, 2020) For a silly example, the 2020 budget for Los Angeles dedicated $1.189 billion to the police department, by far the lion's share of the budget. By re-investing this money in restorative and healing community services, we've reduced crime and made everyone's lives substantially better. (Susan walks into a grocery store) So here's a grocery store. It's no big box store, but it doesn't have to be. All the specialized stores you'd need are right next to each other, staffed by experts in their field. It's like an outdoor mall, kinda, except less sleazy and over-commercialized. People actually *live* here. This is home for our community. Anyways, fun fact about this grocery store: it's actually a food bank! All food here is offered for free. We, as a community, have decided that the benefit of making sure every person can have a dignified meal far, far outweighs the cost of staffing a small grocery store and filling it with food. Our community collectively pays for the groceries in advance, with their taxes, and then they're distributed to everyone who needs them. Humane, efficient, a good idea really. Plus, because everyone in this area relies on this as their primary grocery store, the food here is top-notch. This isn't the "poor people option", this is just *a very good option*. Oh, and the grocery store has little recipe cards you can take with you. And we have cooking classes at the community center every Sunday. So everyone can learn how to cook, too. I enjoy that. (Susan walks out and goes to the library) That does lead into the next building I want to show you: the library. The library is a very nice place for our community. It's staffed with experts that can help you find information on anything you could ask for. Recipe books, car repair manuals, hobby ideas, something fun to read or watch or play, so on and so forth. It's the information hub of our city. Our library also has a big internet presence too, for when you have a tricky question at work and you need some pointers as to where to start looking for answers. It's also a hub for *stuff*, too. Much like our books and DVDs, our library loans out other items too. Some are hobbyist items, like specialized musical instruments or science kits that can be used as a good try-before-you-buy. Others are more practical. I bet you never thought you could check out a shovel or a drill or a multimeter from your library, eh? But we find that people tend to use these sorts of items very rarely, but when they do they *need* them. Instead of forcing everyone to buy and store these items for these rare situations, we just have a few here that can be checked out and used for a little bit. By pooling our community's resources, we're able to improve things for everyone at a lower cost than having everyone do it individually. Same with the public transit, and the free groceries. This doesn't even cost that much to implement, really. Especially compared to the old police budget, oh jeez no. (Susan gets back on the bus) Let's take a visit to somewhere else: a factory. This factory in particular makes hammers. It's not a very large factory, but we're not a very large city either. (Jump-cut to Susan outside factory) Now this factory is interesting for one, very special reason: This factory is co-operatively owned. No single individual owns the factory, and no single individual profits off of its output. The factory is owned by all, the profits are shared by all. Everyone has a voice and a sense of ownership in their workplace, much like they have a say in what downtown looks like. (Susan enters factory) How? The employees *vote* on who their managers and bosses are. Traditionally, it used to be that employees were hired by a single manager, and just as easily could be fired. That employee's coworkers had no say in who they worked with, what they worked on, how they were compensated, or how long they worked for. But *here*? That's all up for vote. It's *their* workplace, after all. Now, naturally, they do vote some people into positions of authority, to handle financials and customers and production management and finding new hires and such. But this is always a voluntary agreement between the workers and those with authority. Everyone has the right to say no. (Cut to worker) WORKER: Yeah, the co-op thing, I find this wonderful. Compared to my old job, I'm happier, I'm paid more, I'm more productive... and also I'm not constantly paranoid that the big scary management is gonna fire them at a moment's notice. SUSAN: But what if someone screws up here? What *does* a person get fired for? WORKER: We handle punishments here much like we do on the streets now. We figure out *why* the mistake was made, and we work to correct that and ensure it never happens again. That said, if someone is just actively unpleasant to work with, we're fine with kicking them out. It's a consensus decision to take that action, though. SUSAN: Thank you (Susan, back outside in a park somewhere) So, that's our little city. That's the world we live in. Years ago we thought that a practical utopia like this was impossible. But we're here now. And I'm very proud of our community for making that possible. For those communities out there that are struggling still, please, remain hopeful. It takes a lot of effort from a lot of different directions, but you can get to this point one day. A very important place to start is simply volunteering. Your community likely already has a library, or a food bank. Volunteer there! Help the library teach community classes, help the food bank stock shelves and get food. You can even start on a smaller scale. Get to know your neighbors. Know their names, know where they work, hang out with them every once in a while. Offer them some help with something you're good at, if you're willing to do so. If you really want to go the extra mile, you can get involved in local politics. Voting, of course, but also sitting in at meetings, using your voice to propose and explain the direction that *you* want to see your town move in. This is how we got the public transit, and the grocery store, and the walkable downtown. At your workplace, you can start unionizing. Get to know your coworkers, stand up collectively when your boss doesn't support you, fight for a sense of ownership of where you spend your working hours, fight for a living wage, fight for your rights. There's many unions out there, but I've always liked what the IWW does. And lastly, and most importantly, use your right to protest. If there's something in your community that is *actively hurting you*, making you feel unsafe or marginalized, organize with those who agree with you and take a stand against it. Take a stand against over-militarized police officers, take a stand against monopolies, take a stand against excessive gentrification, bad water quality, insufficient homeless shelters, etc. etc. etc. Rioting is the nuclear option, but it guarantees your voice is heard. Anywho, that concludes our tour. Thanks for watching! --- Okay, cute narrative device aside, I wrote this to make clear that we absolutely *can* create a better future than the one we live in. We do not need police, we *especially* do not need police brutality, and we don't need to silence the voices of black and other marginalized people. We can live in a community that is *owned* not by outsiders with cash to flaunt around, but by the people who live there. We deserve to make every town and city feel like home. There's lots of ideas flying around on how to live without police officers. [Here's a good tweet thread of some good ones](https://twitter.com/softlyfike/status/1268037109413076993). Regardless, I believe that finding some solution is imperative, as the police as they stand right now are nothing but a waste of resources and a menace to the people. We can and should investigate alternatives. My little tour of an ideal future town here is just one idea of many. Perhaps we can reach this one day, or something similar. At the very least, we should strive towards something better than we have right now. Because, frankly, what we have right now is so, so indescribably awful. Every person should be equal, and every person should get the support they need to live their best life. I stand in full support of the Black Lives Matter movement.