California, the Organic Democracy
My first worry was that I would be late. My appointment with Jessica Finlay was scheduled for three hours after dawn. Since clocks were among the many things banned in California, I planned to get there with plenty of time to spare, in case my estimation of the time turned out to be wrong. To add to the difficulty, California didn’t use standardized time, so an hour just meant one twelfth of the time between dawn and dusk. It being winter, that interval was shorter than the standard hour used in most places I had visited. When the Californians had revamped their country after the war, they hadn’t taken any half measures.
My second worry was that I wouldn’t be able to find the place. The streets still had names, but there were no signs or maps of course, so I had to ask for directions. And since I was asking for directions to the San Jose Social Hall, which any local knew by heart, this immediately marked me as a foreigner, or at the very least someone from out of town. And my accent, manner of dress, and clean-shaven face were more than enough to reveal that I was not simply from the next town over. From the way they gawked at me I quickly learned that this world’s California didn’t get many visitors.
Thirty-five years ago, in the aftermath of a nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact that left the remnants of the US government largely powerless, the people of California had formed a new country where writing, telephones, computers, and a whole host of other things were banned. I was here to find out why.
I had been strip-searched upon stepping out of the portal to make sure I wasn’t carrying any contraband. The customs officer had seemed amused that I was visiting his country. He smirked as he recited the list of things I wasn’t allowed to say or do during my stay. At the end he added, “And that’s just what I’ve been told. California’s laws are always changing, so anything I just said may be obsolete. Good luck.” I nodded grimly, thanked him for his help, and began the long walk to the Social Hall to meet Finlay.
I made it with plenty of time to spare. As I waited alone in the conference room for what must have been two hours - two standard hours, that is - I began to dread that I was in the wrong place, or that Finlay had cancelled our appointment. Finally, the door burst open and in walked a tall, heavily tattooed white woman in a pink tank top and tattered denim shorts. Around her stood four bodyguards who carried automatic rifles but to my surprise were similarly casually dressed. “I’m Jessica Finlay,” she said with a cautious half-smile. “And you must be Mr. Aguaribay Chaná.”
“An honor to meet you,” I said, returning her half-smile. I extended my hand for her to shake, but to my surprise, she pulled me in for a tight hug instead. I hadn’t been briefed on that custom, I thought regretfully. But then again, the reports coming out of California had been so contradictory that perhaps I could be forgiven for not knowing what I would encounter.
She sat down across from me at the small conference table, while the guards remained standing. “I’m sorry you had to wait for so long. I got interrupted by an assembly on the way over, and I felt like I had to do something, so I helped adjudicate.” I opened my mouth to ask for details about this “assembly” but before I could speak, she asked if I would like anything to drink.
“Just water, please,” I said. She asked one of the guards to fetch us a water and a beer. Once again, I prepared to ask her about the assembly, but again she preempted me with another question of her own, this time asking about my family. I didn’t like talking about my family, but I knew I would have to humor her desire to make small talk before we could get to the interview proper.
At last, a gap in the conversation allowed me to ask a question of my own. “So, would you mind telling me some more about this assembly that you adjudicated? I must admit I’m rather ignorant on California politics."
“Of course,” she replied with a proud smile. “Assemblies are the backbone of California’s organic justice system. Instead of having courtroom trials like other countries do, with all their pedantic rules and rituals, here in California we listen to our hearts when deciding legal matters. When someone is accused of a crime, they typically arrange to meet their accuser at a designated time and place. It has to be a public area, so that anyone who wants to help decide the case can participate. After they decide who’s innocent and who’s guilty, the people carry out the sentence, whether that be probation, imprisonment, or death. All of this is done democratically, without any reliance on mountains of paperwork and executive meddling.”
“Interesting,” I said. “But as I understand, you helped resolve the case you encountered today. And you are, as I recall, a member of the San Jose city council.”
“And so why doesn’t that count as executive meddling?” she interrupted, taking the words out of my mouth. “You see, I would have happily let the people resolve the case themselves except for one little thing. As soon as they set eyes on me, they begged me to intervene. It would have been a breach of democracy not to. They were at a deadlock, with the crowd split down the middle and the two sides starting to throw punches when I walked up. If I hadn’t stepped in, we could have had a massacre on our hands.”
“And did everyone accept your judgment?”
“Reluctantly. A good compromise leaves everyone unsatisfied, right?”
“Do these assemblies often escalate to violence?”
At that, she stopped smiling. “Is governing not an inherently violent art? That is no less true of democratic government than it is of a tyrannical one. A little blood spilled in the name of justice is by far preferable to pacifism in the service of despotism.”
I wondered if that was what she told the relatives of those killed in California’s street fights. Finlay looked up at one of her bodyguards, who was staring down at me with a menacing look. I sensed I should change the subject.
“So tell me a little about some of California’s other distinctive policies.”
“The ban on writing, you mean? That’s the one people always ask about. Well, writing is just one manifestation of a very deep, but very simple problem. Dehumanization. You do know about the war, right?” I nodded. “Good. That war, that wiped out half the planet and left the other half scrambling for food and shelter, happened because people forgot who they were. They gave up their humanity in service of other ideals. Communism, capitalism, liberalism, nationalism, you name it. Those ideals did not save them. Instead, their zeal blinded them so that they forgot the most basic truth. That we are human creatures and must always be treated as such.”
“And how does writing enter the picture?”
“Writing, Mr. Chaná, is one of the oldest forms of dehumanization. It takes the beautiful, organic, and deeply personal human voice and reduces it to something anonymous and mechanistic. Writing is the tool of the coward. When we refuse to communicate face to face, we give up some of our humanity in exchange for convenience. And look where that led us.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “I don’t expect to change your position on this, Ms. Finlay, but as a writer myself, I’m inclined to disagree. I think that while there is an inherent danger in writing, it also gives us the opportunity to preserve the knowledge of previous generations. And that is something that can truly save lives, when it comes to medical knowledge.”
Finlay nodded impatiently. I took it she had heard this argument before. “There are some fruits that, no matter how sweet they may taste, we must abstain from.”
“Was there much opposition when this policy was first implemented?”
“There was the usual fear of change,” she shrugged, “But apart from a few misguided folks, the people of California saw what was necessary and made the transition quite amicably.”
I sensed she wasn’t being honest with me, but I did my best to hide my suspicion lest she decide I was too dangerous to be let out of there alive. I asked a few more questions, and got the same rehearsed speeches as answers, but my mind was already jumping ahead to my meeting with Alicia Jiménez across the border in Mexico City. I thanked Finlay for her time, took a taxi to the airport, and boarded the first available flight.
Ms. Jiménez had been a philosophy professor at Stanford before the war. When the new California government took over, she stayed in the Bay Area for a few years before migrating to Mexico and writing several books that were sharply critical of California, especially of its writing ban and heavy restrictions on speech. One of the first things I asked her was whether the transition to California’s new regime had been as smooth as Finlay had claimed.
“It sounds like she told you a whole lot of bullshit,” Jiménez said with a snort. “The takeover of the so-called Organic Democrats was a time of extreme political violence. God help you if you were any sort of intellectual. They only let me live because I had written an essay on dehumanization before the war that they seemed to like. But they knew that I wasn’t really one of them. My days were numbered when I got out of there.”
Though I already felt pretty confident of the answer, I asked her whether the state run by the Organic Democrats was in fact democratic.
“Hell no. The whole thing is run by a handful of rich families. This Jessica Finlay you talked to was probably from one of them. They had stocked up on food and weapons before the war, and used that to bully everyone into submission. It was either join them, be shot, or slowly starve to death as the nuclear winter set in.”
“And why is it you think that they were so intent on abandoning writing, and phones, and photography, and all that?”
“It started out with the prohibition what they called seditious literature, which they said was an emergency measure to last only until we got back on our feet. But instead of easing up once the population started to recover, the censorship only got more intense. Soon they were banning everything but the state-issued news, and even that was done away with as the party got more and more paranoid. As for radio, television, phones, and all that, they had stopped working when we got bombed, and so the party simply chose not to repair them.”
“Do you think there is any hope that California will change?”
“I certainly hope so. They seem to shrug off the trade sanctions placed on them since they aren’t big fans of commerce anyways. And as long as they don’t invade anyone, the rest of the world seems content to let them suffer in their in their miserable little state. But I haven’t given up on the people of California. I’ve started a program here that teaches California refugees how to read and write, in English and Spanish, and helps them get jobs here. Most of the children who come through our program have never seen a book or a TV in their lives. It breaks my heart. And, of course, I continue to write about my experiences and those of other refugees.”
I wished her good luck and made a donation to her program, and said farewell.
“Thank you, Mr. Chaná, and good luck to you as well.”
Cigarettes do make sense. There’s a reason they’re core to prison economies.