This was originally posted on Fedi with the content warning ‘this is very stupid solarpunk bullshit but let me have and hold it for a moment’.
It is two years after the revolution ended and the last of the Union guard has left.
Lara bikes down through the Wiggle and down the urban desert. She stops in the middle of the street, looking at an empty storefront being repurposed for food redistribution. Someone with a PGE patch sewn on their shirt shoulder is setting up mismatched. It is largely vestigial, but the cachet of the power brigade carries.
She really isn’t looking forward to pulling her bike up Nob Hill to get all the way to her volunteer spot, but, hey, what are you gonna do. City of the seven hills and all that bullshit. Better here than past the state line.
- Ultraconservatives seize power
- After dozens of government officials on the line of presidential succession mysteriously disappear, federal government is thrown into disarray
- California reacts by electing a communist-socialist coalition to state assembly
- Government reacts by clamping down on the ability of the Californian state to operate independently. California effectively secedes in response
- 7-9 months of violence and chaos. Internal borders close despite other West Coast states protesting. A universal dignity program becomes universal, building a resource network to provide food, shelter and necessities to all Californians, powered by expropriations by fleeing rich and companies. Anarchist groups on the ground step up to maintain and ensure distribution. The assault and occupation relents after the resulting worldwide instability forces the former
- Washington State, having elected its own hard left government, joins California in solidarity. Union blockade, attempting to prevent red state expatriation into the new Pacific edge, essentially ejects the state from the Union.
- After uneasy negotiations, Union pressure and the possibility of a logistics free fall also cause Oregon to become part of the Pacific edge, retaining a more centrist government.
- The resource network and Union blockade basically remove the relevance of the dollar from the Pacific edge, winding down the capitalist macroeconomy in the region.
I want also to note here that I consider this an utopian outcome. As utopian as I dare to dream anything to be.