TAT 2

This isn’t a record review, but an update on a webseries I’m writing that has gotten good reviews from the Blacklist, a top script hosting site. It’s SciFi and satire, but the Blacklist takes it way too seriously. If it were serious, I’d be advocating the violent overthrow of the US government, and I do not want that to happen. If there is a revolution, let it be non-violent.

Take A Trip, the first season, was about three college students, who through the magic of cell phone time/space machines, go back to 1968 and learn how to be better revolutionaries. The modern US is a right wing dictatorship led by a Trump-like figure, Lambert. Opposing him are the Rainmakers, a non-violent version of the Weather Underground. Once the '68 people believe the 2019 people (I chose '68 because it was a turning point in the civil rights and anti-war movements), they time travel to 2019 to overthrow Lambert. They make a revolution with the phones, selling them with the slogan "Buy our phone, make a revolution," a nice joke about consumer culture and capitalism. Many people did buy them, starting a mass movement.

Take A Trip 2, the second season, takes place after the 2019 revolution. Lambert, his family, and Sense, the insane vice president who thinks he’s Jesus and walks around with his arms outstretched halfway, his head tilted to the side, like he’s a human cross, which is what Pence deserves, are on trial, and are found guilty of treason for plunging the US into a right wing dictatorship and a Russian satellite. They get life in prison without parole.

The '68 people go back to the 60s, armed with blueprints for today’s computers and phones. They meet up with 60s Rainmakers, the

Black Panthers, and Gay Liberation Front, and together they overthrow Nixon. There are so many parallels between the late 60s and today. Nixon is just like Trump. What if today’s tech had been around in 1968? What if the right never comes to power, the US goes social democratic, and is truly tolerant, diverse and inclusive?

I can’t march or actively protest anymore because of arthritis, but I am still enough of an activist to make people think. A good activist does that, and making people think is the first step to getting them involved. That's why I wrote this script.

In the 60s, if the US had not had the civil rights movement, or any of the rights movements, what would the US be like? We’d be terrible. Make all the boomer jokes you want, but I fail to see what’s wrong with a generation trying to give everyone their rights and freedoms, stopping a war that never should have been fought, and bringing down Nixon. The US is the way it is today because of the 60s, for better or worse, and today's activists take the right lessons from that time. If Trump is overthrown at the polling places next year, the 60s will triumph once again, and we’ll be free again.

Andrea Weiss