Kerri Rossi — United States
Interviewer: Jessica Rogers, United States of America
Interviewee: Kerri Rossi, Georgia State Senator, United States of America
Jessica: Hello Kerri and thank you so much for taking time for your very busy schedule to participate in this project. We’re especially happy to have you here because of your perspective from behind the stage of transition, so to speak.
Kerri: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Jessica, and a welcome change of pace. And I completely agree with the motives for this project. I think it’s important so I’m very happy to be included.
Jessica: You have a unique perspective on some of the nuts and bolts of transition, so I’d like to focus mostly on that, rather than the format we usually use. So I won’t ask you to describe your childhood and life up to transition, beyond just a very short summary. Is that OK?
Kerri: Yes, of course.
Jessica: So can you give us a brief summary of your background?
Kerri: Sure. My father owned and ran a large hardware store in Columbus that actually competed pretty well with the big chains. People like local businesses and he managed to maintain his prices attractive enough to keep people coming back. My mother was a defense attorney for her whole professional career. Oh, they’re still with us, but they moved to a retirement community in Arizona and are enjoying their golden years. So I guess you could say we were middle to upper middle class when I was growing up.
I went to good public schools and got good enough grades and SAT scores to get into several universities that I wanted. I wanted to be an attorney like my mother, so I went to the University of Georgia Law School in Athens. My mom always used to share with me about some of her cases, her frustrations, and her triumphs and it fascinated me.
I’ve also always been musically inclined. I was in a couple of bands in high school and later in college. I especially love jazz, blues, and acid rock. But I never thought of it as a career or main occupation. Music was always like my second love. Law was my first.
I went through pre-law pretty easily, but once I was in law school, I had to stretch to my limits and then some. Needless to say, music went on an indefinite pause. But I graduated in the top ten percent of my class. The way things were then, though, it took me three tries to pass the bar.
I started out as a public defender and had some good successes, enough to impress judges and prosecutors. More than one prosecutor told me I made their job a lot harder.
All along, I really tried to keep a sense of integrity. For example, I would try hard to avoid using cheap and unethical tricks. I had a hard time dealing with clients who I knew or suspected were guilty of serious crimes where people were hurt. I had to give the most vigorous defense, but inside I’d be hoping to lose. Of course, I reveled when I got an innocent defendant acquitted.
I also got more and more of a clear picture of the inadequacies of the justice system. I began to have some ideas of how some of them might be remedied.
Eventually I switched to being a prosecutor in order to have both perspectives and a bigger picture. I started to be on fire to change the world, or at least the state of Georgia. That’s what ultimately led me to get into politics.
Jessica: That was perfect. Can you give us a brief history of your political career?
Kerri: Well, first I did some research, since I really didn’t have a background in politics. I wanted to know what I’d be getting into, and I wanted to be prepared.
I decided to start out locally, so I ran for city council as a centrist Democrat since my ideas were closer to more of theirs than to the Republicans. This was before both parties went through their realignment to become the Reform Democrats and the New Republicans. Also, the Republicans had still not gone far enough to let go of their theocratic and authoritarian agendas with which I vehemently disagreed.
On my second attempt, I was nominated to run against incumbent Republican Ronald Berman. Conditions were in my favor. Columbus in particular and Muscogee County in general have traditionally been Democratic leaning, but by a relatively small margin. Ron had been elected two terms ago on the appeal of his platform of bringing property taxes down if not eliminating them and eliminating sales tax and other taxes. He had not been successful, beyond lowering taxes for big corporations and billionaires. People were fed up.
He had also continued the longstanding Republican attempts to privatize everything he could privatize, institute mandatory Christian prayers in public schools, ban all forms of birth control, and expand the list of banned books along with making it a felony to possess them at all. Even most conservatives were getting tired of this kind of extremism. As the child of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father and having grown up with both traditions side by side, I had, and still have, no tolerance for having any religion being shoved down my throat or anyone else’s!
So, my platform of raising taxes on corporations and top earners while lowering it for most other people, protecting separation of church and state, reversing book bans, protecting teachers, librarians, and all public servants from harassment and vigilante intimidation, and increasing protections for consumers and employees found a growingly receptive audience. Of course at the local level, the impact would be small, but it would be a start.
I made sure to avoid any rhetoric that lent itself to being misinterpreted. My husband is a great help in that regard. He’s a perfectionist, which comes in handy when he finds almost every conceivable way an opponent could twist my words or misinterpret them. Sometimes it drives me up the wall, but he’s stopped me from stepping in it more than once.
I made a point of focusing on the issues, refusing to vilify my opponent and his party. I also openly spoke about my flaws which I knew Ron would try to use against me, before he had a chance to do so. And for perhaps the first time, I was able to reverse the script. I was the Democrat running on a platform of ending government overreach, using a lot of the same kind of verbiage that Republicans had used for decades, which put Ron on the defensive.
Of course I didn’t get much corporate funding for my campaign, but I made my campaign ads low-budget, hard-hitting, and to the point. No frills. Mostly just looking the camera in the eye and speaking to the people like I would sing to them if I were performing a song. I did more with less.
I defeated Ron fifty-five percent to forty-nine percent, with the remaining six percent going to independents.
Jessica: How was your first taste of being a legislator?
Kerri: It was intense and humbling at first, but I had a lot of good people around me and I refused to be discouraged. It was a steep learning curve but I’m one stubborn broad.
A number of my new colleagues tried to school me on how to “play the game.” I listened and learned but made my own decisions. For example, I refused to support a bill that would allow religious school social clubs to hold their own prayer meetings on campus after school hours but make it illegal to make any religious activity compulsory or to be backed by the school, all of which I wanted, but as it came through committee, it also expanded the list of banned books and criminalized parents who gave their children access to privately owned copies. That was a compromise I wasn’t willing to make.
But on the other hand, I was more willing than many of my fellow Democratic council members to work with Republicans when I agreed with something they wanted to do, or at least saw some merit in it.
I ended up developing a reputation as a maverick with integrity, an outspoken and a fair dealer but hard to rein in or influence to play along with things. I could live with that.
I was able to accomplish a decent amount of what I hoped to do, which is all one can hope for in politics, especially in as polarized an environment as we had then.
Jessica: I’ve read your track record of course, and it’s very impressive. So what is your current role?
Kerri: I’m a State Senator from Columbus, in Muscogee County.
Jessica: When and why did you decide to trade municipal politics for the shark tank of the state legislature?
Kerri: After a couple of terms on city council, I felt ready to tackle bigger issues and stretch my wings, so to speak. I had a sense of wanting to make a bigger difference. That was sort of my plan all along. I always saw myself as a State Senator, like that was my niche. But I had to learn the ropes, get the hang of it, and get to know the people and let them know me so I could have a better chance of being more effective.
Jessica: How long had you been a State Senator when transition happened, and how old were you?
Kerri: Transition happened when I was thirty-eight years old and in the beginning of my second term.
Jessica: So you’re a seasoned legislator by now.
Kerri: You could say that. I’m glad I had those two years under my belt when transition happened. I think that forced me, and everyone else, to grow and exceed ourselves in a very short time!
Jessica: Were you aware that it was likely to happen at any time? Had you read The Cure?
Kerri: Absolutely! Just like I had read Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky, Daisaku Ikeda, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Milton Friedman, and many others. I kept hearing about it and of course I followed the series of transitions happening around the world. If it was the seed from which such major changes were sprouting, I felt like I had to read it.
Jessica: What were your thoughts after reading it?
Kerri: At first I thought that yes, all the points that it makes are verifiably true and accurate, and thoroughly documented using sources from across every spectrum that all pointed in the same direction. The socioeconomic paradigm dominating most of the world was tragically and unavoidably destructive and unsustainable. But I was a bit skeptical about the underlying premises about human nature and what humans are practically capable of. I also found it very hard to wrap my head around the idea of societies functioning with no form of currency and no kind of hierarchy.
Then I read everything I could about countries that had transitioned. My husband and I took our two children to visit some of those countries as tourists. After Canada transitioned, we tried to spend a week or two a year there to get the feel for how it was developing. It wasn’t easy to get a permit from the State Department to visit Canada by then. The government in Washington was decidedly hostile to the idea of transition. They saw it as a threat to what they called the American way of life, AKA the status quo. They couldn’t forbid citizens from going there outright like they could with North Korea or the Syrian Islamic Republic, but they could sure throw up a mountain of red tape.
It wasn’t dangerous there and Canada wasn’t making any moves towards aggression. They couldn’t find a plausible excuse to forbid travel to Canada, especially after their attempt put a scary face on it via high quality deepfake videos blew up in their face when several whistleblowers released indisputable proof that the videos were fake. They didn’t want credible people to see transitioned Canada and want to have something like it here.
So what they did was create such a labyrinthine miasma of red tape that they thought most people wouldn’t want to bother dealing with it. They were partly right, in the sense that people started sneaking across the border and back, often with the help of Canadian friends and family waiting to receive them at the border, usually on foot but not far from a road. The State Department demanded that Canada patrol the border and send those people back, but the Canadian government just responded with their own version of bureaucratic quicksand for our government to have to wade through.
I’ll admit that a few times we were among those stealth tourists as it was called. It wasn’t illegal per se, and we liked the fact of whom it made uncomfortable.
I was very favorably impressed with what we saw and experienced. My initial skepticism gave way to deepening respect.
Everywhere we went, most people were cordial and open. We could go wherever we wanted and talk to whomever we wanted. We literally could go to any restaurant or distribution center, which usually was in a former store, and pick out anything from electronics to clothing to musical instruments. We were still rung out, but there was no charge for anything, though we did have to show our passports and scan our fingerprints or retinas. We were informed that we could only acquire for our own personal or professional use. We found the quality of every item to be superior to high-end equivalents in the States. That was no surprise since items available in the US from outlets of companies whose parent companies were transitioned were well known for being top quality at bargain basement prices. But our observations disproved the rumors that that high quality was just a gimmick to seed discontent in un-transitioned countries.
We visited a few factories and warehouses to see if rumors and media “documentaries” claiming that massive sweatshops were involved had any basis in fact. No one accompanied us and we made those visits always on the spur of the moment. Rental cars and hotels were, of course, free as well.
What we saw in the factories made our jaws drop. We saw an easygoing but focused environment. People weren’t rushing or hurrying. They were focused intently on their tasks but relaxed. These people seemed to be happy with what they were doing, relaxed but exhibiting industrious professionalism.
On their lunch break, we joined some of the workers at a table and basically interviewed them after telling them where we were from. I told them that I was a lawmaker and wanted to see for myself what this whole transition phenomenon was all about. At the time I was still a city councilwoman so that wasn’t a lie.
We learned that after the first year or year and a half post-transition, the workweek naturally spun down to around twenty hours with only occasional crunches or down weeks when they didn’t need to produce.
This was, as we now know, because the wasteful production of intentionally inferior goods requiring frequent replacement was displaced by production of intentionally superior goods designed to last. Once everyone had enough of what they needed and wanted, factories could run just enough to do a little more than keep up with need due to breakage.
The overall quality of life would have been inconceivable if we hadn’t seen it for ourselves. At one point Raj and I commented to each other that there was something subliminally more relaxed about just being there. Then we realized what it was. We were feeling the absence of the relentless barrage of advertising that we took for granted in the States before transition.
We recorded video, audio, and pictures and gathered countless documents to have on hand when needed to counter some of the rumors, assumptions, and outright fear mongering propaganda that was out there.
It became clear to me that transition would be one of the best things that could happen in our country. But it had little to do with my job as legislator; it would come as a viral swell among our people like a flash mob times a million. By its very nature it couldn’t come from lawmakers and government.
I made contacts with people in Canada, Russia, and other transitioned countries, who made themselves available as advisors and coaches for countries in transition, but they would only come by invitation and as consultants. It would be up to the American people to carry out our transition when we were ready. These advisors and their countries would not meddle in our internal affairs. They would be our Sherpas as we climb the Everest of reconfiguring our society. They would not impose anything on us.
I studied the transitions of various countries. I did my best to understand what the common threads, issues, and challenges were, and equally important, what varied from country to country and culture to culture. I believed it was just a matter of time before the U.S. was ready for transition. At that time, I wanted to be as ready as possible to contribute to the best outcome.
I had to do all of this in secret of course. None of it was illegal or unethical by any means, but my Republican and later my New Republican colleagues were desperately afraid of and opposed to the very concept of transition. Of course they didn’t actually know anything about it, because of fear and propaganda. All they knew was that it would being a fundamental change to our society, and that part of that change was the loss of power, privilege, and wealth. They envisioned it as a rerun of the Bolshevik revolution.
Fear makes people act and think in the craziest, most destructive ways! So, it was prudent for me to keep my research and my thoughts on the matter to myself. Using various precautions like VPN and Tails operating system made it unlikely that I would be easily outed.
By the time I entered the State Senate, I had networked quite a bit. I was in touch with a number of Reform Democrats who were on the same page as me and, believe it or not, a couple of New Republicans who had read The Cure and were open to discussing it in a non-hysterical fashion.
I was also connected with the incredible, if loose, nationwide networking consensus process that was coalescing into a plan for our own transition.
Meanwhile it was business as usual. As a new member of the State Senate, I had yet another learning curve to scale.
Jessica: I wish all of our politicians were as thorough in their research before making important decisions!
Kerri: Yeah, me too!
Jessica: Now let’s get to transition day itself.
Kerri: March 7, a date what will be etched in my memory forever, even if it weren’t a national holiday!
Of course I knew of it in advance. It was a Sunday, which was a nice touch since banks and many businesses would be closed.
Even those who opposed it knew that it was coming. They didn’t know the date or even the year for the most part, thanks to the chumming done by various parties to create enough irrelevant noise traffic to hide the actual consensus traffic, a bit like when the Allies tricked the Germans into thinking that D-Day would happen at Calais instead of Normandy.
There was a virulent movement in Georgia, and in all of the Southern states as well as Texas, Idaho, Arizona and a few other states. It was the old “The South Shall Rise Again” theme, amplified and focused into hysterical proportions. I had little doubt that when Transition came, the Good Old Boys would get violent.
As I said, people in the grip of irrational fear can get pretty crazy. These people knew little to nothing about transition, but they thought they did. Some very wealthy, powerful people with a lot to lose made sure to feed that fire. It wasn’t hard for them to do.
On the chosen day, I came in early along with the other State Senators who knew what was coming. We had sent messages to the rest to invite them to come early to discuss some important issues and a lot of them came because they didn’t know what was up, but they didn’t want something to go through without their hands in it. We started out with the things that were already on the agenda, after answering a few members who asked what’s so important to come in early. We just asked them to be a little patient.
Everybody’s cell phones started ringing more often as the morning progressed. There started to be a feeling of restlessness in the room. Renee Freeman from Atlanta, the most senior Senator who was in on transition, took this moment to explain that very soon there will be a TV broadcast that will explain some very important events currently in progress, and to ask that we all do our best to minimize distractions from our phones as this broadcast will answer most of their questions. She was immediately bombarded with questions.
Renee turned on the big TV in the Senate chamber and tuned it to a news station. The news anchors were present and seemed to be waiting, looking and listening to something happening in real time. The message “Please stand by for an important message.” Scrolled through the chyrons at the bottom of the screen.
“Please, everyone, be patient and stay calm. Things will come clear very soon. We will have our work cut out for us for a while, but what’s coming is good news.”
Then came the declaration that we all know and have studied many times. It was delivered with professionalism and sincerity that inspired trust and confidence. The anchor couldn’t have done a better job.
After that we watched the President’s message urging calm and patience.
There was silence for a few moments while people took it all in. What followed was total chaos. Thunderous applause mixed with the loudest booing I had ever heard. A few Senators even began shoving each other. It was like a scene from a B movie.
The Secretary pounded his gavel and shouted into the microphone, “Please, everyone, come to order! Please come to order!”
This had no effect. Pandemonium continued until a shot rang out. We all froze in shock. Then the Secretary asked, “Is anybody hurt?”
Whoever fired the shot must have fired into the air because no one was hurt. We never did find out who it was, but there were five or six likely suspects.
“The Senate will come to order,” the Secretary said into the microphone. “And there will be no more shooting! I’ve stressed this so many times I’m blue in the face! The rules say no firearms are allowed in here! I’m the first one to defend the Second Amendment, as you all know, but in here we are professionals and if firearms are really necessary, then we’ve lost all vestige of civilization! This is not the Wild West!”
Then several members rushed to the podium and scuffled over the microphone. Senator Harry DiBono ended up with the mic. His face was red and so distorted that I could hardly recognize him. He screamed, “That’s it! This is what we’ve been talking about! This is the globalist communist socialist satanist takeover! They want to indoctrinate our kids with leftist propaganda, and take away our guns and even our money so we’ll all be poor and starving! It’s time to bring back the Confederacy! Who’s with me?”
Then Cindy Gaffigan grabbed the mic from him before he could react and said in a somewhat calmer, but still loud voice, “Senator, you’re talking about treason! You are way out of order!”
Against a background of shouting voices, it was hard to hear. Then Harry grabbed the mic back and said, “We all know you’re a communist and a witch, so what you say is irrelevant! I move for secession and re-establishment of the Confederacy!”
A little over a third of those present raised their hands. Fights broke out. Senator Julie Parke grabbed my arm and yelled in my face, “You’re one of them! I know it!” She dug her nails into the skin on my arm and was shaking me crazily. I had to pry her off of me. We scuffled until someone pulled us apart. I was relieved but she seemed like she really wanted to escalate it.
I heard the Secretary say into the microphone, “Secession from the Union is not a legitimate motion and is unconstitutional. It will not be taken up, besides which, you can see that it would not have passed anyway. That also means that we New Republicans do not support your treason. We all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of Georgia. I urge Senator DiBono to retract his illegitimate motion. Otherwise you stand to be removed from office and charged with treason.” The Secretary was a New Republican, but he was frequently under fire due to his centrist philosophy, which upset the far-right portion of his party.
“We don’t need your support or approval, all of you RINO’s and liberals!” That was Tom Lehrer, the most extreme of the extremists, who had lobbied to pass a bill forbidding the teaching of the Big Bang and a round earth. He was also pushing a narrative that Hitler and the Nazis were actually good humanitarians, that the Holocaust was a fabrication of Jewish globalists and that Hitler tried to protect the Jews from the real villain, Stalin. He wanted that to be taught in schools. I always had to take a few deep breaths whenever he opened his dumpster fire of a mouth.
With that statement, all of the secessionists stormed out of the room. We could hear them outside, sounding for all the world like a lynch mob.
Jessica: I bet you were terrified!
Kerri: Yes, but not so much for myself as for my family and for the people of Georgia. And for that matter, for the whole country.
Jessica: So what happened after that in the Senate chamber?
Kerri: We resolved to do everything in our power to keep Georgia in the Union and keep Georgians safe. We had anticipated this so we already had some contingency plans roughed out.
In the middle of this, the Governor called on the main phone and was put on loudspeaker for all to hear. He basically told us that Georgia was leaving the Union to join the Confederacy and that we were hereby dissolved and disbanded. The Secretary stated that since the Governor is committing treason, we don’t recognize his authority and we will be holding interim elections to choose his replacement. The now ex-Governor said “We’ll see about that!” He hung up the phone.
From that moment, there were two Georgias: one a state of the United States of America and one claiming to be a state in the New Confederacy.
We communicated with the House, which had had a similar crisis. Our next step was extreme but necessary: we put in a call to the President of the United States, who was half expecting, half dreading the call. He was opposed to transition and had put a lot of energy and taxpayer resources into trying to prevent and turn public opinion against transition, but he was enough of a political animal to realize that with him a lame duck in an election year, his actions would determine how he would be remembered forever. A successful and smooth transition might be against his grain, but it was a lesser evil to him than presiding over the dissolution of the nation and the civil war that would go with it. He had been known to say privately that if he couldn’t stop transition from happening, dealing with it wouldn’t be his headache. So we knew that he would act to preserve the Union.
We were right. He sounded overwhelmed, which was understandable because he’d been getting calls from all of the Southern states, Florida, Texas, Idaho, Arizona, Tennessee and others. He had us on a conference call with several other state legislatures and three or four governors. He assured us that he has already invoked the Insurrection Act and that troops are deploying “as we speak,” and that includes bases in states involved in the insurrection.
His instructions were to first and foremost declare a state of emergency and tell people to shelter in place until further notice. He advised to activate the Emergency Broadcasting System but also use every possible medium including the Internet. We were to identify which local governments were trustworthy and which were a danger and coordinate with the National Guard, law enforcement and emergency responders. He cautioned us that those bodies are most likely divided and advised keeping those supporting the insurrection restrained if possible and to be on the lookout for Confederate operatives posing as US GI’s or police in authentic uniforms and vehicles.
All signs, countersigns, passcodes and friend-or-foe systems must be reset immediately and changed hourly. He advised us to see to our safety and that of our families and if possible, base ourselves in the fallout shelters left over from the Cold War and move as many family members as can come in with us. He said we need to keep track of the media because some are reporting accurately while others are disseminating only disinformation and propaganda for the so-called New Confederacy.
The next few months were probably the hardest of my life. My husband and children moved into the shelter with me, so at least we were together. There was more than enough room and supplies for everyone, since about a third of the members were absent. Fortunately, the shelter had been well maintained and stocked. We had everything we needed except sunlight and the ability to go outside.
Immediately after our hurried installation in the shelter, someone thought to change the combinations to the locks and reprogram the electronic keys. Sure enough, that night there were attempts by hostiles to gain entry. The shelter was designed to withstand nuclear bombs and bunker-buster shells, so the Confederate legislators were unsuccessful. Outside there was a real shooting war going on. We were in constant touch with the military, other states, and the Federal government.
To watch the news, you’d think there were really two different countries in two different places.
There was also a war of hackers. Confederate media outlets were frequently interrupted with scenes of animals defeating and the by now well known Gotchya hackers’ pie-in-the-face logo with the synthetic voice saying “Y’all going down once more! We Gotchya!” Not only the Gotchya hackers though. It seemed like every hacker out there wanted to make their mark. It went back and forth. Our broadcasts were sometimes interrupted with confederate flags and Dixie playing in the background, or incoherent rants about globalist satanists. Hackers on both sides got in some hits and electronically jousted with each other. After talking with some of them, I think they enjoyed it. Fortunately, we had the better teams of hackers. We were also aided by independent rogue hackers who, in later interviews, stated that it was just more fun to poke an electronic stick into the Confederate media than the US media because their responses were so amusing. Then there were the livestreams from thousands of people around the state. Hackers were ineffective against them. This kind of coverage is what we now call “guerrilla journalism.”
We had the upper hand in the hacking department, but the Confederates had it over us in sheer violence and brutality. Their so-called “provisional government” in Mobile decreed that any businesses not charging money for goods and services would be forcibly shut down, as in burned down. Any person failing to pay for goods or services was fair game for whatever violence was deemed appropriate, which for the lucky ones meant shooting.
Shortages very quickly developed in everything from fuel to food to all manner of supplies. Un-transitioned businesses displayed big signs saying “This is a freedom business! No free rides here! Shoplifters beware!” Of course, they gouged their prices to the point where a bottle of water was going for $150. Almost no one wanted to even go into those businesses, which were also short on merchandise as their habitual supply chains were mostly down. Members of the Confederate “government” made a big show of shopping in those stores, saying that it was everyone’s duty to do so and how “sacrifices must be made.” Almost no one was convinced or able to afford to comply.
Businesses connected to transitioned enterprises in transitioned states and countries were prepared in advance for anticipated attacks. They had added security personnel augmented with military troops to protect them. Replenishment of supplies was done via underground tunnels that had been pre-dug and via military helicopters, which were also used to transport citizens to and from these locations to protect them from vigilantes and Confederate soldiers and police.
The Army and Marines set up safe zones in almost every neighborhood and town where citizens could go for transportation and medical treatment. The NewWorldWeb was up and running but under constant attack from Confederate hackers, but the servers were out of state in fully transitioned states. Our hackers were able to protect it most of the time and recover quickly from outages, so we posted the locations of safe zones and instructions how to get to them. Special phone numbers are also set up for people to call, and of course all TV and radio stations put it out there.
The military also set up distribution centers for supplies at bases and in cities and towns. These came under frequent attack, along with the protected access routes. The military was more than able to overpower enemy forces but were operating under new rules of engagement. Their strategies and preferred weapons were oriented towards neutralizing or de-escalating a conflict point as quickly as possible with the minimum attainable harm to people and property. Sleep gas was little use most places because combatants on both sides had gas masks, but where it could be used, it proved to be a very effective measure.
It was relatively easy to identify Confederates from friendlies because the former were largely out and about trying to get control over everything, while the latter mostly stayed in per instructions from US government sources.
As shortages and blackouts spread and the brutality of Confederate loyalists grew more and more unrestrained, popular support started to fall away. This was hastened by the strict humanistic and humanitarian behavioral standards followed by transitioned forces in the face of brutality and the fact that the only viable sources of goods were transitioned sources. Little by little, physical reality overcame propaganda.
Transitioned forces also used different kinds of tactics more closely resembling guerrilla tactics. Overpowering Confederate convoys here and there after jamming communications. Blocking bridges and roads and then apprehending Confederate personnel as they tried to clear the obstructions. Tapping into their communications to send their units and civilian operatives into carefully planned traps.
It took months, but gradually the Confederacy went out with a whimper from the most deluded diehards as more and more people realized that transition brought positive changes and not the dystopian hellscape that Confederate propaganda had told them would ensue. Personally, I think many of them actually believed the propaganda they were putting out, as irrational as that sounds.
One by one, states reaffirmed their commitment to the United States and the Constitution. Georgia was the fourth state to stand down and embrace transition. Ringleaders of the uprising were arrested and stood trial very publicly. Due process was followed and these defendants were treated with unwavering human respect but no deference such as they demanded.
Some of them recanted and copped pleas that were accepted when their sincerity was clear. Some remained defiant and self-justifying and ended up sentenced to supervised community service or quarantine villages. Frequent interviews and documentaries were aired to make sure that the world could see that they were well treated and no human rights violations occurred.
Two or three years later, some of the most hardcore of them were interviewed. Some of them still stated their intention to keep up the insurrection if they got the chance. Some expressed contrition and regret that they got drawn into that whole mess. All of them expressed that they had to admit that they felt like the best-treated prisoners of all time.
Once that nightmare was over, we all went home and started rebuilding.
Jessica: So at that point I imagine you had a lot of work to do! Was it hard to reconcile between the Reform Democrats and the New Republicans after that?
Kerri: Actually, during the crisis, political differences and animosity went by the wayside. For the duration, we were one body of people with a common purpose. We spoke as individuals, not as parties.
Jessica: Did that last, or did it go back to the same old same old after the crisis?
Kerri: Believe it or not, it lasted. We never went back to the old antagonism. We still had disagreements and different points of view, but that experience we shared changed us all. For the better. We were no longer in a political football game where the goal was to get power and disenfranchise the other side and then go crazy. There was still disagreement and different points of view, but it led to mutually respectful, even when heated, dialog to hammer out a synthesis aimed at the wellbeing of the people of Georgia.
What also helped was the fact that the really extreme, intractable, inflexible New Republicans all walked out, never to return. All who were left were the reasonable, well thought out, team players whose commitment to the electorate was greater than their party loyalty, greed, or power lust. The authoritarian fanaticism that had blighted the New Republicans was largely though not entirely absent from the ranks of the Reform Democrats. When the missing Senators and Representatives were replaced in special elections, almost all of them were also more reasonable. The fanatics found themselves once again in the fringes where they couldn’t do any serious harm.
Finally, we all realized that we had a huge amount of work ahead of us to adapt the laws and procedures to the new paradigm that the people had placed us in. Instead of lobbying us, writing or emailing us, signing petitions, demonstrating, or otherwise making clear to us what they wanted us to do, the populace just up and changed the whole socioeconomic game rules without asking us.
That’s the only way transition could have happened. A lot of what was changed was things that we didn’t have the authority to legislate, much less the will to. If it had been presented to us as a petition, it would have died of old age in committee if it even got that far. Even if not, it would never have passed. And like I said, it was way far outside our purview as legislators.
So this was where our real work began. The book, “The Cure,” had provided a blueprint for the principles to guide us in crafting the necessary laws and mechanisms to implement the new paradigm. Other countries that had already transitioned had developed it into a mature system and methodology, though of course each country had its own unique flavor and quirks. There were advisors aplenty from home and abroad ready to assist us. They referred to themselves sometimes as “societal midwives.”
Georgia had come a long way since the dark days before the civil rights movement, but it was still the South. You had a place, and you knew what it was. As a junior Senator, I was expected to participate but hold back, not be too assertive or outspoken, and defer to more senior Senators most of the time. There was the assumption that we juniors needed to learn from the experience of more senior Senators, but it was a bit more than that.
I had been patient and knew that as time passed, I would both learn more, become more experienced, and become more senior and so gradually gain the “right” to speak up and initiate things.
Suddenly, I now found myself in a new position. I was one of a handful who had seriously studied The Cure, visited transitioned countries and enterprises, and drawn up ideas and proposals for how to rework the laws, regulations, and procedures of our country to reflect and embody the humanistic principles of the transitioned society. Along with the other few Senators who had done likewise, I was suddenly cast in the role of something like a senior, though not officially bearing any new title. I was one of the ones on point, laying the map out on the table and explaining the new lay of the land. It was sort of like being a second-year law student coaching first year law students. We took the lead, but we were really feeling our way along as we went.
Meanwhile it was still an election year, plus which some of the states that had tried to secede needed to elect new Representatives and Senators on the national level to replace those that had supported the insurrection, as well as replacing treasonous ones on the state level. Yet we had to begin our work while this was going on.
After a few initial statements from the Presidential candidates, campaigning had gone on pause during the secession crisis. The message Jenna Henderson left us with was to pull together and focus on building rather than tearing down and urging against violence. Bill Hess left us with a carefully crafted statement that covered both likely outcomes, avoiding expressing overt support for the secessionists by saying that the real enemy was the transition and that instead of fighting between blocs of states, people should focus on obliterating the transition and those supporting it. He did, however, express understanding and sympathy for the secessionists, saying he understood their righteous anger.
Once the nation began knitting itself back together in the new paradigm, campaigning resumed with a vengeance. The main focus of both campaigns was transition. Reform Democrats almost unanimously ran on a platform of making sure the new paradigm formed in the best way possible for the nation and the people. New Republicans were somewhat split between a less enthusiastic acceptance of transition to vehement calls to crush it out and force everybody back to the old way, round up all transition supporters in mass camps in the desert, and declare a state religion. This was somehow spun as being in the name of freedom and patriotism.
Our tasks were complicated by the fact that the foundation for our work would ultimately have to rest on the work that the Federal Government would have to do, including some Constitutional amendments which involved all of the states as well.
That all meant that we had to coordinate and brainstorm with Federal lawmakers, lawmakers in other states, municipalities in our own state, judges, and attorneys at every level. We had to do this on an unprecedented scale, and we had to do it as quickly as reasonably and responsibly possible. We faced a challenge of monumental proportions, on a par with those faced by the founders themselves.
Among those of us who had studied and prepared, we brainstormed a general approach to break this monumental task down into manageable sized chunks. Our suggestions went something like this:
Identify what challenges must be addressed at the Federal level, which at the state level, and which at the municipal level, or in what combination of these. Liaise with Federal lawmakers and legislators of other states to coordinate our efforts, making appropriate use of AI to facilitate but not replace human action. NewWorldWeb was a rich and versatile new resource and medium for this coordination and collaboration.
Since one or more Constitutional amendments would be necessary and since we would all ultimately be involved, it made sense to write down suggestions.
Since one of the premises of transition was that rights such as life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, etc were meaningless without access to the means to exercise those rights, the definition and specification of human rights had to be expanded.
One practical example of the consequences of the absence of this, was the way some cities, municipalities, and even whole states had made it functionally illegal to be homeless. It was illegal to occupy public land or land that you hadn’t paid someone for permission to occupy. Violation meant fines or jail time. Since anyone in the position of homelessness couldn’t pay the exorbitant fines, which in some cases exceeded the fines for drunk driving, it meant jail time. Since most of these same jurisdictions had cut funding and all support for shelters and other outreach programs and some had gone so far as to criminalize giving shelter or other aid to the homeless, this effectively meant that if you were homeless, your very existence was illegal.
So the new amendment or amendments should explicitly include language to the effect that all persons have the right of reasonable and direct access to the means and resources necessary to exercise their human rights, which includes a reasonable place to live, food, water, education and training, tools, communications access, medical care, transportation, clothing and shoes, and a whole long list. These rights can also apply to social entities such as families, factories and other production facilities, agricultural operations, social clubs, religious organizations, etc, meaning the community of people making them up. In accordance with the principles of the new paradigm, we needed language to the effect that these rights extend irrevocably but exclusively to resources that the person or social entity can and will use directly. It will clearly state that no person or social entity may control or own more than they can and will use personally. No person or social entity shall in any way block, obstruct, or in any way impede or deprive the access of another to their Constitutionally protected property, which includes and is not limited to what is listed. All forms of currency will be null and void; no person or social entity shall create any device or instrument intended to impede or hold hostage the property and activities of another. To discourage and hopefully prevent abuses, reasonable, compassionate limits must be placed on how much one person or entity can own or control; we don’t want some greedy soul, social club, or church claiming square miles of land as theirs. On the other hand, we don’t want to be restrictive or draconian; no one would deem it acceptable to restrict anyone to just enough space for a bed and bathroom. We would need to include provisions that no person or social entity can claim or control another’s time or activities; all social entities will be run on a peership basis.
The Constitutional amendments will lay out the parameters. It will then be up to us lawmakers to flesh them out and implement them. We would have to:
Identify which laws, statutes, regulations, agencies and procedures can remain basically as they are. Examples of these ranged from traffic laws to licensing drivers and pilots to safety regulations to building codes to laws against assault and murder to family law with respect to child custody, division of resources, protective orders and such. What would need to change, however, would be that we would need to craft penalties for noncompliance that would be effective in the absence of fines and other financial ones that were no longer meaningful.
Identify laws, regulations, statutes, procedures, and agencies that could be stricken, repealed, deleted, disbanded, or eliminated entirely. These included whole specialties of law, such as corporate law, the financial aspects of family law, bankruptcy law, the SEC, the Fed, the IRS, the Treasury, landlord-tenant law, laws regarding employee-employer relations, the whole field of tax law, insurance law, all laws targeting the homeless, and many others.
Identify which laws, statutes, regulations, procedures, and agencies would need to remain but be changed and overhauled a lot. Examples were numerous. Across the board, penalties needed to be modified to replace monetary fines with other forms, with an emphasis on community service. Family law would need to change to focus on custody of children and on division of assets with an eye to seeking the best outcome for both litigants. Civil law dealing with lawsuits would need considerable changes to create new modes for assigning damages and restitution. Intellectual property, copyright, and patent law would need to be simplified to unequivocally assign ownership and rights to the individual or individuals who created them and ensuring that no person or social entity can take it away. Laws dealing with enterprises and other complex social entities would need considerable redefinition and modification. Contract law would need extensive revisions. Police and firefighters would need to be reorganized in a much less hierarchical model. The emphasis and training of law enforcement would need to undergo massive changes. Prison reform would be an important project, following a more rehabilitative, less punitive set of principles, and be completely restructured into what came to be called quarantine villages where dangerous and other offenders refractory to rehabilitation could be quarantined where they could live in reasonable conditions with dignity while being restrained from interacting with larger society to prevent them from doing harm. Prisoners guilty of victimless crimes would need to be released and their records expunged. Probate law would of course need to be adapted to the new paradigm. Laws regarding smuggling would need to be strengthened and modified to deal with the likely uptick in attempts to smuggle free high-quality goods out of the country for sale in un-transitioned countries by profiteers. These are just a few examples. It was a very long and detailed list, with each heading broken down into proposed specific language along with a succinct explanation of the logic behind it.
We also needed to identify what new laws, statutes, regulations, procedures, and agencies we needed to create from scratch. These were also many detailed pages. We would have to codify the foundational principles of this new socioeconomic paradigm that we had been presented with. We would need to create laws guaranteeing each person’s and each social entity’s rights to own and control all that they reasonably need to live a full, satisfying, and productive life and exercise the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution, and limiting this access and control to only what they can and will use personally and directly. We produced a long list of specifics, including a reasonable place to live, food, water, transportation, education and training, communications, tools, recreational items, and a lot more. Since a complete list would be impractical, we suggested generic language more or less like “each person and social entity is guaranteed the right to own, control, and be responsible for all resources that they reasonably need and desire in order to lead a fulfilling, empowered, and productive life and exercise all of their Constitutional rights.” We also would need laws and statutes forbidding and making it a criminal offense to obstruct, block, hinder, or hold hostage the property or person of another. We further specified that as of the day of transition, each person is the legal owner of their residence, vehicles, and other things that they use, and the members of each social entity are the collective peer owners of the buildings and resources that they directly use. For that matter, we needed to define what a social entity is. We needed to legally mandate that all unused and unoccupied resources are heretofore available to be claimed, and we had to set up simple legal pathways for making claims. We needed to specify what resources aren’t included in the above, such as nature preserves and national or state parks and historical heritage sites, as well as anything deemed unsafe. We needed to establish legal pathways and procedures for resolving conflicting claims in the most fair and equitable ways possible.
We needed to codify the nullification of all forms of currency. We would have to define fair and equitable algorithms and pathways for distribution of resources to where they were needed and establish reasonable guidelines for triaging distribution of resources in the event of actual shortage and set up an agency or body to facilitate and mediate that process.
We needed to define a new category of laws or binding guidelines for some new processes, such as mandating engineers and developers of products, who were previously working for competing companies, to pool their knowledge and expertise to produce the best quality versions of each product that the state of the art allows in practice, combining the best features and technology of formerly competing products. Developers would be instructed to establish universal form factors and design templates to allow, as much as practical, easy servicing, repair, and replacement of parts when breakage or new technologies made it necessary. Thus, for example, if a new kind of engine is invented, it should be possible to remove the old engine and put in the new one on any and all vehicles instead of replacing the whole vehicle. The only exceptions would be when there were physical reasons why it wasn’t practical. We would set up an agency that would verify, facilitate and advise in this process. There would be no penalties for noncompliance, but products that failed to embody the guidelines would be sent back for further improvements and not approved for production and release.
We needed laws to make it a felony with daunting consequences for any person in any former corporation or business to destroy or withhold any technical or process information and place a deadline for making this information publicly available. This was to head off potential acts of sabotage in spite by former people in power in those entities, the destruction or withholding of such information out of a perverse sense of revenge to prevent it from passing out of their control. In many places, those working in those enterprises had already taken steps to protect against that, but we had to go further.
Many occupations and whole industries would cease to exist, and many more new ones would be created. The impact would not be devastating to peoples’ livelihoods as under the old setup, but those who would be displaced would benefit from counseling and other forms of support. Agencies would have to be created to assist, support, and advise people who were displaced by transition. This would include psychological and emotional counseling and assistance in figuring out what new occupations would be a good fit and accessing the necessary training or education.
The Department of Energy would need to be expanded or a new agency created to spearhead technological research and development, and to ensure that it proceed in harmony with the new “bottom line:” it should support or sustain human wellbeing, happiness, safety, empowerment, and fulfillment, enhance social synergy or at least not detract from it, and be environmentally sustainable and non-damaging. This would have to be backed with laws mandating the phasing out of damaging technologies such as fossil fuels and replacing them with environmentally friendlier alternatives as quickly as possible in practice. We would also be mandating a shift from large central facilities to diversified small and mid-scale facilities.
Given the new and improved definitions of the propose of human society, the new “bottom line” that replaced the old monetary one, we would want to use those criteria that I just mentioned as guidelines and yardsticks for crafting laws.
Public works, such as rolling out the new distributed power grid, encouraging neighborhood and home based agriculture, setting up a new system of roads and support infrastructure for bicycle and other non powered transports, building more hospitals and colleges, large-scale reclamation of useful materials from landfills and other waste dumps, and a whole long list, would need agencies and guidelines to aid in coordination and planning.
What I’m describing was just the tip of the iceberg. We also had to prioritize which of these tasks to do first. During this period, attorneys and judges across the country were having to improvise as best they could. So far most of them, and most of the people, had been amazingly patient, but we needed to codify this new paradigm into practical frameworks pretty quickly or we could sooner or later start to see chaos.
The Constitutional amendments were finalized and ratified within ten months of transition, following a historic public discourse on NewWorldWeb where the text was posted for public comment and feedback. The result wasn’t perfect, but it was many giant steps forward in very positive directions. The amendments also included limits on the terms of Supreme Court justices, as well as mandatory periodic psychological evaluations similar to what airline pilots undergo. We needed to fix that institution and return it to being a means of deepening our understanding and implementation of the humanistic principles of the Constitution at its root, and ease it out of its degenerate role that it had fallen into as an instrument of ideological reinterpretation and “pretzelization” of the Constitution to fit political agendas.
I must admit that I was proud and gratified that a suggestion that I voiced got passed into law. It wasn’t a new idea nor was I the first to voice it, but I was the first to voice it in a fertile setting where action would be taken. I’m talking, of course, of the “Common Sense In The Law” bill that mandated that any bill or law passed must deal with one issue only, including all issues directly bearing upon it. This put an end to “poison pills” and “riders.” Before that, just about every law that passed had unrelated baggage tacked on due to political deal making. It also mandated that legal terminology and procedures be simplified so that non-lawyers could more easily understand and navigate them. That’s why every proposed law or bill at every level of government is now routinely posted on NewWorldWeb and announced in all media in the appropriate jurisdiction for members of the public to read and comment on.
Wow! I apologize for getting carried away talking shop! It was just a heady time and very exciting. Was it too much?
Jessica: No! Not at all! It’s just the kind of thing I was hoping for!
How long did it take before the mad crunch was over and a new everyday routine set in? And what has it been like as a legislator after the dust settled?
Kerri: It was a good two and a half years or so of ten-to-twelve-hour days before we started to feel like we’d crested the hill and settled into a normal flow. Normally, my position is part time, but during that period, we all put in more than full time hours because it had to be done. It was exhausting, but it was a good kind of tired at the end of the day. It’s only once in many blue moons that a lawmaker, or anyone for that matter, gets a chance to make such a big difference and play a part in shaping history!
It did put a strain on my family. My husband was a wonderful support, both of me and of transition, but he got frustrated at the lack of time together as time went on. Our children were in their teens, all full of teenage rebellion, but they still needed more of Mom. Other Senators and Representatives were facing the same thing, and it became clear that we couldn’t sustain the pace seven days a week and neither could our families. So we decided to take weekends off and try to keep the days to ten hours or less.
We had a lot of help from advisors from around the world, who acted as consultants based on their own experiences with transition. Of course, there were differences between countries and different cultures, but the core of common threads was incredibly helpful. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.
That eased much of the stress on my husband and children, but it was still grueling. But also satisfying. Often we wouldn’t even feel the time passing!
The collaborative dynamics were truly a pleasure, like jamming in a jazz band. State legislatures, the Federal government, and municipalities worked together in a mostly beautiful way. We also met with attorneys, judges, and various syndicates and associations from just about every industry and sector. There was lively, productive dialogue with citizens on NewWorldWeb.
As I said, it was many mountains of work for about two or two and a half years, and then things did settle down into a more stable permanent rhythm or flow.
Once we had completed the task of codifying the new paradigm and building the scaffolding to facilitate its functioning, our task became a whole lot easier and simpler than it ever had been before.
Don’t get me wrong. Politics is never easy and there are always disagreements, sometimes vehement ones to be worked through. But the escalating bullying that had taken over is gone. There is now (mostly) constructive dialog.
Before transition, I would say that a huge chunk of our time and energy was devoted to financial issues: where and how to fund this and that, what to cut for the sake of what, what to fund now, what to postpone, and what to take off of the table because there would probably never be funds for it. There were always lots of lobbyists for various wealthy and powerful corporations, industries, and individuals. They could use financial means to pressure or blackmail lawmakers to support their interests and agendas: if we regulate this and that or raise corporate or billionaire taxes, they would take their business out of state, thereby reducing jobs and hurting the economy. Vast corporations and billionaires, and then trillionaires basically held government by the throat. All they had to do was squeeze and they would almost always get almost all of what they wanted. We constantly had to jockey and play power politics and walk countless fine and fragile lines between these powerful interests and what was good for our constituents. Sometimes we were caught in the middle between two conflicting wealthy interests where no matter what we did, the state and its residents would suffer. Even the separation of church and state was constantly being eroded by wealthy religious extremists and the mega businesses they ran.
Now all of that is gone. We actually get a lot more done in a lot less time, and I believe we are able to do a much better job.
Jessica: So now you’re back to being part-time again?
Kerri: Oh yes! The Senate actually demands less of my time than ever before. I’ve gotten back to other things I love doing but that I’d put on back burners for the sake of my political aspirations.
I spend a lot more time with my family, and since my husband’s workload has also greatly decreased, we both have more time to enjoy things together and with our children and of course our grandchildren.
I’ve gotten back into my music in a big way. I’m in a band called No Time Like Now. We perform locally and do some touring around the country and occasionally abroad. Of course my husband almost always comes along, just like I often accompany him on some of his biodiversity expeditions, monitoring the reintroduction of species from the brink of, and sometimes the other side of extinction.
Jessica: How has transition affected music specifically and the arts in general?
Kerri: I think the arts have changed dramatically for the better since transition. Before transition, music had gone from being music to being the music industry to being “The Biz” along with “Show Biz.” Music, film, writing, and all of the arts had mostly become products produced for the sake of making money, rather than being authentic expressions.
That’s all changed. Music is now just Music once again. There is no longer a small cadre of stars being paid lavishly but also being exploited by entertainment corporations and private equity firms, with a few performers making a decent, if irregular, living and a plethora of starving artists and many more who never got the chance to develop and do their art for financial survival reasons.
Now there are still stars, and there are people like me who are well known but not to that degree, and others who only like to perform for friends and family. The popularity of a performer or band is purely a function of the music and how the people resonate to it. There are no longer aspiring artists and performers who wither on the vine because they have to work at a job they hate just to survive.
If you look and listen around you, I’m sure you can see and hear that we’re in the midst of a vibrant renaissance of epic proportions. You can perceive it especially clearly if you compare what’s out there now to what was out there in the decade leading up to transition, both in terms of quality, quantity, diversity, and innovation.
Jessica: Yes, I agree, being a musician and music buff myself.
Thank you, Kerri, for your amazing window into what it was like behind the scenes, so to speak, of transition. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap this up?
Kerri: Well, Jessica, I think I’m pretty much talked out.
Oh, there’s one thing I wanted to mention, and that’s the impact on women. Under the old paradigm, women were paid less than men in most jobs in most countries. There were glass ceilings in many companies. Women were under-represented in many of the most lucrative fields.
That’s also gone. Sure, there are still some male chauvinists out there, but they can’t use financial means to subordinate, disadvantage, or exclude us. There are no power positions that can be abused, consciously or unconsciously. Women can push back if they meet resistance, and they can’t be overpowered by power asymmetry because there is no power asymmetry. I’d say that transition has brought more benefits to women than anyone even anticipated.
Jessica: Well, thank you again, Kerri, for taking so much of your valuable time to share your experiences and perspectives. Would you be open to doing this again in a few years?
Kerri: Yes, of course.
Jessica: OK, take care and don’t work too hard lol.
Kerri: Sure thing, and you too.