Alan N. Shapiro, Technologist and Futurist

In the Deep Space Nine episode Past Tense, economic crisis, urban decay, widening gap between rich and poor, mass unemployment, and homelessness – twenty years into the new Millennium – send Earth society plummeting into a dangerous period of social tension and upheaval. While attempting to beam down from the Defiant to Federation Council and Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco to attend an interplanetary symposium on the Gamma Quadrant, Commander Sisko, Dr. Bashir, and  Lt. Jadzia Dax are redirected by a transporter malfunction triggered by a mysterious disruptive techno-force to the City by the Bay on August 30, 2024, three centuries into the past. Since they have no money or proper identification, Sisko and Bashir (who become separated from Jadzia Dax) are arrested and sent to the prison camp-like Sanctuary Districts, where unemployed, homeless, and mentally ill people are sequestered by the authoritarian-leaning U.S. government. The disheveled inhabitants of the state-sponsored ghetto for the downtrodden are divided into the three categories of “ghosts” (the criminal element), “dims” (the deinstitutionalized former mental patients), and “gimmies” (the majority of down-on-their-luck home- or job-seekers). In September of the year of the Federation officers’ visit to the twenty-first century, one of the most violent civil disturbances in American history is recorded by official information media as “having taken place.” The Bell Riots were ironically named after nonviolent activist Gabriel Bell, played by John Lendale Bennett. In reality, Bell tried to achieve a peaceful resolution to the hostage standoff in the Adminstrative Processing Center of Sanctuary District A. It was the decision by the governor of California to send in the heavily armed National Guard that resulted in the suppression by brute force of the unrest. Hundreds of unarmed inmates died. Events took a similar course to what transpired in Paris earlier that year. The French New Leftist government sent police with tear gas to quell student protests in the Latin Quarter, not far from the future Office of the President of the United Federation of Planets Council.