According to Star Trek lore, the Bell Riots will occur this coming Sunday, September 1st, 2024.
SV@Home has a few Star Trek nerds like me at the office, and we’re both excited and concerned about this pivotal moment in the Star Trek timeline. The Bell Riots, as depicted in a two-part episode of the 90s Deep Space Nine (DS9) series Past Tense (Season 3, Episodes 11-12), were a catalytic event that ultimately led to the formation of Starfleet. But, the fictional, dystopian 2024 San Francisco Bay Area presented in the episodes is disturbingly close to our own.
Spoiler alert! If you don’t want to read spoilers about the plot of Star Trek DS9 “Past Tense,” consider watching the two-part series before reading this article. For some more context, you can learn more about DS9 in the Star Trek Wiki.
Past Tense Plot: Sanctuary Cities and the Bell Riots
Tomorrow, 347 years into the future, three crew members of the USS Defiant/Deep Space Nine (DS9) Station will arrive in San Francisco to speak at a Starfleet symposium about a looming war with a powerful empire known as the Dominion. As Commander Sisko, Dr. Bashir, and Lieutenant Dax are transported to San Francisco, the ship is hit with a temporal anomaly that physically takes them there—not in 2371 but in the past on Friday, August 30th, 2024.
“There’s a law against sleeping in the street.”
- Vin, Sanctuary District Officer
Due to the transporter malfunction, Sisko and Bashir are found unconscious on public property by a couple of guards and are mistaken for being unhoused. Because it’s illegal to sleep out in public, they are processed and thrown into “Sanctuary District A,” a government-sanctioned 20-square block confined area. It’s filled with roughly 10,000 unhoused people in dilapidated and severely overcrowded apartment buildings with endless tents and makeshift homes on the streets. To add salt to the wound, the District is staffed with people who are either apathetic, self-serving, unscrupulous or have simply given up. Sisko quickly realizes they are days away from the infamous “Bell Riots” on September 1st, 2024.
“By the early 2020s there was a place like this in every major city in the United States…The riots will be one of the watershed events of the 21st century…They’ll be torn down and the United States will finally begin correcting the social problems it had struggled with for over 100 years.”
- Commander Benjamin Sisko
Sisko and Bashir witness the terrible conditions that Sanctuary residents and families are living in, many in need of dire medical attention and others fighting for what little scraps they have. Although the government promises them jobs, the residents feel despair. Some have waited years for employment.
“One of the main complaints against the sanctuary districts was overcrowding. It got to the point where they didn’t care how many people were in here, they just wanted to keep them out of sight.”
- Commander Benjamin Sisko
Outside of the District, Dax, who was separated from Sisko and Bashir, is helped by the CEO of an information systems conglomerate and provided shelter. Dax is invited to an extravagant get-together at the CEO’s office, where she meets San Francisco elites. They share their opinions on Sanctuary Districts, believing that they help keep “those people” off the street—showcasing class distinction, ignorance, and lack of empathy.
Despite trying to keep a low profile, Sisko and Bashir get into a life-threatening fight with a troublemaker known as a “Ghost,” a group of disillusioned, angry, and violent people who prey on other fellow Sanctuary residents. Sisko and Bashir are saved by Gabriel Bell, who is killed by the Ghost. In the original timeline, Bell led the “Bell Riots,” which gained nationwide support to get rid of the Sanctuary Districts. Now, the DS9 crew must preserve the timeline by having Sisko take on the role of Gabriel Bell.
“The government troops will storm this place based on rumors that the hostages have been killed. It turns out the hostages were never harmed because of Gabriel Bell. In the end, Bell sacrifices his own life to save them. He’ll become a national hero. Outrage over his death and the death of the other residents will change public opinion about the Sanctuaries.”
- Commander Benjamin Sisko
The two-part episode climaxes when “Gabriel Bell” (Commander Sisko) and the Ghost— whose methods are at odds with each other — hold Sanctuary District staff hostage. Bell repeatedly stops the Ghost from killing any of the hostages while trying to gain access to a communications interface that is connected to the “Net” (the internet). He helps the rioters find a more peaceful resolution by negotiating with the state and eventually connects Sanctuary residents to the Net. Sanctuary residents share their stories with millions across the country — illustrating their humanity and illuminating their inhumane living conditions.
“Causing people to suffer because you hate them is terrible. But causing people to suffer because you have forgotten how to care, that’s really hard to understand.”
- Doctor Julian Bashir
The Sanctuary residents’ heartfelt experiences helped people across the U.S. to care again, ultimately dismantling the Sanctuary District program. Sisko, Bashir, and Dax preserve the timeline, and the DS9/USS Defiant crew rescue them.
Current Tense to Future Tense?
As a Houser and a Trekker, these are my go-to episodes when I’m trying to get my friends into DS9. With most of us impacted by Bay Area housing instability, Past Tense is incredibly relatable and eerily prescient (we don’t call our current condition a “housing crisis” for no reason). In 2023, nearly 10,000 people experienced homelessness in Santa Clara County – one of the highest total of any community in the country. Over half of renters in Silicon Valley are burdened by housing costs and are one unexpected emergency or financial setback away from experiencing homelessness. We need 50,000+ new affordable rental homes in Santa Clara County to address our housing shortage. Unfortunately, our progress has been at a snail’s pace, producing well below the number of homes we need.
Science fiction is always about the times it was written, and Past Tense reflects sentiments and projections of the DS9 writers in the 90s, who imagined a possible, dark future that could happen if we didn’t get our act together. Unfortunately, we seem to be heading towards the future they envisioned. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Grants Pass Decision recently allowed cities to ban and punish the unhoused for sleeping outside in public spaces despite having no place to go with limited public resources (i.e., shelters, housing, services, etc.). California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an Executive Order last month imploring cities to adopt local policies to remove unhoused encampments. Cities like San Francisco (where Past Tense takes place) have paved the way in conducting mass encampment sweeps. Locally, we have made progress in our investments in interim housing, but often at the expense of permanent supportive housing. The Past Tense Sanctuary Districts were supposed to be “interim” as well — which highlights that we need investments across our entire continuum of care, not just short-term solutions.
Speaking about investments across the entire continuum of care, two weeks ago, we lost a huge opportunity to build and preserve 70,000 permanent affordable homes in the Bay Area with the removal of RM4 from our November ballots. Thankfully, we still have an opportunity to change our future and support our unhoused and unstable friends with Proposition 5. This November, voters can decide whether to lower the voter threshold for passing local housing bonds across California from a two-thirds majority to a supermajority of 55%. If this passes, it paves the way for the Bay Area to pass future local affordable housing bond measures more feasibly and hopefully keeps us away from the path to Sanctuary Districts.
So, let’s do everything we can to ensure that a Bell Riot isn’t needed to bring housing justice to Santa Clara County. Become an SV@Home member today or renew your membership, starting at one dollar per year. Every dollar counts to create equitable housing for all in the Bay Area.
Written by Kenneth Javier-Rosales, Program Manager of SV@Home
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