fandomhighdorms | Anarchist Philanthropy Club, Tuesday After Classes

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Anarchist Philanthropy Club, Tuesday After Classes

This week, it wasn't the usual non-leaders coordinating (but not leading, how bourgeois) proceedings from the clandestine location that only members knew (that was perhaps just a classroom, but it was a clandestine classroom, okay?) Instead, it was a dark-haired girl who had several crates stacked behind her.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Rinoa Heartilly, and I'm in this group but I don't remember to come every week. That's because I've been working on something. It's something big, and it's kind of related to what we're doing here, so I asked Jim if I could borrow this meeting to ask for your help."

Also, Jim didn't need to hand the meeting over to her, since it was more of an autonomous collective that he and Britta coordinated, but someone had to coordinate or nothing would get done, right? She was going to assume that was understood.

"Back home, about twenty years ago, Galbadia invaded its tiny southern neighbor, Timber." She paused to hold a hand up. "I promise this is all relevant. Timber has been under martial law ever since. Most Timbrans join underground movements to fight Galbadia, and a lot of Galbadians spoke out against Galbadia's actions, as well. And those people were either executed or thrown in prison, because crazed dictators aren't too fond of dissent."

She sighed. "There were so many arrests that they built a new prison, the D-District. It was just for political prisoners at first, but over time it added overflow from other prisons, usually for their worst offenders. And 'political prisoner' already runs the spectrum from violent terrorist splinter groups who blow up a train in the name of a free Timber to someone who wrote a newspaper article attacking the president once -- they'd be in adjacent cells, right next to a serial killer whose home prison didn't have room for him. To top it all off, the D-District is legendary for its human rights abuses. I've seen the torture rooms myself."

She gave that a moment to let it sink in, and fought the small twist of nausea at the memory.

"President Deling, the crazed dictator in question, is dead. Acting President Caraway, his replacement, isn't a crazed dictator. He's actually a reasonable man, despite the fact that he's in charge right now, and I believe we can trust him, for ... various reasons." She played idly with the rings around her neck before continuing. "The anarchist in me wants to go in there, guns blazing, and break everyone people out instead of working with Galbadia, but the pragmatist thinks maybe there's a way we can do this without any loss of life. Maybe I'm delusional. We can talk about that, too, if you guys want."

This place seemed like a great place to discuss philosophy, especially the intersection of anarchy with philanthropy, and which won out.

"Anyway. Caraway stopped the abuses, and is making sure the prisoners are treated humanely. He is working to shut down D-District. He is committed to the immediate release of every nonviolent political prisoner, and is open to an honest discussion about the release of every violent political prisoner. This is a real, concrete thing. We can get those brave fighters out of a hellhole that they honestly believed they would die in."

Which was kind of amazing.

"The only hold-up right now is that the record-keeping system is a nightmare. No one in charge bothered, because prisoners going into the D-District weren't ever coming back out. There are scraps of paper, half-filed notes, additions scrawled in the margins. There is no comprehensive database of who is where. Caraway isn't willing to open the doors and release everyone carte blanche, especially since some of the people in D-District aren't even political prisoners, but violent offenders who would be a danger to society."

She indicated the crates behind her. "This is where I came in, a couple of months ago. I have been trying to sort these papers into some kind of a system. It's slow going, and it's tedious work, but I'm making progress. I'll make more if I have help. I also know that a lot of you might not agree with this, since we're working with the government that oppressed them in the first place, or because you disagree with the prison culture in whole, or -- if you have ideological issues, or you just don't want to do paperwork, that's totally fine. But if you want to help me, there are real people out there that this would make a huge difference to. I think that's all I wanted to say."

(

answer2bheard asked me to post something and BEHOLD, IT IS SOMETHING. Jim modded with her permission. OCD incoming!)

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¡Viva la Revolución!

Kenzi still missed Rio. So she was lounging about, shades on, pretending she was still there in here head.

Hank arrived today in his Ratman costume. Hey, Ratman was all about anarchy AND philanthropy, right? And totally almost the same thing as Guy Fawkes.

Plus, he hadn't worn it in a while, and it was his favorite outfit.

If you want to object to the reject on ideological grounds, feel free. If you want to start a discussion about methodology of working with the oppressors (or their successors), go wild. If you want to argue that anarchists shouldn't be concerned with the minimum damage or the pragmatic response, let's hear it. Or even if you agree but want to talk it out. Whichever.

(I just thought it might be neat to have a thread about philosophical implications blahblahblah I'm a nerd.)

"I vote we NOT get people killed?" Hank suggested petulantly. "I mean, don't get me wrong, killing people is awesome, but if it's the people you're trying to rescue, I think you lose points for that. And then you don't get a high score at life!"

"I was hoping to contain the casualties to the guards," Rinoa said, "but even that's risky. And at this point, the guards aren't the same ones who were responsible for the past abuses, anyway."

"You could track them all down and kill them off one by one," Hank mused darkly. "Dish out cold vengeance, and make them beg for mercy."

He shrugged. "It would make for a great TV show, anyway!"

"Enough bloodshed," Rinoa said, shaking her head. "You're right. No killing. Let's just get these guys out of jail as quickly as possible."

"Oooh! But if you WANTED to go in and kill people, I know a guy!" Hank offered.

"I'll keep that in mind," she laughed.

"It goes like this," Rinoa said. She was now sitting cross-legged on the floor next to one of the crates, which she had yanked open. She was pulling out a thick sheaf of paper from inside of it. Spread out in front of her were small tabs like someone might put on the outside of manila folder. Color-coded.

"I sort the papers, and then I put sticky tabs on them," she explained. "The first round of sorting, I just pull out the actual records from the addendums that were shoved in here. Non-records get their own pile, and I figure out what they go with later.

"Once I have just records, then I look for the reason for incarceration, and based on that, I sort them. Nonviolent political prisoners go in one stack. Violent political prisoners go in another. Violent non-political, a third. And then the fourth pile is for ones where I can't tell. Like the guy was arrested at a protest but punched the arresting officer, does that count as violent? It's a gray area. Or if the information is smudged, or omitted, and I'm going to need to actually spend time looking into it."

She held up the tabs. "Then I put the sticky tabs on -- each grouping gets its own color, see? -- and then I sort things back into the main piles, and I'm kind of never going to finish this, but it's getting somewhere, I think. Does ... anybody still want to help?"

She would seriously understand if they didn't.

Kenzi might have been pretending to be asleep here. At least until curiosity got her to ask, "They don't have admin types in Timber? 'Cause this sounds like real work."

"It is real work," Jim said, stepping up beside Kenzi and reaching for an armful of papers. "But from what Rinoa told me, we're talking about a political system that's just getting itself on its feet, in a world that's had a lot of pretty serious stuff going on. Things like this just kind of get lost in the shuffle, you know?"

He offered her a little smirk before waving the papers around.

"A little work won't kill anyone. Heck, it might get a lot of innocent people back to their families."

Edited 2012-02-28 23:00 (UTC)

Rinoa handed over the papers and gave him a hollow flash of a smile. "Thanks," she said. "There's been a war. I should have explained that, but I thought I was talking too much as it was. But -- not just the Galbadia-Timber stuff, but a huge one, worldwide. This isn't anyone's biggest priority, so I offered to do it, and I ... really underestimated how huge it was."

She just figured she would bulldoze through. Like she did with everything. It was not going as well as that usually did, for her.

Kenzi sighed. "Okaaaay. An afternoon won't kill me, like Jim said. Gimme a stack." Besides, now she was curious. "Dude, you so need to recruit people besides us, Rinoa. This is gonna take you forever otherwise."

"I've been working on it for months," she admitted. "Jono helps. I'm getting further."

Of course Rinoa wasn't being stubborn about this. What would make Kenzi think that?!

"I just need to concentrate on it more," she said. "I get distracted."

Like when Squall reminded her to do things that weren't paperwork.

"Caraway doesn't trust the Timbrans with this," Rinoa said. "These are just names on a file to us, but Timber's a small country, and nearly everyone was involved in the resistance. Asking anyone to go through these files means they'll find their uncle, mother, father, sister in there. The urge to falsify data would be way too high. Most of the admin types are working on the troop withdrawal, anyway."

She lifted a shoulder, a bit uncertainly. "I said people didn't have to," she added. "It's not a lot of fun. But it wasn't on anybody's priority list, so I made it mine."

As usual, if someone was being nice and cool and way more self-sacrificing than Kenzi, she felt a little obligated to help 'em out. "Ahhh. Well, gimme the hard ones. I want to see if I can figure them out."

"There's not really hard," Rinoa admitted. "It's all easy, just ... mind-numbing. Sort into piles, sort those piles into piles, and then alphabetize those piles."

Oh, wait. "Unless you mean you want to tackle some of the little scraps of not-quite-records off to the side?" she asked. "You're totally free to do those."

"Yeah, those," Kenzi said. "Maybe I can find something in common with them, you know? Aside from maybe having coffee rings on them all." She grinned. "So, this Caraway guy, is he gonna stay in power?" she asked, grabbing some post-its.

"I don't know," Rinoa sighed. "I don't know if he even wants the job. But But he's going to hand over Timber to its own government again before he steps down, if he does step down, and I trust him to keep his word on that. He's ... honorable, even if he did work for Deling."

Figure that one out.

Kenzi was already starting to lay out the paperwork like a huge jigsaw puzzle. "So how'd he get the job? Last man standing? Or was he being punished for being too good at his job?"

"He was the general of the army," she said. "Most of his underlings respect him. A lot of the other higher-ups are either dead, or fled the country when ... things got dangerous, during the war."

During the war, possessed-by-Ultimecia Edea had declared herself to be in charge. She had placed an also-possessed-by-Ultimecia Seifer in charge of the army, deposing Caraway, though many of his men had stayed loyal to him. These were things that Kenzi probably did not need to know.

"Now that they're rebuilding, he's someone who was high in the previous power structure -- so he knows how to run the government -- but not associated with the worst of Deling's regime, so the general populace isn't mistrustful of him."

"Well, that's something." Half last-guy-standing, half okay-person, sounded like. Kenzi frowned over the pile she had, then started re-arranging. "Why did they want to conquer Timber, again? What's in it for them?"

Hmm hmm hmm... she rearranged a couple things, then said, "If I'm reading this right, some guard with the initials ZK is an idiot who doesn't fill crap out. Look."

"I don't have any ZKs," Rinoa mused. "At least, not here. A lot of my files are back in my room. Which looks horrible. It's a good thing I don't have a roommate right now."

And not even for fun sexy times, either. Except during that sex pollen week. But that was not her fault and she was sorry about abandoning the cause but, you know, sex pollen.

"Timber has a lot of natural resources," Rinoa explained. "Lumber's the big one. And Timber is also the hub where all of the rail lines of the continent meet up, so everyone pays rail fees to Timber. Galbadia was fighting a war with Esthar at the time, and Galbadia was broke. Timber is so much smaller than Galbadia anyway that it was actually cheaper to invade Timber and just take their stuff than to keep paying them."

Ugly pragmatism at its finest. Worse if you realized how many Timbrans died in the struggle.

"Well, that blows. Sounds like Latvia getting annexed by Russia," Kenzi said, frowning.

She would totally understand about the sexytimes. Because she'd spent the whole week flirting with everyone, since it wasn't going to go any further with Toby yet.

"Yeah, looks like this guard, ZK, is either an idiot, on the take, or maybe faking records for people," Kenzi said, point at a pile of ten papers. "Look at this, all these prisoners getting 'transferred' to one block, but it doesn't say from where, or what they were in for. Or why. Just date and time, all within one month." She smiled cynically. "Me, I'd bet on bribes, but I'm jaded... so Galbadia's all for setting Timber free now, and Caraway doesn't have a problem with that? After spending all that time conquering them?"

"It didn't take that long to conquer them," Rinoa said -- unfortunate, but true -- "and I convinced Caraway that he couldn't spare the resources to keep Timber under occupation. He's willing to listen to reason. Sometimes."

When he wasn't being ridiculous and stubborn for no good reason at all.

"Put all the ZK records together," Rinoa decided. "I can hunt down some leads later and see if anyone knows who that is."

Wasn't one of Sir Laguna's two sidekicks a former D-District prison guard? He might have information that could help.

"I .. don't know where Latvia is," she admitted. "I'm not really from here."

If Kenzi hadn't guessed, from the names 'Galbadia' and 'Timber.'

"Yeah, Seifer's said some stuff that I guessed," Kenzi said with a small grin. "We need pizza... although it looks like someone was already having one when they filled out this form."

She put all the ZK's together-- about fifteen or sixteen in all-- then went on to the next set that looked similar.

"Latvia was this tiny country that was stuck between two bigger countries, Russia and Germany, and got the shaft from both sides. Occupied by Russia, occupied by Germany, occupied by Russia. They finally got their independence when Russia's government fell apart right before I was born, and then their economy tanked. Which is why both sides of my family emigrated to Canada."

"Canada is ... the one north of here, isn't it?" Rinoa asked. "Why Canada? I mean, it seems like."

She paused, searching for words. "Like this half of the world has one or two countries, and then it's surrounded by oceans, and then most of the other countries are all packed together elsewhere. Why come all the way over here, if it's easier to go somewhere else over there?"

She was trying. This world seemed to be enormous. She was never going to remember it all.

"D-district ... is a horrible place," she said, shivering slightly. "At least the torture has stopped, but ... if I can get these prisoners home again ..."

She bit her lip. Maybe she felt guilty. She, too, had been a resistance fighter. How easily she could have ended up there, waiting for a rescue that would never come.

"Yup. It's cold, but it's home." Kenzi grinned. "I actually know this one... Canada and America have really open immigration policies, mostly. So does Australia. 'Cause when they were first settled from other parts of the world, the only people here were the native tribes, and they were nomads. Hunters. Lots more room for new people." She shrugged. "All the places south of Latvia were pretty full and had their own problems, all the places east were even more Russian, or were Russia itself, north is just a whole ton of ice, so... buy a boat ticket and ask for asylum. Especially if you're from somewhere ex-Russian dominated, Canada and the U.S. are pretty cool about giving you a visa, mostly. It's gotten harder to do, but. Still better than most places closer to Latvia."

Her face sobered. "Right. Saving people from torture. Yay. What convinced Prez Caraway to hand this stuff over to you? Just wanted to to the cool thing?"

Aha. Interesting. Another pile of a ton of prisoners with no real names, all brought in on one evening. Maybe a post-riot group?

Edited 2012-02-29 07:37 (UTC)

"Let me at it!" Hank announced, from behind his cheap plastic Ratman mask. "I AM justice!"

Rinoa would hopefully be forgiven for not immediately trusting the boy in the Ratman costume with her matter-of-life-and-death paperwork.

"Okay," she said, hesitantly. "You ... understand what you need to do with it, right?"

Hank nodded. "Look through it and separate out the cool, wrongfully-imprisoned badasses from the evil psychopaths! Pass judgment on the prisoners and determine who is marked for salvation and who is condemned to torment!!! And look cool in a cape while doing it!!!!!!"

Okay, yeah, this was why she had asked.

"Do you think maybe ... you could take one of these big stacks and sort it into two piles?" she asked, very slowly. "Things that are records, and things that aren't records?"

This might be more his speed.

"Arent... all of these records?" Hank asked, confused. "Records of JUSTICE?!"

All right. She should try another track.

"Hank?" she asked. "Could you take this pile here and put it in alphabetical order?"

And if he screwed that up, then it would just be back where it started.

"Aye-aye, captain!" Hank replied with a snappy salute. "By last name, first name, or cell number?"

Yes, Hank. Alphabetically by cell number.

Well, that did kind of clinch it, didn't it?

"Hey, I have an awesome idea," Rinoa said. "You can play with some of the folders and markers I have, how's that?"

Unused folders, markers, and some of the unused sticky tabs. Far away from her seriously important life-or-death paperwork.

Ask about the project, or the methodology, or how she got into this, or why she trusts Caraway, or why she's bothering, or exactly how long she's been doing this without clawing her own eyes out. Or just say hi. Whichever is fine.

They take no responsibility for your presumption that they are "in charge," for they are not "leading" this group of autonomous individuals kthx.

Jim figured he was doing an excellent job of being non-leady today. After all, letting somebody else come up with the activity for the day was...

Something... anarchistic, right?

He really was no good at this sort of thing.

They take no responsibility, either. One of them is a pony, and the other is trying to make the school board's brain explode.

Pinkie was doing her best to be all serious-faced today, but she'd spent her whole break at home in Equestria with her friends, and the pure glee that accompanied that was doing its best to break through.

If I did this wrong, my apologies. It was late and Le Shannon needed to crash, so I offered to throw something out.

Also, if anyone wants some Boring, Tedious Files as background noise / busy work for their character for whatever reason, hit up Rinoa in her thread. She's perfectly willing to loan out gobs of it.

You are my hero and I love you. I'll fling Jim in here when I get home from work today.

If I get home from work today. (Dun dun DUNNNNNN.)

Does this mean I get sex? I was hoping for sex.

I think I could totally get on board with that.

... Maybe not with this kid, though.

Rinoa is out of smutty icons, since her extensions ran out. Allow me to offer you some jailbait.

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Anarchist Philanthropy Club, Tuesday After Classes

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