When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the Present to be made to greater resemble an ideal Future, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to such an effort. Due to the fact that the Present is increasingly similar to Biff’s alternate timeline in Back to the Future Part II, we, the people of the Present, must take action to redress the wrongs committed by the Present.
Against the Present, we raise the following grievances:
That continued inequities between those of differing ages, ethnicities, genders and gender expressions, races, ranges of ability, religions, sexual orientations, and other qualities persist in significant, unfair, and structurally supported and condoned ways;
That not everyone has safe, affordable access to the quality health care that they require and deserve;
That the justice and policing systems (especially of the United States) unfairly and disproportionately targets marginalized communities and People of Color;
That the militaries of the world continue to engage in conflicts that take more lives than they save and serve to benefit the interests of the wealthy and powerful;
That the wealthy of the world have disproportionate power over political processes and the everyday lives of the non-wealthy;
That the pursuit of wealth overshadows all else, victimizing those in its path;
That sexual assault runs rampant all across the world, especially, though not exclusively, targeting women;
That patriarchal values continue to harm the lives of people of all genders;
That the environment of the Earth is being destroyed at an unsustainable rate, in ways that are disproportionately caused by corporations and unjustly impact the Global South;
That nuclear weapons continue to threaten the destruction of the planet;
That government and corporate surveillance violate the privacy rights of the people of the world;
That quality education is not freely and easily available to all who desire it;
and That imagination and creativity are largely regarded as secondary to conventional “knowledge,” knowledge which is rooted in the above systems.
Therefore, we, the people of the Present, do declare that we shall bring the Present in line with our ideal, just, imminent Future. We do agree to make the Future a more just time than the Present; to strive for those ideals of Equality, Justice, and Peace; and to never go back in time with a sports almanac for the purposes of becoming wealthy only for Biff Tannen to get his hands on it and thoroughly alter the timeline.
