Hoping to be a forerunner of the Next Step For Democracy, Baltimore chooses its city council by random selection. The fifteen new council members must struggle to maintain this Peoples Platform against an uprising from the former powers-that-be.

SYNOPSIS:

RANDOM TAKES BALTIMORE imagines a political option for the not-too-distant future.

Hoping to be a forerunner in assuring that its city council be as statistically representative of the population as possible, Baltimore votes to select its city council by random selection.

The fifteen new council members -- untested ‘ordinary citizens’ -- must struggle to maintain this Peoples Platform against an uprising from the former powers-that-be. The council faces bribery attempts, a smear campaign and eventually a full-blown uprising to cut the city off from the rest of the state.

Although spiced by elements of absurdist satire and purposefully stretched to the limits of plausibility, underneath it all “Random Takes Baltimore” imagines a realistic progression towards the system of democracy used by the ancient Athenians.

This script has received coverage by The Black List.