PPU

## Prairie Public Underground

###    The Militant Wing of the Nonpartisan League

*"Major support for this monstering is provided by the Brett C and Madeline D Morlock Foundation, the Nonpartisan League Direct Action Fund, everybody you ever fucking hurt, you sick fuck, the Khistova Server 's IRL Support Group, the sloppy security on North Dakota Regional University 's personnel files and Viewers Like You"*

So, in the a town  under permanent martial law, without much in the way of participatory government, the line between 'Policlub ' and 'gang' or 'terrorist cell' is pretty thin and not always clear cut. To BlockSec  they are 'Banned From Company Grounds' and the Group  companies consider suspected membership in the PPU to be grounds for dismissal and arrest. To the Zone Patrol  they are an 'active social organization' although definitely also on their 'To Watch List'. To a lot of the people outside the Block (and more inside than care to admit it) they are a trustworthy, if irregular source of news (largely through Matrix Free Fargo, their pirate broadcast feed). And to the activist groups in the area (such as the Nonpartisan League and the Moorlocks ) they are uneasy and uncontrollable allies.

Strange as it may seem, the PPU began as Prairie Public Television the wholly innocuous, nearly to the point of inanity, Public Broadcasting Station in the area before the Awakening. These were people who broadcast childrens television  and documentaries on farmers , who played foreign sci-fi shows and Lawrence Welk during fund-raisers. But as the One-and-Twenty went on, and things like "Public Funding" (Orb  is your friend, kids, look it up) become interesting historical footnotes, Public Television and Radio stations (and their social media and video networks) began to disappear, shut down by the states that supported them and their assets bought up by private companies (in the case of Prairie Public, by the growing TransForum InfoMedia ), and these institutions quietly disappeared as we moved into the modern era.

But while the institutions disappeared (Prairie Public was defunded and put on the aunction block in 2041), the passionate, driven people who worked for them didn't. And they re-emerged in an underground form. During the 40's they were a loose collective of freelance and underground journalists, generally formerly from Prairie Public Broadcasting or the defunct local High Plains Reader, dedicated to reporting the news ignored or suppressed by the official media outlet in the area (after The Group's corporate dominance became complete) and disseminating it however they could (even as megacorporate control of the formerly free-wheeling Matrix  became tighter).

As the 50's continued, the push-back from the corporate Powers That Be (such as The Group and its FuchiSoft  partners) to this grew stronger and the PPU began to push back. Getting their content out to the public increasingly involved direct confrontation with the establishment and began the gradual militarization of the PPU from journalists to journalists with guns and cyberdecks. A new generation of members came to dominate the group as the older ones retired or were imprisoned or (occasionally) even killed. These new members were more militant and weren't just dedicated to preserving an antique notion of 'journalism'. Not content to just report the news they felt they had a duty to act upon it, through sabotage and spying and the occasional bit of violence. They wanted the established powers to know that they didn't just have critics in the PPU, they had enemies. A neo-anarchist strain, present from the early days, now widened to dominate their ideology.

The actual connection between Prairie Public Underground and the Nonpartisan League is... tenuous. Or at least hard to trace. Granted, most PPU members are also members of the NPL but the two organizations have different focuses, although similar goals, with the NPL more dedicated to restoring democratic institutions through legitimate means, where the PPU believes that the current system has no legitimacy and that any means are justified. And yet, when the NPL needs it, the PPU does always seem to find a way to intervene on their behalf...

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