The Orbital Workers League (OWL) is an interest and advocacy group chartered to create safe living and working environments for stellar industry professionals. OWL has been instrumental in securing egalitarian advancement for members with Gravity Adaption Syndrome (GAS) which has rendered estimated millions of people across the cluster unable to inhabit planetary gravity. OWL was instrumental in the execution of the New Monaco Accords where predatory life-support taxation and Evictions where criminalized by 33 system signatories. Crucially OWL brought awareness of the unique pressures faced by O’Neil station citizens and in doing fostered a political platform for the recognition and advancement of these populations.
Measures to ensure parity and protect the rights for gravity affected people slowly but surely increased political agency and appetite of Venti, Temple and Lunar Union O’Neil station inhabitants. Collective concerns of housing, healthcare, employment and worker safety formed a core of issues that gravity affected peoples experienced to one degree or another. Vast cultural and ideological divides were bridged by an acute awareness that the common struggles posed a far greater existential threat.
Preeminent among the contemporary gravity affected peoples numerous crises is having sufficient stable habitation. Gravity typical people have a far greater options in terms of mitigating economic recession, unemployment and homelessness. Moving to greener pastures is a luxury not often held by O’Neil Station Citizens. The next nearest candidate for home is likely a number of astronomical units away. These interstellar distances preclude commuting aside for those wealthy enough to procure private charter or lucky enough to access a high speed municipal shuttle service. This assumes that there is even another station within system with units for purchase or rent. Statistically it is more likely that the nearest available accommodation is light years away. Information lag through the relay buoy network also frustrates efforts to secure housing outside local system. This is before considering other poignant unique pressures that might prompt urgent relocation such as station closure/obsolescence, Piracy, cosmological radiation, population crisis and food shortages.
In truth the plight of gravity affected peoples is for a land not a home. O’Neil stations are volatile environments due to a combination of unique economic, social and environmental stressors. They are impermanent solutions to securing a future and actively propagate conditions that engrain systemic disadvantage among their patrons. Recognition of this catalyzed the formation of the LaGrange Nations Assembly.
Dr Prita Beyasekara of New Monaco University is cited as a key influence for the structure and function of an autonomous GAP state. Dr Beyasekara’s paper, Gravity Adaption Syndrome; a disease of division. Economic, ideological and existential implications for gravity affected peoples was received with a degree of disquiet. The professor of sociology and economics identified that the numerous stressors of stellar habitation would result in internal and external conflict and or severe population collapse followed by extinction of individuals with Gravity Adaption Syndrome. Dr Beyaserkara warned, that the only recourse to meaningfully ameliorate the issues faced by gravity affected peoples would be the creation on an independent nation. Wresting the means of propagation from hundreds of corporate interests across three conflicting super powers would be no small task. For decades the notion of a GAP nation remained a tense political issue that served to persist in the public zeitgeist.
Fearing that Dr Bayasekara’s prediction would come to pass Grand fleet admiral Gunnar Hollister of the Lunar Union used his influence to entreat the high caucus to find a solution for the Unions GAP population. Following 3 days of debate and 4 championed combats a resolution initiative was charted to utilize obsolescing orbital defense platforms to provide the basis of a GAP nation. For minimal cost and refitting these stellar fortifications could be modified into vast networked factories fitted for the creation of orbital habitats. These stations would be trusted to a task force led by Hollister to help establish the vital infrastructure required for a democratic GAP state to coalesce around.
Numerous system candidates were proposed over the following 2 High caucuses but contention around the autonomy of the state and its necessity for sustained expansion left few suitable. Ultimately the distant gate of the frontier was chosen, not by the lunar union but by a collection of extra national gravity affected frontiersmen and orbital workers. The workers had amassed in the region in large number as a result to of the planetary rush. Their vessels and O'neil stations around the gate had profited greatly, providing transport, security and trade to planetary colonists. The Lunar Union and Venti chose to recognize the request of workers, offering to purchase the stations and ships of their corporate owners and bequeath them to workers. The primary stated condition of the Lunar Union's offer was that the workers would have confederate into a democratic state and hold free elections. Over the following years delegates from orbital habitats around the cluster gathered under the oversight of the superpowers to form a an independent nation.
From this gathering the LaGrange Nations Assembly was federated, this nation included in its constitution that food water, air, healthcare and housing are inalienable rights of its citizens. This representative democracy was formed around a non-partisan system of election where candidates are chosen on their own merits rather than their political affiliations. Additional constitutional rights were ratified by the assembly and chief among them was the implicit offer of citizenship status to all gravity affected people across the cluster. National service was offered as an alternative to taxation as a means to entice immigration and expeditated the development of the fledgling nation. In the assembly’s second election Hollister, now retired from the lunar union navy and a registered citizen ran for chairperson himself. Hollister displayed sound judgement to many in his resolution Torbanner Piracy Crisis. His recent permanent procurement of the Lunar Union habitat factories also cemented his as an influential figure in the LNA’s foundation. It was a forgone conclusion that Hollister would win, but now approaching his 5th consecutive term it is unclear if any candidate could reasonably compete with him.
The LNA is currently governed from Sophia station in the Torbanner system where its capital class super carrier fleets Subiaco, Bicton and Fremantle provide security for the gate and 68 orbital habitat clusters scattered through the system. The assembly navy provides 60% of frontier policing and acts as a de facto judiciary for crimes committed in frontier space. The LNA routinely hires Armournauts to pursue criminals and pirates where its largely gravity affected law enforcement cannot follow.