California legislation (AB705, signed 2017) mandated accelerated community college writing education and implementation to begin just before the COVID-19 pandemic. This study captures faculty experiences with mandated pandemic-era acceleration via analysis of 131 open-ended faculty survey responses representing 60 of the 116 California community colleges. Using an activity system framework to analyze responses, we find that while faculty navigated a new simplified acceleration activity system due to legislation focused on accelerating writing education, their commentaries suggest that a more complicated, dynamic acceleration activity system emerged in which time became a determinate force that pushed and pulled on actors, objects, and outcomes. We argue that acceleration and basic writing both require a more inclusive conception of time to be leveraged as the tools of educational equity and open admissions they aspire to be. We advocate learning from faculty, holistic and contextual assessment of the initiative, fuller funding of the initiative to include support, and appreciation for the multiplicity of student experience and purpose.