Vermont secession movement

[tristano's ghost]

It's been around for several years, and methinks we've discussed it here before--new story on the wires today:

Vt. secession movement gains traction By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer

MONTPELIER, Vt. - At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl music store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers.

But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States — peacefully, of course.

Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics hopes to put the question before citizens in March. Eventually, they want to persuade state lawmakers to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.

Neither the state nor the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids secession, but few people think it is politically viable.

"I always thought the Civil War settled that," said Russell Wheeler, a constitutional law expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. If Vermont fought and won a war with the federal government, "then you could say Vermont proved the point. But that's not going to happen."

Still, the idea has found plenty of sympathetic ears in Vermont, a left-leaning state that said yes to civil unions, no to slavery (before any other) and last year elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.

Supporters have published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union."

In 2005, about 300 people turned out for a secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.

"The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable — it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.

"We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war," Williams said. "If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."

Vermont, which was historically conservative, has evolved into one of the nation's most liberal states since the latter part of the 20th century, a tie-dyed bastion of countercultural dissent and New England self-reliance where folks wear their hearts — and their anti-war stickers — on their Subaru station wagon bumpers.

Secession movements have a long history. Key West, Fla., staged a mock secession from America in the 1980s. In Vermont, the town of Killington tried to break away and join New Hampshire in 2004, and Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Texas all have some form of secession organizations today.

The Vermont movement has been simmering for years but gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.

Secession supporters hope to have the question considered in March on Town Meeting Day, when voters gather to discuss state and local issues.

Thomas Naylor, 70, a retired Duke University economics professor and author, wrote the manifesto and founded a secession group called Second Vermont Republic.

His 112-page manifesto contains little explanation of how Vermont would make do without federal aid for security, education and social programs. Some in the movement foresee a Vermont with its own currency and passports, for example, and some form of representative government formed once the secession has taken place.

Frank Bryan, a professor at the University of Vermont who has championed the cause for years, said the cachet of secession would make the new republic a magnet.

"People would obviously relish coming to the Republic of Vermont, the Switzerland of North America," he said. "Christ, you couldn't keep them away."

The Middlebury Institute, a Cold Spring, N.Y., think tank, hosted a North American Separatist Convention last fall in Burlington that drew representatives from 16 organizations. The group is co-sponsoring another conference in October in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Of course, skeptics abound.

"It doesn't make economic sense, it doesn't make political sense, it doesn't make historical sense. Other than that, it's a good idea," said Paul Gillies, a lawyer and Vermont historian.

For now, the would-be secessionists are hoping to draw enough support to get the question on Town Meeting Day agendas.

"We're normal human beings," said Williams, 39, a history professor at Champlain College. "But we're serious about this. We want people in Vermont to think about the options going forward. Do you want to stay in an empire that's in deep trouble?"

They're certainly right about the end of empire--Iraq is putting that concept into the graveyard for sure.

[walto]

I like how they're driven by "rising oil prices" and "corporate corruption." Only Vermont's secession will stop those for once and for all.

[Robert de St. Loup]

"The Vermont movement has been simmering for years but gained new traction because of ... the formation of several pro-secession groups."

Question-begging at its finest.

[Gary Sisco]

It was already around when I got here in the 60s, when it was (entirely mistaken) common belief that when Vermont joined the US as the fourteenth state, after having been an independent republic for fourteen years, that part of the agreement allowed for the state to vote whether or not to continue being a part of the US two hundred years after it joined. But the 200th anniversary of course came and went and so did the common-lore aspect of the legend -- which really was readily accepted as fact by most until then.

Of course, the whole notion, Americans once again being as ahistorical as possible, ignores the rather obvious fact that the Civil War put an end to the secession question once and for all, at the cost of much blood.

Texas has a similar legend about such a deal when it joined the US, also nonsense, and, having been on the Confederate side, seems like the War might have taught a hard lesson but you have to live in history for it to have any relevance.

[Felix]

Vive le Vermont libre!

[Gary Sisco]

Actually, in the 70s, when the New Left was establishing its communard movement here (it thought), the Quebec secessionist struggle was well underway and there were meetings and discussions between the two movements about possibly joining forces to form a different "distinct society."

At least that idea had some practicality to it, since Vermont would otherwise have been landlocked and surrounded by two other nation-states, and also might have had some basis for an economy, in that circumstance. Which it literally hasn't, on its own.

Absurdist fantasy that merely distracts from making actual politics in the world that exists.

As usual.

[rollhead]

The Middlebury Declaration
November 7, 2004, Middlebury, Vermont
Author: Kirkpatrick Sale


We the undersigned participants of Radical Consultation II held in Middlebury, Vermont on November 5-7, 2004, are convinced that the American Empire, now imposing its military might on 153 countries around the world, is as fragile as empires historically tend to be, and that it might well implode upon itself in the near future. Before that happens, no matter what shape the United States may take, we believe there is an opportunity now to push through new political ideas and projects that would offer true popular participation and genuine democracy. The time to prepare for that is now.

In our deliberations we have considered many kinds of strategies for a new politics and eventually decided upon the inauguration of a campaign to monitor, study, promote, and develop agencies of separatism. By separatism we mean all the forms by which small political bodies distance themselves from larger ones, as in decentralization, dissolution, disunion, division, devolution, or secession, creating small and independent states that rule themselves. Of course we favor such states that operate with participatory democracy and justice, which is only attainable as a small scale, but the primary principle is that states should enact their own separation and self-government as they see fit.

It is important to realize that the separatist and self-determination movement is actually the most important and most widespread political force in the world today and has been for the last half-century, during which time the United Nations, for example, has grown from 51 nations in 1945 to 193 nations in 2004. The break-up of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia are recent manifestations of the separatist trend, and there are separatist movements in more than two dozen countries at this time, including such well-known ones as in Catalonia, Scotland, Wales, Lapland, Sardinia, Sicily, Sudan, Congo, Kashmir, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Quebec, British Columbia, Mexico, and the Indian nations of North America.

There is no reason that we cannot begin to examine the process of secession in the United States. There are already at least 28 separatist organizations in this country - the most active seem to be in Alaska, Cascadia, Texas, Hawaii, Vermont, Puerto Rico, and the South - and there seems to be a spreading sentiment that, because the national government has shown itself to be clumsy, unresponsive, and unaccountable, in so many ways, power should be concentrated at lower levels. Whether these levels should be the states or coherent regions within the states or something smaller still is a matter best left to the people active in devolution, but the principle of secession must be established as valid and legitimate.

To this end, therefore, we the undersigned are pledged to create a movement that will place secession on the national agenda, encourage secessionist organizations, develop communication among existing and future secessionist groups, and create a body of scholarship to examine and promote the ideas and principles of secessionism.

"Whenever any form of government is destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Declaration of Independence, 1776

[Gary Sisco]

Kirkpatrick Sale knows about as much about Vermont as you know about the runnings in farthest Outer Mongolia.

Another absurdist joke, he.