Sunday, November 11, 2007

Cascadia Now Chapters Seek Student Organizers

By: Collin S. Ferguson

Abstract: The Cascadian Independence Project seeks students who want to take on a local and regional perspective in volunteering for community groups and advocates as well as political organizing in their city, county, state, province, region and country.

Students at Northwestern in Bellingham, University of Washington, SCCC, UW Tacoma, Evergreen, and Portland State University, Portland OR, are starting student chapters for the new regional advocacy group, the Cascadian Independence Project, or Cascadia Now. The group is in its infancy, but intends to keep growing and start student organizations at all Cascadian universities.

“We wanted to create an inclusive group that was an umbrella organization for everything Cascadia,” announced the group leader in an email. While the C.I.P. will not deny its inclination towards secession adding that it is the hope of the organization that students will support an investigative platform for Cascadian independence, C.I.P. has stated that it is fully accepting of variation in focus, “We’re not here to form a political group where it’s our way or the highway.” They hope to maintain a loose coalition allowing groups to suit the needs of their communities, and hoping that conferences and conventions will work to keep the focus of the organization as a whole. The C.I.P. wants to emphasize that community engagement is increasingly critical stating “We want our project to fill the gap that our current government(s) has left.”

The fundamental belief is that the Pacific Northwest can do it better and that a distant seat of power cannot properly govern everything that Cascadians witness on a daily basis. The C.I.P. wants to strengthen communities, investigate how to lessen dependence on federal government, and build a base of active citizens resolved to unify the Pacific Northwest.
The Cascadian Independence Project, formally the Cascadian Independence Party, hopes to create organizing committees that will connect the spread out groups and market the formation of new groups at local universities, community colleges, and the public at large.

The organization’s long term goals highlight work towards progressive change: writing and supporting local referendums, legislative policies and initiatives, as well as spreading the base by encouraging volunteer work, calls to political action, and contests for flag designs, anthems, emblems, logos, battle chants, etc. The organization also hopes to support food drives, first-aid trainings, worker retraining programs, creation and operation of info shops, promoting and participating in recycling and environmental clean ups, sponsoring local events and working as an arm in educational outreach.

The organization is attempting to build support throughout the Pacific Northwest by contacting and gaining support from other like minded groups. Much of their website is currently under construction, which is http://cascadianow.org, however an article about bioregionalism is available and you can contact the organization for more information at cascadianow@gmail.com. 

Sunday, February 11, 2007

California Split

New York Times
Gar Alperovitz

SOMETHING interesting is happening in California. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have grasped the essential truth that no nation — not even the United States — can be managed successfully from the center once it reaches a certain scale. Moreover, the bold proposals that Mr. Schwarzenegger is now making for everything from universal health care to global warming point to the kind of decentralization of power which, once started, could easily shake up America’s fundamental political structure.

Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear that California is not simply another state. “We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,” he recently declared. “We have the economic strength, we have the population and the technological force of a nation-state.” In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “We are a good and global commonwealth.”

Political rhetoric? Maybe. But California’s governor has also put his finger on a little discussed flaw in America’s constitutional formula. The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

A recent study by the economists Alberto Alesina of Harvard and Enrico Spolaore of Tufts demonstrates that the bigger the nation, the harder it becomes for the government to meet the needs of its dispersed population. Regions that don’t feel well served by the government’s distribution of goods and services then have an incentive to take independent action, the economists note.

Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.

James Madison, the architect of the United States Constitution, understood these problems all too well. Madison is usually viewed as favoring constructing the nation on a large scale. What he urged, in fact, was that a nation of reasonable size had advantages over a very small one. But writing to Jefferson at a time when the population of the United States was a mere four million, Madison expressed concern that if the nation grew too big, elites at the center would divide and conquer a widely dispersed population, producing “tyranny.”

Few Americans realize just how huge this nation is. Germany could fit within the borders of Montana. France is smaller than Texas. Leaving aside three nations with large, unpopulated land masses (Russia, Canada and Australia), the United States is geographically larger than all the other advanced industrial countries taken together. Critically, the American population, now roughly 300 million, is projected to reach more than 400 million by the middle of this century. A high Census Bureau estimate suggests it could reach 1.2 billion by 2100.

If the scale of a country renders it unmanageable, there are two possible responses. One is a breakup of the nation; the other is a radical decentralization of power. More than half of the world’s 200 nations formed as breakaways after 1946. These days, many nations — including Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Italy and Spain, just to name a few — are devolving power to regions in various ways.

Decades before President Bush decided to teach Iraq a lesson, George F. Kennan worried that what he called our “monster country” would, through the “hubris of inordinate size,” inevitably become a menace, intervening all too often in other nations’ affairs: “There is a real question as to whether `bigness’ in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.”

Kennan proposed that devolution, “while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government,” might yield a “dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.”

Regional devolution would most likely be initiated by a very large state with a distinct sense of itself and aspirations greater than Washington can handle. The obvious candidate is California, a state that has the eighth-largest economy in the world.

If such a state decided to get serious about determining its own fate, other states would have little choice but to act, too. One response might be for an area like New England, which already has many regional interstate arrangements, to follow California’s initiative — as it already has on some environmental measures. And if one or two large regions began to take action, other state groupings in the Northwest, Southwest and elsewhere would be likely to follow.

A new wave of regional devolution could also build on the more than 200 compacts that now allow groups of states to cooperate on environmental, economic, transportation and other problems. Most likely, regional empowerment would be popular: when the Appalachian Regional Commission was established in 1965, senators from across the country rushed to demand commissions to help the economies and constituencies of their regions, too.

Governor Schwarzenegger may not have thought through the implications of continuing to assert forcefully his “nation-state” ambitions. But he appears to have an expansive sense of the possibilities: this is the governor, after all, who brought Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain to the Port of Long Beach last year to sign an accord between California and Britain on global warming. And he may be closer to the mark than he knows with his dream that “California, the nation-state, the harmonious state, the prosperous state, the cutting-edge state, becomes a model, not just for the 21st-century American society, but for the larger world.”

Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of “America Beyond Capitalism."

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Is Cascadia Next?

Vermont Group Passes Resolution To Secede From The US
The members of a peaceful freedom-fighting group want no part of neo-cons running the imperialistic U.S. government. Plan to secede from the U.S. gaining momentum in the fiercely independent Green Mountain state.
By Greg Szymanski
11/2/05

The neo-con band of criminals running Washington, trampling on civil rights at home and invading countries at will overseas, has led a large group of strong-minded Vermont freedom-fighters with no choice but to secede from the United States.

And last Friday at the state capital building in Montpelier, a historic independence convention was held, the first of its kind in the United States since May 20, 1861, when South Carolina decided to leave the Union.

A packed House Chamber in the Vermont statehouse, with more than 400 gathered, started the daylong secession convention with a speech by keynote James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, and ended with a resolution passed to secede from the United States.

Most people think of secession as impossible if not treasonous, but the concept is deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence, reminding us that “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and to institute new government.”

And with the neo-con takeover of Washington, including all its branches of government transforming America into a one-party dictatorship, that’s exactly what the resolution passed in Vermont seeks to do by members of grassroots movement growing in numbers daily.

Although the resolution is the first step in the long process that needs support from the state legislators - as well as an officially recognized convention - the grass roots group called the Second Vermont Republic passed the following citizen’s resolution:

“Be it resolved that the state of Vermont peacefully and democratically free itself from the United States of America and return to its natural status as an independent republic as it was between January 15, 1777 and March 4, 1791.”

Even though critics give the secession group “a snowball’s chance in hell,” organizers are firmly convinced in the present-day tyrannical political climate secession will not only succeed but will prosper.

“This could only happen in Vermont where people are still fiercely independent and fed up with the course the American government is taking,” said Thomas Naylor, the head of the group calling itself the Second Republic of Vermont. “We have a lot going for us and if you think about it, we have a lot in common with Poland’s Solidarity movement, who many said would never succeed.”

“But Poland did get its freedom, mainly because it was a country liked around the world, sort of like how people in America feel about Vermont. When people think of Vermont, they have a warm and fuzzy feeling, an image of black and white Holstein cows and beautiful scenery. I can also tell you there is now closet support in the legislature now and we are serious about getting the support needed to secede from the United States.”

Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor, said from his Vermont home this week that statewide independence is really a euphemism for secession, adding Vermont also will seek to join the group of Unrepresented Nations similar to the Lakota Indians and other international indigenous people.

“Secession is one of the most politically charged words in America, thanks to Abraham Lincoln,” said Naylor, adding he had been writing about secession for the better part of 10 years but the movement picked up tremendous steam after 9/11. “Secession really combines a radical act of rebellion grounded in fear and anger with a positive vision for the future.

“It represents an act of faith that the new will be better than the old. The decision to secede necessarily involves a very personal, painful four-step decision process. It first involves denunciation that the United States has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable, ungovernable and unfixable. Second, there is disengagement or admitting I don’t want to go down with the Titanic. Third, there is demystification that secession really is a viable option constitutionally, politically and economically. And finally, defiance, saying ‘I personally want to help take Vermont back from big business, big markets and big government and I want to do so peacefully.’”

What started out as Naylor’s little fantasy to have an independent country made up of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, has already grown from a small group of 36 several years ago to a packed House Chamber in the state’s capital. Claiming to have a membership of 160 as of last April, Naylor said the numbers have doubled or even tripled.

“I’m getting calls from all over the country supporting our movement,” said Naylor. “Although there are more than 20 states with some kind of secession movement, Alaska and Hawaii being the best examples, I think Vermont really has the best chance at succeeding at seceding.”

Besides holding the Vermont independence convention in Montpelier, the smallest state capital city in the United States, it also has the reputation as being the most fiercely independent and anti- big business, being the only one not allowing a McDonald’s in the entire country.

“First and foremost, we want out of the United States. It’s not just an anti-Bush statement and if Kerry was elected, we still would have wanted out,” said Naylor. “The reality is that we have a one party system in this country, called the Republican party, that is owned and operated and controlled by corporate America. So it’s not just a Bush protest, but a protest against the Empire.

Although many critics have said the mighty U.S. would not stand for Vermont’s secession, Naylor as will as others disagree, including Jim Hogue, a talk show host on Vermont Public radio.

“There’s nothing they would want here. There’s no oil, just mountains. We’re just not important enough. We’re funny, we’re small and we’re peaceful,” said Hogue several months ago in an article in the Montreal Gazette.

With most Vermont politicians, including the Congressional delegation, ignoring the grassroots secession movement or just laughing it off as good theatre, Vermont’s Lt. Gov., Brian Dubie, has weighed in on the issue, giving it a certain amount of merit but stopping short of outright support.

“I really salute their energy and passion,” he said in a local press interview. “we have an obligation to think of what is in our best interest as a state and for the people of out state, even as we approach federal and national issues.”

Besides Naylor and Kuntsler, others who spoke at the Oct. 28 independence convention included Professor Frank Bryan of the University of Vermont; Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale; J. Kevin Graffagnino, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society; Professor Eric Davis, Middlebury College; Shay Totten, editor of the Vermont Guardian; and Dr. Rob Williams of Champlain College.

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/36584.htm

Monday, September 12, 2005

Cascadia Rising

Can’t you just feel it sometimes?

The angst, the schadenfreude, the hubris.
Rotting from the core, oblivious to what they don’t want to hear, the center cannot hold it all together.
The steady drumbeat of stories chronicling the slow crumbling and dissolution of the Imperial ‘Murcan Empire?

Endless “spin” to counter truth, rampant cronyism, unprecedented corruption, incompetance beyond belief, religious doctrine foisted off as policy. Lies, lies, and more lies and a press that, until recently, was so cowed by the administration that they wouldn’t (or weren’t permitted to) ask the uncomfortable questions that need to be asked.

A “loyal opposition” that has been more loyal than opposition. The Democrats have played possum ever since 9/11. Four years on, they are threatening to actually grow a spine someday. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Why do I continue to have hope in the face of evil deeds and those who abet it? I am not a Pollyanna or prone to “just pretend it’s all OK”, as a recent satirical bumpersticker put it. It’s because of my feeling - and it’s difficult to find hope in facing certain disaster - that we’re seeing the beginning of the end for Bush and his cronies, and their repugnant corporatist ideology. At least for some parts of the U.S.

But first, there will be more of the same ol’, same ol’ - more natural disasters driven by global warming, more denial of humankind’s effects on the environment, more wars over natural resources, more ugly ideology-driven politics, more gutting of any regulation of pollution and corporate malfeasance, even more massive budget deficits and more clamping down on Constitutional rights.

Business as usual cannot go on much longer. Another few years of these policies will end in a global war or a depression worse than the one 75 years ago. The Earth itself can’t take much more. It’s letting us know in increasingly unsubtle ways. What gives me hope is that the long-term effects of these policies upon the U.S. are starting to perhaps break the back of Bush’s support or more likely, the “Blue States” will finally secede from the increasingly fascist American Empire.

Why do I think this? The first signs are already at hand - Oregon, Washington and California and the states of the Northeast are taking matters of energy, global warming and pollution into our own hands, because the Feds will not. The Bush regime is instead trying to make things worse - aiding and abetting their friends in the oil and automobile industries, and trying to strike down state laws on pollution and fuel economy.

We who live in these states consider this one more madness, compounded on all the others. In the ongoing “Reign of Error” the Bush regime has once again made not only the wrong choice, but the worst possible choice out of all available options.

There’s already a lot of resentment in many of these states about the constant religion-based and ideology-driven attempts to roll back state laws on things like assisted suicide, medical marijuana, women’s rights, reproductive rights and gender rights. It won’t take many more such meddlings in state’s affairs before you start seeing serious talk of secession in the mainstream media. Of course, something like the Federal government reneging on Social Security, which Bush hinted about in April, probably would be enough, too.

The Republican Party’s use of “wedge issues” for the last 30 years has succeeded in splitting the Union along ideological grounds. The “culture wars” are increasingly between the Red and Blue states, and will probably end in a breakup that hopefully won’t take the form of a civil war, only because the rest of the U.S, will be too consumed with the latest crisis du jour.

I’m thinking something along the lines of the breakup of the Soviet Union. We have reached the point - like the Soviets - where there is no longer enough “social glue” to hold together a country that is increasingly polarized and too big to effectively govern. We have a president who is actively dividing people rather than uniting and has little interest in governance, planning or followthrough. We have less and less in common with other regions, and have become 2 or 3 or more distinct societies. And so, it will likely break asunder, although it may take a generation to do so.

The loss of the West Coast and Northeast will cut off most of the financial base of the American war machine. Check out the balance of payments between individual states and the Feds in regards to both taxes and benefits. The blue states pay much more in, on average, than they get back. Without that cash flow, the red states will be unable to bully the Middle East, or much of anywhere else for that matter.

I, for one, will welcome the end of the ability of the U.S. to throw its massive resources behind Bush’s latest brainfart. And an independent Cascadia or Pacifica will be able to move beyond the dead-end petroleum-based economy much faster without the hindrance of the U.S. government forbidding us to act.

So what do you do, individually? How can one person stand against vast machines of greed, death and destruction?

Watch water and how it behaves. It is soft as silk, but infinitely persistant. Even the hardest rock cannot stand against it, not in the long run.

Do likewise. Be gentle, but persist. Live your life well, but with the Earth in mind. You are as much a part of it as it is of you.

Grow. Nurture. Feel. Plant seeds, talk to friends and family, sing songs. Drive less, read more.

Take control of your life - individually, neighborhood, city, state and region-wide. Eat local food, patronize local businesses. Disengage from the Great American Death Machine a little more every day. Encourage your local and state governments to do the same. Turn off the TV, take a walk in the sun, or among the falling leaves and rain. And while you’re at it, look for the silver lining and await the coming of spring.

Cascadia has always been here, it’s just waiting for us to realize it.

- Bob Woods