CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2016, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2016, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WILL BREXIT SPUR A ‘CALEAVEFORNIA?’”
Louis Marinelli polled just 6.2
percent of the vote in San Diego’s 80th Assembly District during the
June primary, but there’s at least a chance the subsequent “Brexit” vote in
Great Britain could increase his influence greatly.
Marinelli, a teacher of English as a
second language, has made a semi-independent California his theme for years.
Until lately, he hadn’t pushed a complete split from the rest of the United
States, the way some promoters of an independent Texas now advocate, using
Twitter hashtag #Texit.
Marinelli’s Yes California
Independence Campaign (formerly called Sovereign California) sees immense
promise in the way the United Kingdom likely will soon divorce the European
Union. Yes California had mostly sought a semi-autonomous status similar to
what Scotland has in the U.K.
Just maybe, if Britons felt they had
more of a voice within the EU, they would have voted to remain in it. That kind
of larger voice is what Marinelli’s nascent movement has sought for California.
Prior to the late-June British vote,
Yes California Independence had not seen much success. In March, for example,
the group under its previous name failed to qualify a new and more aggressive
ballot initiative that would have asked that Californians vote on whether to
become independent, with governors present and future to be called “presidents.”
The measure also specified that if the
rest of America refused to allow a so-called “Calexit,” the question would
automatically appear on the state ballot every four years, along with the
question of whether California should apply for membership in the United
Nations.
Even in a year when the number of
signatures required to qualify initiatives for the ballot is at a historic low
of about 365,000, this idea found no traction, just like Marinelli’s state
Assembly campaign.
But the Brexit vote could change
things. “It shows secession isn’t just a relic of the 19th Century,”
Marinelli told a reporter. “It’s an example of an independence movement
occurring in the Western world, a modern-day, 21st Century example
of a political entity seceding from a political union. It means Californians
who hear the word secession don’t have to think of the Civil War anymore. Now
they have an example of how it can happen peacefully and legally…, and that’s
the path to mimic here in California.”
Marinelli has changed his tune a bit
over the last two years. In 2014, he said in an interview that a totally
sovereign California wasn’t needed, that the state should merely become capable
of making its own binding deals with other countries and be able to pass laws
that could not be overturned by the United States Supreme Court.
Back then, he wanted to set up a nonpartisan blue-ribbon panel of
state legislators to analyze “sub-national sovereignty” and its effects on
Californians and other Americans. The group would hold hearings and call
experts to testify on how California could sign its own treaties with foreign
countries and otherwise assert itself internationally — while still using the
United States dollar and having its citizens register with Selective Service
and serve in the American military.
The idea of making binding agreements with other countries is
something recent California governors like Jerry Brown and Arnold
Schwarzenegger have liked, to the point of signing myriad “memoranda of
understanding” with provinces and states belonging to other nations from India
to Russia, Canada, Brazil and, yes, the U.K. These have had little long-term
meaning because they lack the status of treaties.
Marinelli also raised the question of whether California should
stop participating in presidential elections and revert to something like the
not-quite-statehood status Puerto Rico has today.
And he plumped for the symbolic change of always flying the
state’s Bear Republic flag at equal height with the Stars and Stripes on public
property.
No one took much of that seriously
until after the British vote. Now far more radical changes may be taken
seriously, at least in part because California gets back only about 77 cents in
federal spending for every dollar in taxes its citizens contribute. There’s
also the reality that Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court are often at
philosophical odds with a majority of Californians.
No, a Caleavefornia movement is not
imminent. But neither is the notion quite as preposterous as it used to be.
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Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net