In this week’s Seven Days, a well written piece about the Second Vermont Republic.
Well, now. This is an idea that has been knocking around my brain
for years, and recently I have found myself having little use for the
current mainstream america.
Two days after Katrina hit, FEMA still fumbling, Bush doing his
fly-over, and I went down to the local state police barracks to drop
off a load of groceries. One local outfit had donated a load of
pallets, another a forklift. Folks dropping off food, water,
toys, toothpaste … guys on their way to work, a mom with her kid
trailing behind lugging a gallon of water, a white haired lady on her
way to tennis lessons. Volunteers sorting and wrapping the piles
of goods. The trucks, thirty-five of them, would be departing
Brattleboro at 2:00 that afternoon, full, headed for Gulfport.
I looked around at these people, ordinary Vermont’s coming together to
do what needs to be done, and I thought “We know how to do this.” And
then I thought of the ten grand I pay in federal income tax alone, and
at the complete non response on the part of the federal government, at
the ineffectiveness of our leaders. In that moment it became very
clear, in a very concrete way. We don’t need the Feds. I
was ready to secede.
So here it is:
democratic, grassroots solidarity movement committed to the return
of Vermont to its rightful status as an independent republic as
was the case in 1791 and to support Vermont’s future development
as a separate, sustainable nation-state.
One question raised in the article was “Can Vermont Feed
Itself?”. I would like to raise the question “Can Vermont Provide
It’s Own Energy?” I guess maybe yes. I haven’t done the
calculations but I do know that we could grow a considerable amount of
our own fuel in the form of BioDiesel. I’ve been doing a bit of
work in this area, and … well, if I told everyone the reason
was so that we could gain energy independence as one of the key steps
towards secession they might think I was on the lunatic fringe.
But there it is.