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"The Middlebury Declaration"

"The Middlebury Declaration"

Issued Novenber 7, 2004

Middlebury, Vermont

We gathered here this weekend to explore the possibilities of a new politics that might provide a realistic and enactable alternative to the familiar sorry political scene around us that has just ratified its decadent and corrupt nature with the re-election of George W. Bush.

We 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 at this moment an opportunity to push through new political ideas and projects that will offer true popular participation and genuine democracy. The time to prepare for that is now.In our deliberations we 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, dedicated to the precept of human scale, distance themselves from larger ones, as in decentralization, dissolution, disunion, division, devolution, or secession, creating small and independent bodies that rule themselves. Of course we favor such polities that operate with participatory democracy and egalitarian justice, which are attainable only at a small scale, but the primary principle is that these states should enact their separation and self-government as they see fit.

It is important to realize that the separatist/independence movement is the most important and 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 153 nations in 2004.

The break-up of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia are recent manifestations of this fundamental trend, and there are separatist movements in more than two dozen countries at this time, including such well-known ones as in Catalonia, Scotland, 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 processes 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 growing 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 are pledged to create a movement that will place secession on the national agenda, encourage nonviolent secessionist organizations throughout the country, 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." — United States Declaration of Independence, 1776.