In their new plan, supporters of #Calexit will call for the establishment of what they call “the first ever autonomous Native American nation in North America.” | Nick Ut/AP Photo Quixotic effort to secede California from U.S. to get reboot

LOS ANGELES — Organizers of a campaign to split California from the United States will abandon their improbable initiative this week — then re-launch it to include not only secession, but the creation of an “autonomous Native American nation” encompassing nearly half the state.

The plan, which organizers are preparing to announce this week, marks the latest setback — and rebirth — of a quixotic yet much-ballyhooed #Calexit campaign, which abandoned a similar signature-gathering effort last year.


In their new plan, supporters of #Calexit will call for the establishment of what they call “the first ever autonomous Native American nation in North America.” Under the proposal, all federally owned land in California would be returned to Native Americans, creating an “autonomous Native American nation” running up and down California from the Mexico to Oregon borders.

“Why not do something to right some of the wrongs of the past to the Native American people, and give them back their land?” Louis J. Marinelli, a Calexit co-founder, said Tuesday.

Because most of that land falls on the eastern, more conservative part of the state, one of the leaders of the group, Marcus Ruiz Evans, noted in a prepared statement that a side benefit would be to create a “buffer zone between Donald Trump's America and the new independent California Republic.”

Marinelli and other organizers of the group loosely likened the proposed Native American territory to the governance of Greenland, which has limited autonomy from Denmark.

The proposal is the latest in California’s decades-long series of flirtations with secession – all producing fodder for the imagination, but little else. The movement gained widespread attention following the election of President Donald Trump, which sharpened the contrast between a Republican-held Washington and this heavily Democratic state.

Before this week, proponents of #Calexit had been circulating a ballot initiative that, if approved, would have required a vote on whether California should become an independent nation. They faced an October deadline to collect more than 365,000 signatures – a massive undertaking for a volunteer effort.

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Marinelli said an alternative ballot measure by the venture capitalist Tim Draper to split California into three states had caused voter confusion about the #Calexit initiative. He also feared his initiative, as originally proposed, could suffer the same fate as Draper’s. The California Supreme Court last month, questioning the validity of Draper’s measure, ordered state officials not to put it on the November ballot.

The new #Calexit measure will be no less onerous to advance. If the initiative qualifies and is approved – polling suggesting a highly skeptical electorate – many legal experts say the initiative would then face the Herculean task of winning an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Marinelli said the campaign does not consider that step necessary.

Instead, he said that if California voters approve of secession, campaign organizers will seek resolutions of support from a majority of state legislatures throughout the country.

“Then,” Marinelli said, “the world will hopefully be willing to support that as a legitimate secession.”



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