Cascadia

Cascadia is the name of the region that comprises mostly of the current U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, and a part of Northern California North of Mount Lassen. The present Canadian province of British Columbia is also a part of Cascadia. Each of these areas will constitute the future nation of the Republic of Cascadia. As the United States continues it's slow and steady decline as a superpower and moves away from the core principles set by it's founding fathers, the demand of the people's of Cascadia for self-determination, greater rights, and a better future will be greater and grow louder.

The vision of an independent nation in the Pacific Northwest is not a new one. The idea dates as far back as 1803 when U.S. President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark into the Pacific Northwest. Jefferson envisioned the establishment of an independent nation in the Western portion of the North American continent that he dubbed the "Republic of the Pacific". Jefferson's original idea has since been embraced by a number of different groups with generally similar aims. Some groups have sought to extend the interpretation of "Cascadia" to embrace parts of Northern California and Alaska, while others are more closely aligned with such related concepts as the State of Jefferson, the New California Republic, the State of Trinity, State of Jackson, State of Klamath, State of Shasta and Pacifica.

Political motivations for the secession and autonomy movements deal mostly with perceived shared Cascadian political culture, values, language dialect, history and interests, which the eastern federal governments are accused of ignoring and being out of touch with.

Elements among the region's population sought to secede from the United States and form their own country from the very beginning of Oregon's statehood. While the Southern states broke away to form the Confederacy, some Oregonians saw it as a perfect opportunity to do the same and give new life to Jefferson's original idea, by trying to establish a country under Jefferson's name: the "Republic of the Pacific". The American government launched a successful propaganda attack to destroy the movement by trying to associate the Pacific movement with a group called the Knights of the Golden Circle, which was a pro-Confederate, pro-slavery organization.

At the same time, other movements inside of Cascadia, such as the Klamath movement, Trinity and Jackson movements all sought to wrench certain areas of Cascadia free from U.S. control. These too failed, largely by being put down through various uses of force.

In the 1930s, the State of Jefferson movement came into being and is, to date, the best known of such movements in the region. The movement was created to draw attention to the area by proposing that Southern Oregon and Northern California form a separate state. As this is historically a depressed area, many locals placed the blame on the governments of Salem and Sacramento. For that reason, a flag bearing two X's and a gold pan was adopted. The two X's represented the so-called "double crosses" from Sacramento and Salem.

In 1956, groups from Cave Junction, Oregon and Dunsmuir, California threatened to tear Southern Oregon and Northern California from their respective state rulers to form the State of Shasta. Several of the organizers involved took it one step further and threatened the federal government with armed resistance unless certain demands were met.

Two novels by Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981), are fictional portrayals of the secession of the region from the United States. Callenbach's novels include Washington, Oregon, and the northern half of California in the new country (with the dividing line between northern and southern California drawn roughly through Santa Barbara and Bakersfield). Seriatim was a short-lived magazine published in El Cerrito, California in the late 1970s which also promoted the secession of the region along the lines portrayed by Callenbach.

Unrelated to any of the other secessionist movements and regarded with near-universal hostility among residents of Cascadia was the Northwest Territorial Imperative, a secessionist proposal promoted by the Aryan Nations during the 1980s. The vast majority of those who support the idea of a Cascadian nation are against such groups and the hatred they preach.

In more recent years, a more organized movement calling for the re-unification of the original Oregon Country (which included the area of the modern day southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho and into a single entity for the purpose of gaining independence from both the United States and Canada has come into being under the name of the Evergreen Revolution. Supporters of the Evergreen Revolution hope to one day achieve the independence of Cascadia through peaceful means. In September of 2001, just a few days before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the Cascadian National Party (CNP) was established. The CNP was the first political party to call for outright independence of Cascadia through democratic and peaceful means. It had it's own manifesto and a progressive yet libertarian platform. Unfortunately, the idea never got far. The CNP became inactive and folded by 2003.

Today, the main group actively pursuing secession is the Republic of Cascadia and the Cascadian Independence Project. The Cascadian Independence Project adopted the CNP's manifesto and many of the policy platform though the Cascadian Independence Project does not consider itself a party in the political sense.

The region is already served by several cooperative organizations and interstate or international agencies, especially in forestry and fishery management and emergency preparedness – the whole region being prone to earthquakes (see Cascadia subduction zone). These organizations are thought by some to be precursors of a bioregional democracy, perhaps along the 'Republic' lines.

It is hard to say when full independence will be achieved. There are also many different ideas, opinions, and visions of what Cascadia should be all the way from what form of government to have all the way to what flag Cascadia should adopt. In all of this, the idea and principles for the ultimate freedom are already set in stone and will continue to be until that day arrives.