The Bolinas Declaration of Independence

By Ernest Callenbach

This piece was originally published in Home! A Bioregional Reader, edited by Van Andruss, Christopher Plant, Judith Plant, and Eleanor Wright, New Society Publishers, copyright 1990.

We are American people. But we are human beings before we are Americans, and we would still be human beings if we ceased being American citizens. Governments are created to serve people, not the other way around. And so, when institutions have become bureaucratized and rigid, when the laws and applications of the laws no longer protect the people but have instead become a burden and a danger to them, then the people have the right, and indeed the duty, to take the management of their health, their welfare, and their happiness back into their own hands.

“In recent months we have seen the development of an intolerable situation in many parts of the territories which have become known as Ecotopia. Citizens despairing at the ineffectuality of government measures to protect them against the abuses and dangers of the chemical and nuclear industries have been forced to take direct action in self-defense. The citizens’ just demands for healthy conditions of life, such as contaminant-free food and water supplies, air to breathe which does not contain dangerous levels of pollutants, freedom from the threat of nuclear plant accidents, and a reduction of the influx of carcinogenic substances into the biosphere, have been ignored or even derided—in government documents which call upon us to sacrifice human life upon the altar of profit. The attempts of our state governments to protect their citizens against the economic and health dangers of the automobile have been overturned by federal court order. Arrogant county bureaucracies and criminals employed by corporations have obstructed citizen attempts to achieve independent, renewable-source energy systems. In a time when experimentation and novelty are essential to our very survival, citizens have been forced into lock-step with outmoded standards.

“Our petitions for redress of these grievances have been met with silence or outright refusal. Now, therefore, we the elected officials of the Town of Bolinas proclaim that a state of civil emergency exists. The people must take the power over their destiny back into their own hands and form new institutions to defend their welfare.

“From this date forward the Town of Bolinas is hereby declared an independent territory in which the laws of the county of Marin, the state of California, and the United States of America no longer have legal force whenever they run counter to duly instituted ordinances of the Bolinas Town Council…”

Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) was a writer and editor. He worked for the University of California Press from 1955 to 1991. His interest in environmentalism grew out of his work frequently editing their Natural History Guides. He is the author of several books on ecology and sustainability, most notably 1975’s Ecotopia, which presented the belief that technology could be successfully integrated with humanity and the environment and anticipated some later developments in the real world.