What follows is an edited interview based on a series of email
conversations between Vermont Commons editor Rob Williams and Heidi
Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, conducted during late
winter, 2008. Both parties agreed on the final transcript.

Q. Thanks for talking with me, Rob. Have you heard of the Southern Poverty Law Center?

A. Indeed I have. I have made extensive use of your “Teaching
Tolerance” materials when I taught high school courses about the
Holocaust for Boston’s “Facing History and Ourselves” program several
years ago. I appreciate your work in this arena.

Q. Let’s talk about Vermont secession groups. How closely interrelated are the Second Vermont Republic and the Vermont Commons?

A. Let’s start with a bit of “full disclosure.” Speaking personally, I
have been the (web) editor or Vermont Commons since spring 2005. For a
period of several months during fall 2006 and winter 2007, I also
served as acting co-chair for the Second Vermont Republic, after the
organization’s executive director stepped down with some unfinished
projects that I agreed to help finish. I left SVR in March 2007 to
focus more attention on growing Vermont Commons (we are currently
Vermont’s only statewide independent newspaper after one year of work),
and to help start www.freevermont.net,
a self-organizing grassroots citizen initiative dedicated to putting
Vermont independence on Vermont’s annual town meeting day agendas every
year.

Beyond my temporary “dual” service to both Vermont Commons and SVR,
there have never been any formal organizational connections between the
Second Vermont Republic and Vermont Commons.

We see ourselves as Vermont-based "sister" organizations, in the sense that we both are interested in nonviolent secession.

Q. So there are no formal connections between the two organizations?

A. To be clear: SVR chairman Thomas Naylor does not and has never sat
on our Vermont Commons editorial board, nor do we take any money or
financial contributions from SVR, beyond yearly subscription fees. SVR
also purchases some of our FREE VERMONT merchandise from time to time.

As a Vermont Commons editorial board, we decide to publish SVR chairman
Thomas Naylor's writings, essays germane to the U.S. Empire and
nonviolent secession, on a regular basis, as you can see at our Vermont
Commons web site. He is a colleague and a neighbor in our emerging
independence/secession conversation.

Again, speaking personally, I consider Thomas Naylor a colleague, and
while I
often have had disagreements with SVR with regard to both the tactics
and tone of the Vermont independence work, I think these debates are
healthy – disagreement and debate often leads to fruitful outcomes.

And, as two different organizations, we often adopt different
strategies and advocate for different sorts of ideas and approaches. To
whit:

Vermont Commons is exclusively focused on Vermont as a once and future
republic, is "educative" in nature as a newspaper and web site, and is
as interested in questions of "sustainability" as much as we are
interested in questions of "secession/independence" - we see the two as
inextricably linked, moving forward into the 21st century. The first
question asked of us once people become interested in nonviolent
secession is: what would an independent Vermont republic look like?
We’re trying to answer that question in all of its manifestations.

SVR is much more of a globally-focused think tank and network
exclusively focused on political secession/independence - thus SVR's
interest in discussion with secessionist groups all over the continent
(including the South, of course) and the world.

I see the tensions between SVR and Vermont Commons as generally healthy
ones. To achieve the peaceful dissolution of the U.S. as an Empire, we
all need to think carefully and creatively about building collaborative
bridges with all kinds of groups of good will, both within the once and
future republic of Vermont and globally.

Q. Has Vermont Commons taken a position on SVR's relationship with the
League of the South and other Neo-Confederate types? I'm assuming that
Vermont Commons is against racism, yet Naylor's colleagues in the
League are clearly racist. Has Vermont Commons ever criticized the
relationship between SVR and the League, for example? Have you ever
written about how you would feel about allying, as SVR has, with
racists groups to further the cause of secession? And how do you all
feel about that? I know that's a bit theoretical, but I'm wondering if
there is any apprehension among secessionists in allying with those who
would like to create a racist society in their seceded state.

A. Your assumption regarding Vermont Commons partnerships is correct. I
have absolutely no interest, nor does Vermont Commons, in partnering
with or publishing the ideas of known racist groups or individuals who
openly espouse racist beliefs. We never have and we never will.

And, having worked alongside Thomas Naylor and SVR for several years
now, I can safely say that Thomas Naylor is certainly no racist, and
SVR has no interest in promoting or advancing racist policies or
programs.

As I mentioned earlier, SVR chairman Thomas Naylor (and our colleague
Kirkpatrick Sale of the Middlebury Institute) are both interested in
talking with any secession-minded organization of good will – they are
in contact with more than thirty secession-minded groups representing a
wide array of political and philosophical positions currently
discussing the notion of peaceably disassembling the U.S. Empire.

You state in your question above, Heidi, that the League of the South
is “clearly racist,” and would “like to create a racist society in
their seceded state.”

Yet, the League of the South issued a public statement in 2004
specifically denouncing racism, a statement explicitly explaining that
they do not want a racist state in a secessionist nation.

If the Second Vermont Republic choose to talk with other secessionist
groups from around the country and the world, that is SVR’s business –
that’s not what we at Vermont Commons or other Vermont secession-minded
groups are doing – but we practice a “live and let live” approach up
here in the Green Mountains when it comes to strategies for working on
Vermont independence.

Q. So "Vermont Commons"does not work directly with the League of the South?

A. Speaking as Vermont Commons editor, we have no interest in allying
ourselves with any non-Vermont groups, southern or otherwise. We are a
Vermont-focused newspaper, one interested in ideas and solutions for an
emerging 21st century that will prove very different than the 20th.

The “racism” charge, by the way, has become a convenient way for a few
outspoken Vermonters who may not agree with our goals to throw stones
at us. A few Vermont bloggers, in particular, have spent more
than one year now huffing about how Vermont Commons and SVR are
“racist,” or “working with racists,” or espousing “neo-Confederate”
ideas (whatever that means.).

While some Vermont journalists have taken the time to check in with us
about our work, many bloggers – who love to flap their electronic jowls
in cyberspace - have attacked us repeatedly without ever once bothering
to contact us to find out what we really think.

Here are two useful examples of Vermont blogosphere misrepresentation
related to “racism” and “neo-Confederate-ism,” based on public comments
I have made, by way of illustration.

Example #1 – Re: “Williams doesn’t know and doesn’t care…”

I was asked last winter 2007 about why Vermont Commons published the writings of a southerner named Donald Livingston.

Donald Livingston, who runs the Abbeville Institute, is a professor of
philosophy at Emory University, and his writings on decentralization,
Jeffersonian democracy, the history of the early U.S. republic, and the
work of secession efforts – including those in 19th century New England
- are respected in the field.

Succinctly summarized, my response to this question re: Professor Livingston last winter was:

“In all of my professional dealings with Mr. Livingston (a phone call,
two face-to-face conversations over dinner at conferences, and two
dozen e-mails), nothing he ever said, did, or wrote to me suggested
that he was a ‘racist,’ his writings give no indication of the same,
and speaking personally, the question of Professor Livingston’s alleged
‘racism’ was none of my damn business.”

I was clear in my comment to make a distinction between the
professional and the personal – unlike Homeland Security or the current
occupant of the White House, I do not have the ability to make windows
into men’s souls, nor do I care to.

My statement of winter 2007 re: Professor Livingston, however, was
immediately seized upon and repeatedly translated in the Vermont
blogosphere this way: “Williams doesn’t know and doesn’t care if he’s
working with racists.”

Which is a complete misrepresentation of what I said.

And this complete misrepresentation of a public comment I made in good
faith is, sadly, how the blogosphere tends to operate sometimes.

Example #2 – Re: Republican president Abraham Lincoln and the lessons of U.S. history

A few bloggers have repeatedly alleged that Vermont Commons’ occasional
critique of 16th president Abraham Lincoln’s economic policies and
political agenda re: the U.S. Constitution is a “neo-confederate” (and
thus implicitly “racist”) position.

This is utter nonsense.

Observers from across the political spectrum – well-known socialist
historian Howard Zinn, (author of A People’s History of the United
States), formerly of Boston University, and right-leaning libertarian
economist Thomas DiLorenzo of Maryland’s Loyola College, for example,
have both been critical of Republican Abraham Lincoln’s programs and
policies: in particular, Lincoln’s creation of a new kind of
centralized economic relationship between the 19th century federal
government and emerging multinational corporations, and Lincoln’s
sweeping and radical re-interpretation of the U.S. Constitution during
the years of the “Civil War,” which effectively removed the “secession”
option – first championed by the citizens of 19th century New England –
from the table.

19th century Vermonters, many of whom fought and died during the “Civil
War,” understood the scope of Lincoln’s radical re-interpretation of
the U.S. Constitution full well, even as many chose to fight and die
for Lincoln’s new vision for the “United States.”

In a September 4, 1861 diary entry, for example, Vermonter Charles Nelson Morse wrote these words:

“Speaking about voting here now days is something that I cannot do and
know what I am voting for. As for the Republican Party, I perfectly
hate the name and that is all there is to it, for there is no
principle, neither can there be any principle to any party that comes
up, unless it comes within limits of our old Constitution.” (the
italics are mine.)

Anyone interested in U.S. history and the “secession question” must
come to terms with the complexities of this important moment in our
history, just as anyone interested in U.S. history and the “secession
question” must understand that the American “Revolution” of 1776 was,
in fact, a “Declaration of Secession” from the British Empire, and that
all of our Founding Fathers and Mothers were secessionists, championing
secession from an Empire that they believed no longer represented them
or served their needs or interests.

Seen in this light, the 1776 Declaration of Independence may be the most important secession document in modern world history.

But all of this useful context – and this is just a sampling - gets
lost, of course, in the reductionist propaganda of the blogosphere,
especially when bloggers repeat the same tired allegations, devoid of
context and, in many instances, logic itself.

Q. Do you have anything else to say on this topic?

A. The last thing I’d say about “racism” is that it comes in many forms.

I’ve traveled and lived all over the country, and I’ve studied U.S.
history for a long time. United States history with regard to the
question of race is an interesting mix of lofty idealism and political
expediency.

Just to take one example from the past few years – we now know from
independent research by journalists and writers like Greg Palast, Bev
Harris, Mark Crispin Miller, Congressman John Conyers and many others
that tens of thousands of American voters of color were systematically
disenfranchised in the so-called presidential “elections” of 2000 and
2004.

Simply stated, their votes weren’t counted.

And Democratic and Republican party leaders at the national level, as
well as every respected mainstream news outlet in this country, have
refused to even look at the mountains of evidence about election fraud,
fraud that is very much tied to questions of race.

So one might reasonably conclude that the United States Empire is deeply racist.

And Vermont, the first state in the U.S. to abolish slavery, has a long
history of tolerance, “live and let live” pragmatism, and “small d”
democracy. We’re also one of the few states left, by the way, where
votes are counted (in many towns, including mine) using a pencil,
paper, and flesh-and-blood human beings, rather than corporations using
proprietary technology the public cannot access.

Vermont is not perfect, by any means, but I think that our small state
has a fair bit to offer the world as we move into an unknown future
that will look very different from our past.