Champlain College Professor Publishes Book on the Vermont Independence Movement

Champlain College Professor Rob Williams, and his co-editor Ron Miller have released their new book, Most Likely to Secede, What the Vermont Independence Movement Can Teach Us about Reclaiming Community and Creating a Human-Scale Vision for the 21st Century. The book, published by The Vermont Independent Press, features dispatches from Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence news journal.

Most Likely to Secede is a provocative and visionary response to the political and economic decay of the U.S. empire. Defying conventional categories of "left" and "right," a diverse group of activists, scholars and entrepreneurs explore relocalized ways of meeting our essential needs for food, energy, financial stability and a robust community life. They explain why powerful highly centralized institutions, from government and global corporations to colossal educational and medical systems, mass media and agribusiness, conspire to destroy community, erode democracy, and enrich an elite few at the expense of everyone else. The authors argue that these monolithic and dysfunctional institutions will be unable to cope with an impending crisis brought about by climate change, depletion of resources, and collapse of the global economy.

In Vermont, long admired for its strong communities, careful stewardship of the land, and democratic governance, citizens are responding to this crisis proactively, through local and regional efforts toward greater self-reliance and resilience. Some have even concluded that political separation from empire-that is, nonviolent secession-is necessary for achieving these goals. Most Likely to Secede draws from observations and reflections on Vermont independence efforts that have been published since 2005 in the journal Vermont Commons: Voices Of Independence, also published by Williams. These radical but reasonable essays challenge the stale platitudes of the current political scene and point the way toward a livable future.

More information can be found at http://vermontindependencepress.com

Media contact: Rob Williams, editor@vtcommons.org, 802-279-3364
Find Most Likely to Secede on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Most-Likely-Secede-Independence-Reclaiming/dp/1603585028/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363706616&sr=8-1&keywords=9781603585026
ISBN: 978-1-60358-502-6, 280 pages, 6 x 9, $19.95, paperback
Publication Date: 3/31/13

Distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing


Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition. For the fourth year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2019 "America's Best Colleges,” and a “Best Value School” and is ranked in the top 100 “Regional Universities of the North” and in the top 25 for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2019 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2019 College of Distinction. For more information, visit champlain.edu.