At least ten rural Colorado counties are taking aggressive steps to form a 51st state, saying their interests are not being met by moves to regulate the oil and gas industry, increase renewable energy, and better regulate guns. Organizers in Kansas and Nebraska are also interested in joining the state they call “North Colorado.”
Organizers met this week to draw up boundaries of the new state, as part of an ambitious schedule to draft a ballot initiative by August 1, and get a proposal before the voters in November. Congress must approve admission of a new state into the Union. But the U.S. Constitution also requires that secession of parts of any existing state be approved both by the voters and legislature of that state. This means Colorado would have to approve of the counties’ secession, as would Kansas and Nebraska if parts of those states wanted to join. One of the ten counties that initiated the movement, Weld County, is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island, according to a county commissioner.
Bring it, oil and gas. We will stop you right in your tracks in every humanly legal possible way. Citizens will surge and re-establish their civil rights. You will face a resistance you have never seen in recent history. You will not destroy our ways of life and continue to remove our civil rights. We will protect ourselves and we will protect our neighbors.
We do not want your toxic industrialization in our neighborhoods. We do not want your lies.
