October 18, 2022 • 32 mins
Meet your new Founding Fathers: Marcus Ruiz-Evans & Louis Marinelli. Who are they? And how did they take CAL EXIT from the political fringe to the national news? Sources:
- The Seasteading Institute
- @SophiaBollag on Twitter
- KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco
- Fox News
- PBS SoCal
- Kayla Moon on YouTube
- Yes California Calexit Campaign
- Donald J Trump on YouTube
- Good Morning Britain
- CGTN America
- truth videos on YouTube
- Fox News
- Fox News
- Fox News
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic language and content that may be
alarming to some listener. Discretion is advised talk about what
spending his money on you lying into up. Yet, in
February of eleven, if you were skipping around on late
night cable, you might have come across an interview with
(00:21):
an intense looking guy in a black suit and a
gray shirt. Here with us is someone with more radical
vision of the future. Patrie Friedman, founder of the Sea
Steading Institute sea steading instead of homesteading platforms in the
ocean y. His name was Patrick Friedman, and he was
pitching a big idea sea steadying. Hey, I'm Patre Friedman,
(00:45):
and I've been thinking for twenty years about how we
can make government and society work better. See's saying he's
the idea of homesteading the high seas, living permanently on
the ocean. Patrie is a libertarian, someone who wants small government,
extremely small. For example, libertarians opposed the idea of public
education or of a minimum wage. But libertarian views have
(01:09):
never been very popular, which means people like Patrie have
had a hard time getting their ideas actually put into practice.
So what could they do well? We want people to
be able to peacefully test new forms of government. I mean,
no technology advances unless you can try new things. The
same is true for political systems, just like anything else.
Right now, governments control all the lands, so you need
to create a new place exactly. Technically, no one owns
(01:33):
the ocean, which made it the perfect place for Patrick
to build a new society, no compromises, no rules, and so.
On April fifteen eight, Patrick co founded the c Studing Institute,
and we looked into like whether it's practical and how
and the international law and engineering and the business models
to build on the oceans. The institute quickly announced that
(01:55):
its first prototype would launch in San Francisco Bay. The
idea was a hit, millions of dollars. Yeah, we've raised
almost two million dollars. Our lead donor is Peter til
who invented PayPal, was the first investor in Facebook. It's
it's a bit of a long shot, like any startup,
but it's a long shot worth taking because if it works,
it'll completely transform government. Right instead of all of this
(02:17):
complaining about how our government works, we can go out
and compete with it. I mean, it's the entrepreneurs way
to fix things, go do something better. Patrick Freedman had
(02:39):
a big idea for changing the world. He had millions
of dollars to back him, and he had the media spotlight.
But when you look out in the Bay today, there
is no floating city. There are no new societies operating
in the high seas. So what happened? As it turns out,
founding a new country? It's easier said than done. From
(03:05):
Interval presents an awfully nice This is the Last Resort
Episode two. The ballot of Marcus and lewis, Oh we
(03:27):
what do we want? Americans are pretty divided these days,
but as we talked about last episode, there is one
thing a lot of people do agree on. Our system
of government doesn't work. So it's probably no surprise the
interest is growing in ideas like cal Exit. That was
(03:47):
protesters around the our state and around the country took
to the streets on Twitter that hashtag cal exit began
to trend. This is real, this could happen, and this
would mean breaking up the United States of America. Is
it crazy for California to want to leave the Union?
I don't think it's crazy at all. Calls it was
(04:13):
founded back by two friends, Marcus Ruise Evans and Louis Marinelli.
There have been plenty of independence movements in the US
over the years, from Texas to Alaska to Cascadia in
the Pacific Northwest, but so far, none of these efforts
have been successful. So why would Calls It be any different?
(04:35):
And why would Marcus and Lewis dedicate years of their
lives to such a long shot idea. Today we're going
to tell you their story, how they took cal Exit
from a fringe idea to headline news, and why they
believe Calls It can succeed where others have failed. I
(05:00):
never started off wanting to become a secessionist. This is Marcus.
He sat in Stocky in his forties. He looks more
like an accountant than a political leader. Even he seemed
surprised by how his life has turned out. I never
started off wanting to become a nationalist. I kind of
fell into that role, and I would say I'm the
(05:22):
best known California secessionist in California. That was the title
I never thought I would have. I never saw myself here.
It just kind of happens. Marcus may not have set
out to be an activist, but the roots of his
political ideas go all the way back to his childhood.
He grew up in a city called Fresno, far from
the beaches or Hollywood. He was a sensitive kid who
(05:46):
loved reading and playing with his friends. Here's his mom, Connie.
Marcus always seemed to adopt and become best friends with
all the different groups or children who needed caring. Marcus
always had to be the leader. He always had to
be the general or you know, the lieutenant or something
to tell everybody what to do. I had Asian friends,
(06:07):
white friends, black friends, Hispanic friends. There are other people
mixed like me. Nobody said anything. I'm half Mexican and
half Caucasian, and my mom is full blown Mexican, and
she's a CFO at a international agriculture firm and one
of the top fortune companies in America. Marcus's mom would
(06:27):
often travel for work, and she would come home with
stories about in America that seemed a lot different from friends. Now,
I was in the Pacific Northwest. I had gone up
there to teach a meeting. The manager had taken us
to this particular bar and grill. So it was summer
and I had on a short sleeved shirt and I'm Hispanic,
and I get very dark in this summer. If I
(06:48):
want to write you just go out the sun and
you get dark. There was a gentleman who had been
in the bar way too long, so he came over
and he said, kind of slurring, like, you know, what
are you doing here? You need to get back the reservation,
and started really getting aggressive and in my face. So
I'm telling him, you don't have the right to treat
me this way, and I couldn't believe that anybody treats
(07:10):
someone that way. At about that time, the location manager
came in. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know
she's from corporate. We aren't going to do this. And
she made sure she told her young boy about how
she was treated. In the middle of America. People would
yell at her, are you off the goddamn reservation? Get
your ass back on the reservation. Hearing these stories from
(07:32):
his mom wasn't just upsetting to Marcus, it was confusing.
I'm being told from everybody in California, America loves diversity.
It's all acceptance everywhere, and I'm like, I'm hearing two
different things, one from friends and family in California, and
one from my mom who's actually been to America, And
(07:54):
so I kind of grew up that way from an
early boy, going there's this. I knew things were different
in California in America. He was always like, I love California.
Why would we not always be here? You know, it's inclusive,
where our own bread basket is, has the ability to
support itself. The weather is perfect. If you want to
go skiing, you can go from Fresno up to the
(08:15):
mountain and you can come home. If you want to
go to the ocean, you just go from Fresno over
to the ocean. You come out as well here next episode.
This image of California being some kind of refuge from
injustice is flawed at best. But Marcus and Connie aren't
the only people who think there's just something special about
the state. Here's Pat Morrison, a journalist for The l
(08:38):
A Times who writes about California history. The original California,
from a novel that's mentioned in Don Quixote, talked about
California as an island. There's a different place, a place
all of its own, that it was a reward at
the end of a long journey and so I think
Californians still think of California as an entity unto itself.
(09:01):
Just the size of the American West argues that we
are a place of independent spirit. California is often a
leading indicator for issues like human rights or climate change
or things like that. You see that again and again
in California. California allows a peek into the future for
(09:23):
other states to see, well, if we were to do this,
what would probably happen. So there's this uniqueness, I think,
to the community that is California, and I think that's
what was the premise around his first book was the
model of how unique California is. After he graduated college,
(09:47):
Marcus hadn't quite figured out what he wanted to do,
but these childhood experiences and ideas about California stayed with him.
So I set out to write a book to simply
document the California culture was different from America. That's all
I was attempting to do. That simple idea eventually expanded
into something more. I did not come up with the
(10:10):
idea of California being a nation. I read about Pat Morrison,
the Pulitzer Prize winner at the l A times. I
was seeing reporters and scholars and professors going California's kind
of a nation. I never thought about it that way
until I started writing the book and doing the research.
It was other people who had expressed this idea before
(10:31):
me and had pedigree that convinced me to go into
this path. Three years in and I was losing my
grip on my sanity because I had gone from this
is a simple discussion about how California culture is different too. Bro,
you're actually saying California should succeed and become a nation. Yes,
you're actually saying this. Oh my god, think about what
(10:53):
you're saying. And you're gonna put your name on this
and publish this. Are you sure you know what you're doing?
Because you don't get walked this back. One person who
was definitely raising the red flag was Connie marcus mom
when he very first introduced this idea and then he
started talking about secession. There are many people who are veterans,
(11:18):
his father, my husband, um, who feel a loyal teaching
the country. The United States is a beautiful, gorgeous country,
and every place you go there are people who have
a uniqueness in their community. It's an amazing nation and
in my opinion, we should stay unified. Despite his mom's worries.
(11:40):
Marcus published his book in two thou twelve, and that
might have been the end of it if not for Lewis.
My family is all from New York State. I moved
to California just actually. I was a fan of the
(12:03):
San Diego Chargers and I wanted to be able to
watch the games and go to the games. This is
Louis Marinelli. He's a white guy in his mid thirties
with the short beards starting to go a little gray.
Louis is complicated, but for now, let's just say his
story begins with love. Lewis started his career teaching English,
(12:25):
sometimes in the US and sometimes overseas. During one of
these things abroad, he fell in love with a woman
named Anastasia. I met a woman kind of by chance,
very accidental meeting, and we ended up moving to the
United States together, and we stayed there, and we moved
to California, and the Station followed Louis to the US
(12:49):
on a tourist visa, but eventually it expired. She overstated
the visa and we tried to adjust our status for
several years. Nothing of that worked. So that really kind
of caused a lot of stress in our family. That
prevented her from being able to work or finish her
education and maybe even leave the country because if she
leaves the country, then she can't come back. So the
(13:09):
situation is then she just gotta stay now, right, because
we can't riskue going overseas to you know, not be
able to come back for five years or ten years
because they have those automatic bands. Lewis's fight with the
immigration system left him angry. How could something is dumb
is a visa issue destroy his marriage and yet it
didn't seem like the government was in a hurry to
(13:29):
do anything about it. Welcome to America, my boy. Why
should we be having no progress on immigration because senators
from Vermont or Maine or Montana who have nothing to
do with immigration really because nobody lives there. Uh? Why
why are we being held up because of this? I
was like, well, what if it just had California was
its own country. If California was its own country, we
(13:52):
could have immigration system and rules that people in California
needn't want, not just us, right, millions of people in
California who would be affected by something being done to
reform the immigration system. Lewis created an online group to
explore his idea. Then I started looking for other people
(14:13):
who could join the campaign to help me, you know,
advance this cause. And I found Marcus Ruise Evans. I
think it was the evening, about six o'clock PM, maybe
six or eight. I just remember it was dusk dark outside.
(14:33):
Louis called me on the phone. I believe that he
was somewhat cautious about who I was, because here's this
stranger from San Diego who's contacting him saying he wants
to work on California's secession. And so here's somebody that's
contacting you out of the blue and saying, let's starting
a campaign. We talked for three hours that day, then
(14:57):
we talked for three hours the next day, and then
we talked for three hours the next day, and the
next day and the next day. In about five days
and three hour conversations. I had a serious bromance with
this guy. You had such a big heart as a volunteer.
You just wanted to do something and put it out
there and move move, moved, And I invited him to
my place in Fresno. He came out for a weekend
we met in person and we got out our big,
(15:19):
you know, dryer race board and started brainstorming the campaign
for California Independence. I think after that first weekend we
realized we're going to do this. From that moment on,
the two men were inseparable. The campaign they started together
would have come to be known as Cala Exit. Despite
(15:42):
the bromance, not everyone was feeling Louis Marcus mom. For one,
I have my own opinion about Louis Marinelli uh and
have since the start. I do think he's an opportunist.
I don't know that he's a trustworthy character when you
look at all of the evidence of where he is,
his actions, and the different positions that he has put
(16:06):
forward over his the last ten years. I will say
I always cautioned Marcus about him and his engagement in
his life. Over many conversations, emails, and dinners at Buffalo
(16:26):
Wild Wings, Marcus and Lewis slowly fleshed out their vision
for an independent California. To them, it was a no brainer.
We can have our own clean land laws and clean
air laws. We wouldn't have millions of people as second
class citizens who are scared to report to the police.
Or file paperwork because they're afraid that they'll be deported.
(16:49):
We could do more of our own stuff better without
these people in the way of blocking us. More importantly,
they believe it could work. If California were a country,
it would have an economy bigger than France. It has nukes,
the iPhone, and some of the most productive farmland in
the world. In their mind, California wouldn't just survive on
(17:10):
its own, it could become a global leader. To build
support for the cal EX campaign, Marcus and Lewis took
their pitch on the road. It was a rough start.
Our first ever activity for CALEX. It was here in Fresno,
I think at the Walmart parking lot. I was wearing
shorts and flip flops and a T shirt, and you know,
(17:34):
Lewis came dressed up and he was like, oh God,
what are you doing? And I go, I don't have
a change of clothes. Is flip flops and shorts not
okay for a protest? And He's like, not if there's media.
I knew nothing, I mean amateur hour. Lewis and Marcus
began organizing events across the state, pulling up the beaches
and parks and just chatting up the people who came by.
(17:56):
We tried to travel on as much as we could
and just distribute literature. I'd like to go to I
think it was Long Beach or Santa Monica, where you
could stand up on the top of the cliff and
look down at the beach. There's a bunch of people
just relaxed on the beach, and I take my bullhorn
and they can't go anywhere. So I can do is
just preach to him, and they can't escape because it's
I got the upper ground. Would California turn like l A,
(18:20):
San Diego, San Francisco into states of that country? Actually? Yes,
what we want to do is actually take each of
our fifty eight counties and turn them basically into a state,
which means that each county would have its own governor,
its own legislature, local governance. As a month passed, their
pitch got sharper collegs. It was slowly starting to feel
(18:41):
like a professional operation. A lot of that was thanks
to Lewis. The more time they spent together, the more
marcus Is admiration for Lewis grew. He was brilliant, brilliant
marketing and media Lewis is also the smartest man I've
ever met in my life or read about at public
relations in marketing. We would not be here if it
(19:02):
wasn't for Lewis. If Marcus was the soul of calls,
Lewis was its face. He shined as a public speaker
and loved talking with people, so much so that he
eventually announced a run for state Assembly. Hi, my name
is Louis Marinelli, and I am a candidate for the
eightieth Assembly district and I'm running for State Assembly. I'm
(19:22):
touching the ground right now, and it's very hot. The
ground is very hot under the San Diego, California's sun.
How about we replaced the asphalt roads with solar panels,
with constant touring. They slowly gained the allies, people like
Theo Slater, a lawyer from northern California. It was Marcus
(19:43):
and Lewis um we found each other on Facebook, and
then that grew to like eight or nine people like Marcus.
THEO really identified with the idea that California was just
different in the US was only holding the state back
from doing amazing things. It could be a force for
for good in the world. It could be a Switzerland
(20:06):
on the Pacific that didn't start wars with people every
California could have healthcare and and these were goals that
the United States would never be capable of. As more
supporters came on board, disagreement popped up. Some people wanted
to focus on getting cal Exit on the ballet, while
others wanted to get Proclaxit candidates elected into government. The
(20:30):
solution was to found two different organizations. Marcus and Lewis
would lead a group called Yes California. It would focus
on the ballot initiative. The second group, which included THEO Slater,
became the California National Party or CNP for sure and
a note before we go on today, the cal Exit
(20:50):
movement has grown bigger than any one group, But whenever
we talk about cal Exit, we're talking about Marcus Lewis
and their group Yes California New The groups were close allies.
Lewis was actually the first interim chairman of the CMP.
Together they could attack the colleagues of problem from different angles.
The arrangement worked great until it didn't. Lewis was there
(21:15):
at the very beginning of the California National Party. Now
the California National Party did kick him out and publicly
disavow him. I hadn't really done very much research into
his political background, and I certainly wasn't aware of his
future plans. And I also subsequently learned other information about
him that if I had known, I probably never would
have wanted to speak to him in the first place. Um,
(21:37):
I think I'll leave it at that, but we'll get
into all that in later episodes. As time passed, the
friendship between Marcus and Lewis deepened. Bonded by the shared
vision and lack of cash, the two men grew incredibly close.
I mean I shared a bed with him. I'm straight,
but you know, we're keeping things on a budget. So
(21:59):
you get two people when you share life experiences. And
he went through divorce. I was there when he was
going through divorce. You're spending years with this person. You're
sharing hotel rooms, eating meals, crying in front of each
other when you won't do that to anybody else. So
you get real, real, real close. By the middle of
(22:28):
thousands of people had joined the colleges and movement, but
in a state with forty million people, this was far
from mainstream, and without more funding and media attention, it
was hard to see how they could ever get there.
I expected people to hear the words se session and
think that's brain dead, crazy, and that's not what I found.
We were finding a third of the population of forty
(22:48):
million people, if you could get in front of them,
were like sure. That shocked me. I didn't know that
people were open to the idea, and we were surprised
by that. The only problem that we had was that people,
you know, kind of would think that's a great idea,
but it will never happen. But then something happened that
changed everything. Overnight, Donald Trump is elected the president of
(23:15):
the United States of America. And this is a seismic
political earthquake that will have fuck this. That was the
reaction of millions of Californians to the election of Donald Trump.
They took to the streets in protests, and some were
inspired to take even more drastic action. From San Diego
(23:37):
to Los Angeles to Berkeley. Much of California is curious
of her who will soon be running the nation's highest office.
So what's happening today? Why are you guys here today?
It's a review or refutation of Donald Trump and the
fact that America chose him as their election official. Now
we're about California leaving, and this proves our point. If
(24:00):
California votes were taken away, Trump won the popular election.
So what kind of people elect a man like that?
The answer not Californians. Here's theos later again, he was
one of calgs it's first supporters. When that twenty six
(24:22):
election happened. It was a catastrophe in a lot of ways.
But my phone was ringing off the hook. It made
a whole lot of California's give up on the American
project all at once. Here's Lewis. It was reporters, it
was people sending messages of support, and a lot of
people wanted to, like volunteer to do something, or they
had a business they wanted to donate their resources to.
(24:44):
We were putting together like Facebook discussion groups as fast
as we could, and we were doing all the stuff.
We really weren't ready for that level of interest, and
it was unexpected. I think Donald Trump didn't even expect it.
With let alone US calls exploded inside virtually overnight. Donations
poured in. Marcus was no longer handing out flyers and
(25:06):
Walmart parking lots. He was appearing on national television. Marcus
Ruiz Evans is co founder of cal Exit. Marcus Ruise
Evans the president of Yes California, a group advocating for
the Golden States independence from America. Is it time for
the Golden State to seee become the wrong country? The
man who says yes. His name is Marcus Ruiz Evans, Marcus,
(25:27):
why do you want to leave us? Money, press coverage, enthusiasm.
By December, everything that Marcus and Lewis had been working
towards suddenly felt like it was within their grasp. In short,
they were in just about the same position that Patrick
Friedman had been in back inn. At the beginning of
(25:52):
this episode, we told you about Patrick's plan to build
new countries on the ocean, like cal Exit. Sea standing
was a big, ambitious idea, and back in two thousand
eleven there were lots of reasons to believe that it
could work. There is some precedent for this. There's a
Dutch abortion ship that's right. Women on Waves is a
Dutch flagship that goes around the countries where abortion is illegal,
(26:14):
and it goes into ports. People get on board and
then it goes out past the twelve mile limit and
performs abortions. But with all the media hype around sea
studying came plenty of tough questions. You're saying, living like
living on a platform in the see right about weather conditions.
So you're saying that government um is different when it's
on the sea set. What happens when government starts developing
(26:37):
there and they start regulating things, Is it going to
be different? That kind of come to accept that I'm
probably never going to be able to afford ocean front property.
How affordable is this going to be? The sea studying
prototype in San Francisco Bay never launched, neither did a
deep sea colony promise. The reason why is honestly pretty simple.
(26:58):
It's fucking hard to build a country. Here's Patrie Friedman again,
it's really hard. It's been a long struggle the ocean.
It's really hard to work on. We have designs that
would work, but we don't have the combination of the location,
the states to cooperate with the people who want to
live there in the businesses to sustain it. While the
c Setting Institute exists today, the dream of floating nations
(27:21):
still just getting started. The truth is movements like c
stetting or cal Exit are long shots. California alone has
seen hundreds of attempts to succeed or divide itself since
it became a state. Here's Pot Morriston again, about two
(27:41):
hundred twenty times in more than a hundred seventy years.
Some politicians some groups said, we want to be out
of here. But the idea of the practicalities of becoming
a nation are overwhelming and our daunting and kind of dispiriting.
But while most of us would be discouraged by this
long history of failures, calls as leaders are unfazed and
(28:05):
their view achieving the impossible. It's kind of what California
is all about. Here's Steals later. California is about dreaming
about a future yet to be and then creating that dream.
And I think that the national project for California devetails
very well with that culture. Patrick Friedman shares the sentiment,
(28:26):
if we can all find virtue in a good life
and improving society in our own way, great, do it
a thousand different ways. My first political blog was called
let a thousand Nations bloom, and I think we need
a thousand movements, three factors society. At least one major
figure agrees with this Mousha approach. Billionaire Peter TiO. He
was the primary investor in the c Studing Institute, and
(28:49):
regarding cal exit, he told The New York Times quote,
it would be good for California, good for the rest
of the country unquote. The election of the Donald Trump
brought massive attention to call legs, but December, Marcus and
Lewis were under pressure to turn that attention into actual progress.
(29:10):
Their first step was to get calls on the ballot.
That meant convincing a lot more people that they were
for real actually starting with Marcus, Mom Connie, I don't
believe it's in our best interest to become a separate nation.
I think there's a lot of complexities to that. I
don't see how it benefits the bulk of Californians to
(29:33):
win people over. Marcus and Lewis were gonna have to
come up with good answers to tough questions. What would
happen to California's economy, the water we drink, and the
food we eat? Pulling away from another country is not
easy at all. What do the borders look like? How
are you going to separate from US military? What happens
with the nuclear weapons. There are a hundred and fifty
(29:55):
questions like that. We'll be trying to answer these questions
and more as we weave together the rest of this podcast,
And we're gonna start by asking a question that's sort
of at the center of every major conflict in American history.
What about the land? Growing up, Marcus Ruise Evans felt
(30:16):
that California was different, that it was above the racism
poisoning the rest of the United States. The truth is
a lot more complicated. California was home to over a
hundred Native tribes, but when settlers arrived, they stole their lands,
martyred their people, and relegated the survivors to the margins
of society. There were bounties, bounties that were put out
(30:40):
on Native Americans fifty for a man, I think twenty
for a woman, ten for a child. It was gruesome,
it was grizzly. The invasion of white settlers looking for
gold wiped out so much of what the original California was,
both flora, fauna, and most tragically, the Native American population. Today,
many of these tribes are fighting for the return of
(31:02):
their ancestral lands, the same lands Cals is now trying
to claim for itself, Who owns the land? Who should
own it? That's next time on the Last Resort. The
(31:24):
Last Resort is an Interval Presents original production from Awfully Nice.
From Interval Presents. The executive producers are Alan Coy and
Jake Kleinberg. Executive producers from Awfully Nice are Jesse Burton
and Katie Hodges. Written and produced by Jesse Burton and
Dana Bulut. Associate producer is Suzanne Gaber. Project management by
(31:45):
Kadi Kama Kat Editing, sound design and mix by Nick
Cipriano and Kiana McLellan of Bang Audio. Post original music
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song by Me Shoots Scott and Sweet. Sound fact checking
by Lauren Vespoli. Script consultation by William Bauer. Operations lead
(32:05):
is Sarah You, Business development lead is Cheffi a Lnswig,
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For a full list of the sources used in this episode,
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(32:29):
Rollo yeah,
This episode contains graphic language and content that may be
alarming to some listener. Discretion is advised talk about what
spending his money on you lying into up. Yet, in
February of eleven, if you were skipping around on late
night cable, you might have come across an interview with
(00:21):
an intense looking guy in a black suit and a
gray shirt. Here with us is someone with more radical
vision of the future. Patrie Friedman, founder of the Sea
Steading Institute sea steading instead of homesteading platforms in the
ocean y. His name was Patrick Friedman, and he was
pitching a big idea sea steadying. Hey, I'm Patre Friedman,
(00:45):
and I've been thinking for twenty years about how we
can make government and society work better. See's saying he's
the idea of homesteading the high seas, living permanently on
the ocean. Patrie is a libertarian, someone who wants small government,
extremely small. For example, libertarians opposed the idea of public
education or of a minimum wage. But libertarian views have
(01:09):
never been very popular, which means people like Patrie have
had a hard time getting their ideas actually put into practice.
So what could they do well? We want people to
be able to peacefully test new forms of government. I mean,
no technology advances unless you can try new things. The
same is true for political systems, just like anything else.
Right now, governments control all the lands, so you need
to create a new place exactly. Technically, no one owns
(01:33):
the ocean, which made it the perfect place for Patrick
to build a new society, no compromises, no rules, and so.
On April fifteen eight, Patrick co founded the c Studing Institute,
and we looked into like whether it's practical and how
and the international law and engineering and the business models
to build on the oceans. The institute quickly announced that
(01:55):
its first prototype would launch in San Francisco Bay. The
idea was a hit, millions of dollars. Yeah, we've raised
almost two million dollars. Our lead donor is Peter til
who invented PayPal, was the first investor in Facebook. It's
it's a bit of a long shot, like any startup,
but it's a long shot worth taking because if it works,
it'll completely transform government. Right instead of all of this
(02:17):
complaining about how our government works, we can go out
and compete with it. I mean, it's the entrepreneurs way
to fix things, go do something better. Patrick Freedman had
(02:39):
a big idea for changing the world. He had millions
of dollars to back him, and he had the media spotlight.
But when you look out in the Bay today, there
is no floating city. There are no new societies operating
in the high seas. So what happened? As it turns out,
founding a new country? It's easier said than done. From
(03:05):
Interval presents an awfully nice This is the Last Resort
Episode two. The ballot of Marcus and lewis, Oh we
(03:27):
what do we want? Americans are pretty divided these days,
but as we talked about last episode, there is one
thing a lot of people do agree on. Our system
of government doesn't work. So it's probably no surprise the
interest is growing in ideas like cal Exit. That was
(03:47):
protesters around the our state and around the country took
to the streets on Twitter that hashtag cal exit began
to trend. This is real, this could happen, and this
would mean breaking up the United States of America. Is
it crazy for California to want to leave the Union?
I don't think it's crazy at all. Calls it was
(04:13):
founded back by two friends, Marcus Ruise Evans and Louis Marinelli.
There have been plenty of independence movements in the US
over the years, from Texas to Alaska to Cascadia in
the Pacific Northwest, but so far, none of these efforts
have been successful. So why would Calls It be any different?
(04:35):
And why would Marcus and Lewis dedicate years of their
lives to such a long shot idea. Today we're going
to tell you their story, how they took cal Exit
from a fringe idea to headline news, and why they
believe Calls It can succeed where others have failed. I
(05:00):
never started off wanting to become a secessionist. This is Marcus.
He sat in Stocky in his forties. He looks more
like an accountant than a political leader. Even he seemed
surprised by how his life has turned out. I never
started off wanting to become a nationalist. I kind of
fell into that role, and I would say I'm the
(05:22):
best known California secessionist in California. That was the title
I never thought I would have. I never saw myself here.
It just kind of happens. Marcus may not have set
out to be an activist, but the roots of his
political ideas go all the way back to his childhood.
He grew up in a city called Fresno, far from
the beaches or Hollywood. He was a sensitive kid who
(05:46):
loved reading and playing with his friends. Here's his mom, Connie.
Marcus always seemed to adopt and become best friends with
all the different groups or children who needed caring. Marcus
always had to be the leader. He always had to
be the general or you know, the lieutenant or something
to tell everybody what to do. I had Asian friends,
(06:07):
white friends, black friends, Hispanic friends. There are other people
mixed like me. Nobody said anything. I'm half Mexican and
half Caucasian, and my mom is full blown Mexican, and
she's a CFO at a international agriculture firm and one
of the top fortune companies in America. Marcus's mom would
(06:27):
often travel for work, and she would come home with
stories about in America that seemed a lot different from friends. Now,
I was in the Pacific Northwest. I had gone up
there to teach a meeting. The manager had taken us
to this particular bar and grill. So it was summer
and I had on a short sleeved shirt and I'm Hispanic,
and I get very dark in this summer. If I
(06:48):
want to write you just go out the sun and
you get dark. There was a gentleman who had been
in the bar way too long, so he came over
and he said, kind of slurring, like, you know, what
are you doing here? You need to get back the reservation,
and started really getting aggressive and in my face. So
I'm telling him, you don't have the right to treat
me this way, and I couldn't believe that anybody treats
(07:10):
someone that way. At about that time, the location manager
came in. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know
she's from corporate. We aren't going to do this. And
she made sure she told her young boy about how
she was treated. In the middle of America. People would
yell at her, are you off the goddamn reservation? Get
your ass back on the reservation. Hearing these stories from
(07:32):
his mom wasn't just upsetting to Marcus, it was confusing.
I'm being told from everybody in California, America loves diversity.
It's all acceptance everywhere, and I'm like, I'm hearing two
different things, one from friends and family in California, and
one from my mom who's actually been to America, And
(07:54):
so I kind of grew up that way from an
early boy, going there's this. I knew things were different
in California in America. He was always like, I love California.
Why would we not always be here? You know, it's inclusive,
where our own bread basket is, has the ability to
support itself. The weather is perfect. If you want to
go skiing, you can go from Fresno up to the
(08:15):
mountain and you can come home. If you want to
go to the ocean, you just go from Fresno over
to the ocean. You come out as well here next episode.
This image of California being some kind of refuge from
injustice is flawed at best. But Marcus and Connie aren't
the only people who think there's just something special about
the state. Here's Pat Morrison, a journalist for The l
(08:38):
A Times who writes about California history. The original California,
from a novel that's mentioned in Don Quixote, talked about
California as an island. There's a different place, a place
all of its own, that it was a reward at
the end of a long journey and so I think
Californians still think of California as an entity unto itself.
(09:01):
Just the size of the American West argues that we
are a place of independent spirit. California is often a
leading indicator for issues like human rights or climate change
or things like that. You see that again and again
in California. California allows a peek into the future for
(09:23):
other states to see, well, if we were to do this,
what would probably happen. So there's this uniqueness, I think,
to the community that is California, and I think that's
what was the premise around his first book was the
model of how unique California is. After he graduated college,
(09:47):
Marcus hadn't quite figured out what he wanted to do,
but these childhood experiences and ideas about California stayed with him.
So I set out to write a book to simply
document the California culture was different from America. That's all
I was attempting to do. That simple idea eventually expanded
into something more. I did not come up with the
(10:10):
idea of California being a nation. I read about Pat Morrison,
the Pulitzer Prize winner at the l A times. I
was seeing reporters and scholars and professors going California's kind
of a nation. I never thought about it that way
until I started writing the book and doing the research.
It was other people who had expressed this idea before
(10:31):
me and had pedigree that convinced me to go into
this path. Three years in and I was losing my
grip on my sanity because I had gone from this
is a simple discussion about how California culture is different too. Bro,
you're actually saying California should succeed and become a nation. Yes,
you're actually saying this. Oh my god, think about what
(10:53):
you're saying. And you're gonna put your name on this
and publish this. Are you sure you know what you're doing?
Because you don't get walked this back. One person who
was definitely raising the red flag was Connie marcus mom
when he very first introduced this idea and then he
started talking about secession. There are many people who are veterans,
(11:18):
his father, my husband, um, who feel a loyal teaching
the country. The United States is a beautiful, gorgeous country,
and every place you go there are people who have
a uniqueness in their community. It's an amazing nation and
in my opinion, we should stay unified. Despite his mom's worries.
(11:40):
Marcus published his book in two thou twelve, and that
might have been the end of it if not for Lewis.
My family is all from New York State. I moved
to California just actually. I was a fan of the
(12:03):
San Diego Chargers and I wanted to be able to
watch the games and go to the games. This is
Louis Marinelli. He's a white guy in his mid thirties
with the short beards starting to go a little gray.
Louis is complicated, but for now, let's just say his
story begins with love. Lewis started his career teaching English,
(12:25):
sometimes in the US and sometimes overseas. During one of
these things abroad, he fell in love with a woman
named Anastasia. I met a woman kind of by chance,
very accidental meeting, and we ended up moving to the
United States together, and we stayed there, and we moved
to California, and the Station followed Louis to the US
(12:49):
on a tourist visa, but eventually it expired. She overstated
the visa and we tried to adjust our status for
several years. Nothing of that worked. So that really kind
of caused a lot of stress in our family. That
prevented her from being able to work or finish her
education and maybe even leave the country because if she
leaves the country, then she can't come back. So the
(13:09):
situation is then she just gotta stay now, right, because
we can't riskue going overseas to you know, not be
able to come back for five years or ten years
because they have those automatic bands. Lewis's fight with the
immigration system left him angry. How could something is dumb
is a visa issue destroy his marriage and yet it
didn't seem like the government was in a hurry to
(13:29):
do anything about it. Welcome to America, my boy. Why
should we be having no progress on immigration because senators
from Vermont or Maine or Montana who have nothing to
do with immigration really because nobody lives there. Uh? Why
why are we being held up because of this? I
was like, well, what if it just had California was
its own country. If California was its own country, we
(13:52):
could have immigration system and rules that people in California
needn't want, not just us, right, millions of people in
California who would be affected by something being done to
reform the immigration system. Lewis created an online group to
explore his idea. Then I started looking for other people
(14:13):
who could join the campaign to help me, you know,
advance this cause. And I found Marcus Ruise Evans. I
think it was the evening, about six o'clock PM, maybe
six or eight. I just remember it was dusk dark outside.
(14:33):
Louis called me on the phone. I believe that he
was somewhat cautious about who I was, because here's this
stranger from San Diego who's contacting him saying he wants
to work on California's secession. And so here's somebody that's
contacting you out of the blue and saying, let's starting
a campaign. We talked for three hours that day, then
(14:57):
we talked for three hours the next day, and then
we talked for three hours the next day, and the
next day and the next day. In about five days
and three hour conversations. I had a serious bromance with
this guy. You had such a big heart as a volunteer.
You just wanted to do something and put it out
there and move move, moved, And I invited him to
my place in Fresno. He came out for a weekend
we met in person and we got out our big,
(15:19):
you know, dryer race board and started brainstorming the campaign
for California Independence. I think after that first weekend we
realized we're going to do this. From that moment on,
the two men were inseparable. The campaign they started together
would have come to be known as Cala Exit. Despite
(15:42):
the bromance, not everyone was feeling Louis Marcus mom. For one,
I have my own opinion about Louis Marinelli uh and
have since the start. I do think he's an opportunist.
I don't know that he's a trustworthy character when you
look at all of the evidence of where he is,
his actions, and the different positions that he has put
(16:06):
forward over his the last ten years. I will say
I always cautioned Marcus about him and his engagement in
his life. Over many conversations, emails, and dinners at Buffalo
(16:26):
Wild Wings, Marcus and Lewis slowly fleshed out their vision
for an independent California. To them, it was a no brainer.
We can have our own clean land laws and clean
air laws. We wouldn't have millions of people as second
class citizens who are scared to report to the police.
Or file paperwork because they're afraid that they'll be deported.
(16:49):
We could do more of our own stuff better without
these people in the way of blocking us. More importantly,
they believe it could work. If California were a country,
it would have an economy bigger than France. It has nukes,
the iPhone, and some of the most productive farmland in
the world. In their mind, California wouldn't just survive on
(17:10):
its own, it could become a global leader. To build
support for the cal EX campaign, Marcus and Lewis took
their pitch on the road. It was a rough start.
Our first ever activity for CALEX. It was here in Fresno,
I think at the Walmart parking lot. I was wearing
shorts and flip flops and a T shirt, and you know,
(17:34):
Lewis came dressed up and he was like, oh God,
what are you doing? And I go, I don't have
a change of clothes. Is flip flops and shorts not
okay for a protest? And He's like, not if there's media.
I knew nothing, I mean amateur hour. Lewis and Marcus
began organizing events across the state, pulling up the beaches
and parks and just chatting up the people who came by.
(17:56):
We tried to travel on as much as we could
and just distribute literature. I'd like to go to I
think it was Long Beach or Santa Monica, where you
could stand up on the top of the cliff and
look down at the beach. There's a bunch of people
just relaxed on the beach, and I take my bullhorn
and they can't go anywhere. So I can do is
just preach to him, and they can't escape because it's
I got the upper ground. Would California turn like l A,
(18:20):
San Diego, San Francisco into states of that country? Actually? Yes,
what we want to do is actually take each of
our fifty eight counties and turn them basically into a state,
which means that each county would have its own governor,
its own legislature, local governance. As a month passed, their
pitch got sharper collegs. It was slowly starting to feel
(18:41):
like a professional operation. A lot of that was thanks
to Lewis. The more time they spent together, the more
marcus Is admiration for Lewis grew. He was brilliant, brilliant
marketing and media Lewis is also the smartest man I've
ever met in my life or read about at public
relations in marketing. We would not be here if it
(19:02):
wasn't for Lewis. If Marcus was the soul of calls,
Lewis was its face. He shined as a public speaker
and loved talking with people, so much so that he
eventually announced a run for state Assembly. Hi, my name
is Louis Marinelli, and I am a candidate for the
eightieth Assembly district and I'm running for State Assembly. I'm
(19:22):
touching the ground right now, and it's very hot. The
ground is very hot under the San Diego, California's sun.
How about we replaced the asphalt roads with solar panels,
with constant touring. They slowly gained the allies, people like
Theo Slater, a lawyer from northern California. It was Marcus
(19:43):
and Lewis um we found each other on Facebook, and
then that grew to like eight or nine people like Marcus.
THEO really identified with the idea that California was just
different in the US was only holding the state back
from doing amazing things. It could be a force for
for good in the world. It could be a Switzerland
(20:06):
on the Pacific that didn't start wars with people every
California could have healthcare and and these were goals that
the United States would never be capable of. As more
supporters came on board, disagreement popped up. Some people wanted
to focus on getting cal Exit on the ballet, while
others wanted to get Proclaxit candidates elected into government. The
(20:30):
solution was to found two different organizations. Marcus and Lewis
would lead a group called Yes California. It would focus
on the ballot initiative. The second group, which included THEO Slater,
became the California National Party or CNP for sure and
a note before we go on today, the cal Exit
(20:50):
movement has grown bigger than any one group, But whenever
we talk about cal Exit, we're talking about Marcus Lewis
and their group Yes California New The groups were close allies.
Lewis was actually the first interim chairman of the CMP.
Together they could attack the colleagues of problem from different angles.
The arrangement worked great until it didn't. Lewis was there
(21:15):
at the very beginning of the California National Party. Now
the California National Party did kick him out and publicly
disavow him. I hadn't really done very much research into
his political background, and I certainly wasn't aware of his
future plans. And I also subsequently learned other information about
him that if I had known, I probably never would
have wanted to speak to him in the first place. Um,
(21:37):
I think I'll leave it at that, but we'll get
into all that in later episodes. As time passed, the
friendship between Marcus and Lewis deepened. Bonded by the shared
vision and lack of cash, the two men grew incredibly close.
I mean I shared a bed with him. I'm straight,
but you know, we're keeping things on a budget. So
(21:59):
you get two people when you share life experiences. And
he went through divorce. I was there when he was
going through divorce. You're spending years with this person. You're
sharing hotel rooms, eating meals, crying in front of each
other when you won't do that to anybody else. So
you get real, real, real close. By the middle of
(22:28):
thousands of people had joined the colleges and movement, but
in a state with forty million people, this was far
from mainstream, and without more funding and media attention, it
was hard to see how they could ever get there.
I expected people to hear the words se session and
think that's brain dead, crazy, and that's not what I found.
We were finding a third of the population of forty
(22:48):
million people, if you could get in front of them,
were like sure. That shocked me. I didn't know that
people were open to the idea, and we were surprised
by that. The only problem that we had was that people,
you know, kind of would think that's a great idea,
but it will never happen. But then something happened that
changed everything. Overnight, Donald Trump is elected the president of
(23:15):
the United States of America. And this is a seismic
political earthquake that will have fuck this. That was the
reaction of millions of Californians to the election of Donald Trump.
They took to the streets in protests, and some were
inspired to take even more drastic action. From San Diego
(23:37):
to Los Angeles to Berkeley. Much of California is curious
of her who will soon be running the nation's highest office.
So what's happening today? Why are you guys here today?
It's a review or refutation of Donald Trump and the
fact that America chose him as their election official. Now
we're about California leaving, and this proves our point. If
(24:00):
California votes were taken away, Trump won the popular election.
So what kind of people elect a man like that?
The answer not Californians. Here's theos later again, he was
one of calgs it's first supporters. When that twenty six
(24:22):
election happened. It was a catastrophe in a lot of ways.
But my phone was ringing off the hook. It made
a whole lot of California's give up on the American
project all at once. Here's Lewis. It was reporters, it
was people sending messages of support, and a lot of
people wanted to, like volunteer to do something, or they
had a business they wanted to donate their resources to.
(24:44):
We were putting together like Facebook discussion groups as fast
as we could, and we were doing all the stuff.
We really weren't ready for that level of interest, and
it was unexpected. I think Donald Trump didn't even expect it.
With let alone US calls exploded inside virtually overnight. Donations
poured in. Marcus was no longer handing out flyers and
(25:06):
Walmart parking lots. He was appearing on national television. Marcus
Ruiz Evans is co founder of cal Exit. Marcus Ruise
Evans the president of Yes California, a group advocating for
the Golden States independence from America. Is it time for
the Golden State to seee become the wrong country? The
man who says yes. His name is Marcus Ruiz Evans, Marcus,
(25:27):
why do you want to leave us? Money, press coverage, enthusiasm.
By December, everything that Marcus and Lewis had been working
towards suddenly felt like it was within their grasp. In short,
they were in just about the same position that Patrick
Friedman had been in back inn. At the beginning of
(25:52):
this episode, we told you about Patrick's plan to build
new countries on the ocean, like cal Exit. Sea standing
was a big, ambitious idea, and back in two thousand
eleven there were lots of reasons to believe that it
could work. There is some precedent for this. There's a
Dutch abortion ship that's right. Women on Waves is a
Dutch flagship that goes around the countries where abortion is illegal,
(26:14):
and it goes into ports. People get on board and
then it goes out past the twelve mile limit and
performs abortions. But with all the media hype around sea
studying came plenty of tough questions. You're saying, living like
living on a platform in the see right about weather conditions.
So you're saying that government um is different when it's
on the sea set. What happens when government starts developing
(26:37):
there and they start regulating things, Is it going to
be different? That kind of come to accept that I'm
probably never going to be able to afford ocean front property.
How affordable is this going to be? The sea studying
prototype in San Francisco Bay never launched, neither did a
deep sea colony promise. The reason why is honestly pretty simple.
(26:58):
It's fucking hard to build a country. Here's Patrie Friedman again,
it's really hard. It's been a long struggle the ocean.
It's really hard to work on. We have designs that
would work, but we don't have the combination of the location,
the states to cooperate with the people who want to
live there in the businesses to sustain it. While the
c Setting Institute exists today, the dream of floating nations
(27:21):
still just getting started. The truth is movements like c
stetting or cal Exit are long shots. California alone has
seen hundreds of attempts to succeed or divide itself since
it became a state. Here's Pot Morriston again, about two
(27:41):
hundred twenty times in more than a hundred seventy years.
Some politicians some groups said, we want to be out
of here. But the idea of the practicalities of becoming
a nation are overwhelming and our daunting and kind of dispiriting.
But while most of us would be discouraged by this
long history of failures, calls as leaders are unfazed and
(28:05):
their view achieving the impossible. It's kind of what California
is all about. Here's Steals later. California is about dreaming
about a future yet to be and then creating that dream.
And I think that the national project for California devetails
very well with that culture. Patrick Friedman shares the sentiment,
(28:26):
if we can all find virtue in a good life
and improving society in our own way, great, do it
a thousand different ways. My first political blog was called
let a thousand Nations bloom, and I think we need
a thousand movements, three factors society. At least one major
figure agrees with this Mousha approach. Billionaire Peter TiO. He
was the primary investor in the c Studing Institute, and
(28:49):
regarding cal exit, he told The New York Times quote,
it would be good for California, good for the rest
of the country unquote. The election of the Donald Trump
brought massive attention to call legs, but December, Marcus and
Lewis were under pressure to turn that attention into actual progress.
(29:10):
Their first step was to get calls on the ballot.
That meant convincing a lot more people that they were
for real actually starting with Marcus, Mom Connie, I don't
believe it's in our best interest to become a separate nation.
I think there's a lot of complexities to that. I
don't see how it benefits the bulk of Californians to
(29:33):
win people over. Marcus and Lewis were gonna have to
come up with good answers to tough questions. What would
happen to California's economy, the water we drink, and the
food we eat? Pulling away from another country is not
easy at all. What do the borders look like? How
are you going to separate from US military? What happens
with the nuclear weapons. There are a hundred and fifty
(29:55):
questions like that. We'll be trying to answer these questions
and more as we weave together the rest of this podcast,
And we're gonna start by asking a question that's sort
of at the center of every major conflict in American history.
What about the land? Growing up, Marcus Ruise Evans felt
(30:16):
that California was different, that it was above the racism
poisoning the rest of the United States. The truth is
a lot more complicated. California was home to over a
hundred Native tribes, but when settlers arrived, they stole their lands,
martyred their people, and relegated the survivors to the margins
of society. There were bounties, bounties that were put out
(30:40):
on Native Americans fifty for a man, I think twenty
for a woman, ten for a child. It was gruesome,
it was grizzly. The invasion of white settlers looking for
gold wiped out so much of what the original California was,
both flora, fauna, and most tragically, the Native American population. Today,
many of these tribes are fighting for the return of
(31:02):
their ancestral lands, the same lands Cals is now trying
to claim for itself, Who owns the land? Who should
own it? That's next time on the Last Resort. The
(31:24):
Last Resort is an Interval Presents original production from Awfully Nice.
From Interval Presents. The executive producers are Alan Coy and
Jake Kleinberg. Executive producers from Awfully Nice are Jesse Burton
and Katie Hodges. Written and produced by Jesse Burton and
Dana Bulut. Associate producer is Suzanne Gaber. Project management by
(31:45):
Kadi Kama Kat Editing, sound design and mix by Nick
Cipriano and Kiana McLellan of Bang Audio. Post original music
by my Boy Manta Way, Yuki Emi Shoots Scott, theme
song by Me Shoots Scott and Sweet. Sound fact checking
by Lauren Vespoli. Script consultation by William Bauer. Operations lead
(32:05):
is Sarah You, Business development lead is Cheffi a Lnswig,
and marketing lead is Samara Still. I'm your host, Shouldest God.
For a full list of the sources used in this episode,
please check the show notes. Make sure to follow, rate
and review The Last Resort on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening
(32:29):
Rollo yeah,
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