"Caliexit" group to file new ballot initiative, seeks secession from United States

California Freedom Coalition (CFC), a new California secessionist group, won the support of "anti-war mom" Cindy Sheehan in planning to file a new ballot initiative next week that seeks to secede the state from the United States.

According to a tweet posted Friday morning by John Myers, Sacramento bureau chief of the newspaper Los Angeles Time, the "Caliexit" campaign group would take its second shot next week and plans a march in Sacramento, the capital of California on May 19.

The bids have aimed to raise the public awareness of the cause to establish an independent nation through legal means.

The campaign for California's independence began long before Donald Trump took up the White House in the presidential election last year but has been growing ever since.

A Reuters poll in January and a UC Berkeley IGS poll in March suggested as many as one in three Californians wanted the state to become its own nation.

On Jan. 25, the Secretary of State's office announced that backers of a proposed constitutional amendment seeking California's independence can begin collecting voters' signatures to qualify for the 2018 ballot.

According to state law, proponents of the initiative have to collect 585,407 valid voter signatures until July 25 to launch a ballot in November next year. If passed, there would be a state-wide special election in March 2019 to ask voters' opinions.

However, in April, Louis Marinelli, the self-appointed leader of a major Caliexit activist group "Yes California" said he had abandoned the movement and would settle permanently in Russia.

Meanwhile, Marcus Ruiz Evans, vice president of the group and the official proponent of the initiative, withdrew the proposal.

Though some have pronounced the campaign dead, the Business Insider website reported that Evans has organized a new secessionist group CFC after he quit from Yes California.

The group, with board members including a principal manager at Think Big Analytics, a mid-sized Silicon Valley data company, and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, hold meetings every week.

Dubbed by media as the anti-war mom, Sheehan's son was killed during the Iraq War. She has since then attracted national and international media attention for an extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch in 2005. Sheehan ran for Congress in 2008 but failed. Endi