2 | The Ballad of Marcus & Louis

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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 Interval presents an awfully nice This is the Last Resort

Episode two. The ballot of Marcus and lewis, Oh we 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 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 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?

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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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

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 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 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. 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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, 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Rollo yeah,