Mendocino County is nestled in Northern California along the distinctive Pacific coastline on one boundary and the big Redwoods on the other.
The population is small, around 88,000 by the last census in 2010. Besides its beauty, some local wines, growing medicinal pot and a popular song recorded by country music legend Willie Nelson, it's hardly a place on the national radar.
That is, it wasn't and might still not be unless the results of its recent election change all that. Mendocino County voters recently trucked to the polls to vote on an important proposition, that of self-government and self-independence.
The results were encouraging, especially for those sick and weary from big government and big government intervention, a growing global phenomenon if one views places like the European Union, China, Catalonia and the recent events in Hong Kong, to name a few.
Sixty-seven percent of the voters clicked the yea button as in we've had enough of government intrusions in our lives making Mendocino the second such jurisdiction in the country to declare for self-determination.
Some will laugh, some just shrug, others will recognize. California for all its perceived nuttiness is a trendsetter in many areas of life for the rest of the nation. With perhaps the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world and a huge population it's no economic or social joke.
Its richness in resources from agriculture to energy to people to technology is no joke either. Make no mistake there's a burgeoning grass roots global movement in the air unencumbered by geographical boundaries or language and cultural differences.
Pick up a newspaper or click on the Internet and see all the stories about corporate or political corruption and the ever tightening, hardly subtle garrote being squeezed around the neck of individual liberties by governments.
Though we never had a horse in that race and many still fail to perceive it, the gay movement was really one about individual liberties and self-determination. And so too is the right of interracial marriages and things like self-employment and just whom one hires.
All things start small.
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