A11 NATIONAL A12-15 Valley Secession Drive Gains in California A state commission issued a report clearing away most legal obstacles to a November referendum on allowing the San Fernando Valley to secede from Los Angeles.
"The future of our children and our community is at stake," said Carolyn Harris, leader of the secession drive in Carson, best known as the West Coast port of the Goodyear blimp and as home to California State University at Dominguez Hills.
After municipal elections in May last year, Berga and its roughly 16,000 inhabitants became the most important Catalan town hall run by the CUP, a radical party that has punched above its weight in Catalan politics recently and is playing a pivotal role in the secession drive.
To counter frustrations that led to secession drives by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood sections of Los Angeles, Mayor James K. Hahn proposed a 10-point plan to improve residents' access to services like building permits, street repairs, trash pickup and graffiti cleanup.
The secession movement is still on the fringe, driven largely by emotion and, some critics say, racism, since some of its proponents are quick to point out that most inhabitants here are of mixed races, not full-blooded Aymara or Quechua Indians, as are the vast majority in the rest of this nation of eight million people.
A precociously gifted student, Schiele soon attracted the attention of Gustav Klimt, the pre-eminent artist of the Secession movement – an artistic revolution that covered many art forms, all driven by the basic aim of rejecting Beaux-Arts classicism and stuffy Salon mediocrity.
The secession campaign was also highly effective.
The nation itself was birthed by the rebellious spirit that often drives secession movements, though historians typically point out that the Revolutionary War was just that, a revolution, and not technically a move to secede from the British empire.
The secession plan is driven by a number of new laws recently passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature, including gun control, the curbing of perceived cruel treatment of livestock, expanded regulation of oil and gas production, an increase in renewable energy standards in rural area and civil unions.
Even Rick Perry, governor of Texas and no fan of the federal government, has opposed the drive for secession.
Together, the attacks suggest a renewed determination by militants to pursue their drive for secession from India.
