1. Make the economic argument
Take Belgium. “The Dutch part of Belgium pays, and the French part of Belgium takes,” Mitchell argued. “If you’re Walloon and your politicians can no longer mooch off the Flemish, maybe that forces you to improve. Secession becomes a means of limiting the greed of the political class.”
2. Sell reasonably priced copies of your new flag
Data is thin, but symbolism appears to play as much of a role as anything else in secession. In Barcelona right now — capital of maybe-breakaway, maybe-not Catalunya — a senyera costs nine Euros (about $12) and is available at places like bookstores, hardware stores, and gas station mini-marts.
The easy access to flags means that virtually every block of the city has several banners visible, typically hanging from apartment balconies. To walk down a street in Barcelona right now is to think, “I am in a secessionist territory.” This is probably not true in Austin, and mindset matters.
3. Don’t rattle sabers
Wealthy Singapore is the obvious case. After initially enjoying independence from Britain as part of Malaysia, the Southeast Asian state found itself at loggerheads with national leaders over banking rules, and ethnic tensions rose between Chinese and Malay groups. A negotiated divorce took less than a year. Both states have found success and co-exist peacefully.
Thirty years later, a list of grievances between the eastern and more prosperous western regions of then-Czechoslovakia led to a similarly amicable divorce. Like most divorces, grievances remain. But no one threatened anyone, and ultimately, no one got hurt.
4. Focus on things outside politics. Like sports.
Scotland won the right to represent itself in some international competitions, notably soccer’s prestigious World Cup, and has built a separate identity via its athletes — on the sports page. So has its antagonist: David Beckham played for England all those years, not Great Britain.
Back in Barcelona, the president of the local soccer team has spoken frequently to calm fears that an independent Catalunya would result in the cancellation of the annual match against rival Madrid. In both cases, an international brand-building exercise via sports appears to have bled into sympathy, or at least interest, in the local secession movement.
5. Don’t petition
Most secession petitions in the U.S. have between 30,000 and 40,000 signatures. Florida’s secession petition has just shy of 35,000. Georgia is at 32,000, Louisiana at 37,000, each of the Carolinas is in the low thirties. The big one, Texas, is at 118,000 and change so far.
However, a petition to “Remove Marijuana From the Controlled Substances Act,” filed with the White House about the same time, got 64,000 signers, or more than double the number of most secession drives. Petitions to repeal Obamacare, to make publicly funded scientific research available online, and to recount November’s ballots, are all out-drawing the secessions by significant margins.
Alternatively, a secessionist rally in Scotland two months ago pointedly did not count its participants very carefully, opting instead for visuals, filling a square in Edinburgh with flags. It looked persuasive.
6. Don’t vote
After two million people paralyzed Barcelona in a pro-secession rally in September, the Catalan government called for early elections, seeking to identify itself with the independence cause and gain a mandate for a popular referendum. Instead, local infighting took over, and
