Dennis Steele on the Mark Johnson Show WDEV
Mark Johnson Show Dennis Steele, Pt 1 by Radio Free Vermont
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"It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to return to her true home of brotherhood and peaceful pursuits. We cannot remain silent as our nation engages in one of history's most cruel and senseless wars. During these days of human travail, we must encourage creative dissenters. We need them because the thunder of their fearless voices will be the only sound stronger than the blasts of bombs and the clamor of war hysteria. Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace. "Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968) |
Mark Johnson Show Dennis Steele, Pt 1 by Radio Free Vermont
True North Radio interview with Dennis Steele by Radio Free Vermont
Platform: Secession. Steele’s an active member of the Second Vermont Republic movement (publishers of Vermont Commons newspaper) and thinks Vermont must secede from the United States to avoid economic and social catastrophe. He believes the United States has lost its “moral authority” and that deepening federal deficits make it a “sinking ship” that Vermont should jump off of. Seceding would keep Vermont afloat, he believes, by reclaiming the $2 billion Vermonters currently pay into the U.S. Department of Defense budget. (Steele served in the U.S. Army for three years in the late 1980s — he joined to get money for college — and served as a helicopter crew chief.
We caught up with Steele at Langdon Street Café in Montpelier earlier this week.
The most radical antiwar candidate in the US is not Dennis Kucinich or Rand or Ron Paul or any of the usual suspects. It’s a 42-year-old Vermonter named Dennis Steele, who is running for governor of his state as an open secessionist. From what I can tell, Steele is just an average dude. He wears Carhartts and a baseball cap and drives a pickup truck and lives with his wife and two kids in a little Vermont village called Kirby (pop. 500), off in the wild hills of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. On occasion, he feeds his family by hunting deer and butchering the meat himself. He served three years in the US Army — working for “the Empire,” as he puts it — and he tells me his main reason for running is that he doesn’t want his kids serving in the Army. Or any other branch of the Empire. He wants the Empire to drop dead. And he thinks the best way to start that process is by getting Vermont to secede from the union. Destroy the empire by undermining it from within. That’s the goal.