Aug.-Sept. 1982 RAIN Page? Williams: It is scary and risky if you do not want to get in there and organize to elect delegates. It doesn't scare me. I think it would shake the country up, and that would be healthy. If it comes to a convention, we should be prepared to drop almost everything else and get in the thick of it. It would be kind of fun. I do not think anybody, including the Supreme Court, could intervene and limit issues raised in a convention. The Supreme Court cannot control a constitutional convention because by definition a convention undertakes to change the instrument of government on which the court's authority is based. RAIN: When thinking about building a more regionalized society, don't we also have to look at transforming our economy? Williams: Sure, or at least at a very tough re-mapping of resources and skills, asking tough questions about whether these resources should be used for different purposes. Sometimes it is probably more rational to stay with the kind of mix between human and natural resources that has developed. In other instances it would be the grossest folly to keep on with the status quo. For example, the South has started growing a particular plant from Africa from which you can make newsprint. It is much better, lasts longer, produces clearer images and has a 150-day growing season. Using that makes more sense than cutting down all the trees. RAIN: The standard idea is that private industry should take the lead on economic change and irmovation. Maybe state governments should be doing some of these things themselves. Williams: Absolutely. The Progressives of the early 20th Century and the Populists of the late 19th Century had lots of proposals for the states to do certain kinds of positive things. RAIN: Have you read Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach? Williams: I read it when it first came out. It created an audience for the subject of regionalism. Prior to that, interest had been limited largely to academics. Certainly Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America has also been consequential. [See access below]. RAIN: \^at do you think of Garreau's regional divisions? Williams: I liked the inclusion of Canada. But the regions are highly debatable, particularly west of the Mississippi. They are a bit oversimplified, based too narrowly on crude economic statistics rather than on a broader mix of social, political and economic criteria. But I welcomed the book because it stimulated a lot of discussion. RAIN: Thinking regionally and continentally, isn't it hard to find a compelling reason for the existence of the United States of America? Williams: There are explanations, but an inherent, a priori justification for it does not exist. Canada has confronted the issue of a reason for being more directly than we have, and it is not just Quebec. The Canadians are having many problems like ours, because like ours, their economics run north-south rather than east-west. British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest are integral parts of one another. Manitoba and Saskatchewan make more sense being part of an economic region including the Dakotas and Montana than they do tied to Toronto. If there is anything approaching secession in Canada, I would not be surprised to see it come out of the western provinces. They have a tradition of being ignored by the central government, and they have a lot of resources to work with. RAIN: Do you see any other such examples of the emergence of regional consciousness in North America? Williams: Certainly the resistance in the High Plains and Rockies to strip mining, the MX missile and that kind of nonsense bespeaks a determination to stand up and say, "Enough is enough." You can talk about emerging regionalism to some extent in the southern part of the old South — the Gulf Coast Reach, Georgia, Alabama. That's a curious kind of self-consciousness, but it exists. They see themselves as different than the rest of what we speak of loosely as the South. Every once in a while, I think we are developing an integrated regional consciousness in the Pacific Northwest, but then it seems to peter out. You get a lot of it periodically when the Californians and the Southwest say they are going to get our water whether we like it or not. But that is a pretty negative basis of unity, and Tm sure the Canadians would stop any such plan because most of it is their water. RAIN: Murray Bookchin has criticized the regionalist approach. He says regions are too big and we should be concentrating on local and municipal levels. Williams: You have to start out with local politics and then state politics. If in the course of that you build a strong power base in local communities and states, you can create regional structures. As regional communities get more confidence and experience, they might devolve some of their responsibilities. But you have to create the region first. It is absurd to think local communities can take on a corporation. But a
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz