The man plotting California's secession quit and moved to Russia — here's what's next for the movement

In April, the leader of a major California secessionist group announced he was abandoning the movement and settling permanently in Russia.

Some pronounced the "Calexit" campaign dead in Marinelli's absence.

But a small group of Californians has vowed to take up the effort. The California Freedom Coalition (CFC), formed earlier this year, is on a mission to establish California as an independent nation through legal and constitutional means. In the short term, it wants to raise awareness in communities across the state of why secession makes sense for Californians.

"I think after this election, a lot of Californians realized we just would like to go on their own. Deal with our own stuff. Develop our world, develop our lives and develop our environment the way we want to," Timothy Vollmer, chief state gist of the CFC, told Business Insider in April.

Califonia helped give the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, handing Clinton four million

"In some ways, the people who back the Electoral College 'cause they say, 'Otherwise, big states would dominate the national process,' are correct. They're right. If there was no Electoral College, then all the action would be in California, Texas, and New York," Vollmer said.

"But the answer to that cannot be the stripping of California's voting rights. We deserve to have a voting system — a national political system — in which we participate," he added.

a former professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a community organizer for gay advocacy groups in San Francisco, attended a few meetings put together by Yes California organizers around the time of Trump's inauguration. After learning of Marinelli's ties to Russia, he said it "became apparent that the Russian element would bring [the campaign] down."

He kept in touch with small, grassroots secessionist groups forming across the state. Eventually, he teamed up with a handful of other Calexit backers to create the CFC. As the group's chief strategist, he's tasked with overseeing logistics (the group in the process of registering as a non-profit) and community education.

The group — whose board includes a principal manager at Think Big Analytics, a mid-sized Silicon Valley data company, and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan — meets every week. It's planning a march on Sacramento on May 19 to raise awareness of the cause.

The man plotting California's secession quit and moved to Russia — here's what's next for the movement

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