Around 3,000 Tea Partiers and Oath Keepers are banding together and rallying today to build support for their effort to have the state of New York split into separate regions. They want to form a new conservative utopia.
The rally has been named “Let My People Go” and they want to rename their new state “New Amsterdam.” New York City, Long Island, Rockland and Westchester counties keep the name of New York.
Why does the group want to secede? The group released a statement:
Why Secession? Secession is about reclaiming the economic opportunities Upstate has lost and restoring the liberties Upstate residents once enjoyed. Downstate has dominated Upstate for decades and Upstate has no future in a state controlled by New York City’s needs and desires.
It’s not likely to bring the economic prosperity or golden age they seem to think, though, as Gawker points out:
If supporters are serious about splitting from the depraved metropolis below them, that also means splitting from their largest source of revenue. In 2009 and 2010, New York City and the rest of the non-New Amsterdam counties paid out $12 billion in tax dollars to struggling counties upstate. Good luck getting along without it.
