voting with their feet

I want to highlight a new website that's part of a very interesting project. Voting With Their Feet is an oral history that documents the stories of people who have left the United States for political reasons during the past 25 years.

The people behind the project, Victoria Fontan and Pandora Hopkins, are experienced in this kind of research, having conducted projects in Iraq, Norway and Iceland, among other places. Victoria lives in Costa Rica; Pandi, a US citizen, voted with her own feet when she left the US for Mexico. They say:

The purpose of the oral history project we call Voting With Their Feet (VOF) is to conduct, record, collect and publish interviews with emigrants driven from the United States by conscience, persecution, or material necessity. It is a virtually untold story, conflicting as it does with popular perception. The term "American Dream," was first featured in a book published in 1931, The Epic of America; its author, the historian James Truslaw Adams, merely encapsulated a familiar assumption, long-held -- even at the time — both within and without the U.S. Absorbed with mother's milk has been the view of the United States as an exceptional nation, one that has become more powerful, innovative and higher up the evolutionary ladder than any other country on the globe.

The lapse in documentation of emigration away from the U.S. is unfortunate. It is also, we believe, dangerous at a time when the nation's political representatives openly flaunt its military-based economy and imperial ambitions in direct contradiction to progressive ideals that continue to coexist with the dark, ethnocentric side of American exceptionalism.

The project is not a how-do-it manual. Advocacy is not our motive. There is no intention to promote emigration - or to provide practical information for those contemplating a departure from their homeland. Our intention is simply to document the motivations and experiences of this group of emigrants, the people who are considering leaving, have left, and even, in some cases, have decided to return to their native country. In short, as with any true oral history project, VOF is not based on a particular ideology; its parameters are constantly in flux, shifting according to the experiences and insights of the interviewees.

The VOF website is a work-in-progress, but right now there are interview excerpts and a news section, which I've just noticed highlights war resisters! The movement of people from the US to Canada, to escape war and in search of peace, is definitely a sub-category of voting with one's feet.

The website is new, and I'm sure Pandi and Victoria would enjoy receiving some feedback.