One author, and nothing moves without them
The entire sequence rests on a single member of the Legislature agreeing to put their name on a study. That has not happened yet.
Every other step on this page is hypothetical until one member of the California Legislature agrees to author the Resolution. That has not happened.
1. What introduction actually is
A member introduces a measure by filing it with the Chief Clerk of the Assembly or the Secretary of the Senate. The measure gets a number, is read the first time, and enters the file. For us that measure is an Assembly Joint Resolution, and the text already exists.
That last point matters more than it sounds. A legislator considering this is not being asked to commission drafting, find staff time, or start from a blank page. They are being asked to read a finished document and decide whether to put their name on it. The full text is published, with its status, so nobody has to take our word for what it says.
The 2025 to 2026 session runs to 30 November 2026. Measures are subject to introduction deadlines and house-of-origin deadlines within it, which is the practical reason this is a question of months rather than years.
2. Why one name is the whole bottleneck
There are 80 members of the Assembly and 40 in the Senate. The Resolution needs one of them.
Not a majority, not a committee, not a leadership position. One member willing to be first. Everything downstream, the co-authors, the hearing, the floor vote, the commission itself, is unreachable until that signature exists, and every hour of organizing that does not move a specific member closer to it is an hour spent on something else.
This is why the campaign is aimed at districts rather than at statewide publicity. A statewide number does not persuade an individual legislator. A room full of their own constituents does.
3. What we are actually asking them to sign
The Resolution requests a Blue Ribbon Commission on California Sovereignty and National Separation, to study and report on seven questions: the legal frameworks under US and international law, the economic and trade implications, national security and defense, diplomatic recognition, the political structures independence would require, transitional arrangements, and voter attitudes.
It does not declare independence. It does not commit California to any position. It does not change a single line of California law, and it cannot, because a joint resolution has no binding force. What it does is ask for facts, on the record, from a body with the standing to gather them.
A member who authors it is putting their name to the proposition that the question deserves a serious answer. That is a smaller thing than opponents will say it is, and we are content to have that argument in public.
4. The risk to the first author
Authoring this carries real political risk, and pretending otherwise would insult the person we are asking.
The first author owns the headline. They will be asked about it in every interview for a month, and some of that coverage will be hostile and will not distinguish between studying a question and endorsing an answer. That is the cost, and it is front-loaded onto exactly one person.
Against it: a majority of Californians already say the state would be better off independent, and the language has stopped being career-ending. The ground has shifted faster than the political class has noticed, which is usually where opportunity lives. The polling in full.
5. Which members, and why districts
No target list appears on this site. Naming members as targets on a public website is a gift to their opponents and to ours, and it makes the ask harder for the person receiving it.
What we will say is the logic. The plausible first author represents a district where the underlying sentiment is already strong, has enough tenure to absorb a month of attention, and has a record of taking up questions before they were comfortable. That description fits more members of this Legislature than it did in 2017.
If you live in California, the member who matters most to this campaign is yours. Find out who represents you and write to them.
6. What moves this
Letters from constituents in the district, in their own words, arriving steadily rather than all at once. Not a petition with a hundred thousand signatures from across the state. A district office counts the mail it receives from the people who vote for its member, and it discounts almost everything else.
That is the entire mechanism, and it is unglamorous. It is also the only part of this sequence that is fully within our control today.