4 reasons Manchester needs its own blog

November 12, 2011 by Skeptikos
Filed under: Essay, Free Manch

I talked to a few Manchesterites last week who are working to relaunch the Free Manch blog, which has been abandoned for a long time. I’m excited, and I want them to be successful. So, to help motivate people to make this happen, here are 4 good reasons that every liberty activist in Manchester should want a well-maintained blog:

1) Attracting new movers.

The Free Keene blog has attracted all sorts of liberty activists to New Hampshire. (Myself, for example!) It does an excellent job of showcasing local activism, and gives liberty-lovers elsewhere a taste of New Hampshire. In my judgment, this is the biggest reason that Keene is a hub of libertarian activism, rather than just another small NH city.

From what I’ve heard, there’s plenty of activism in Manchester– but it doesn’t seem that way to the rest of us, because there’s no good blog to present it. How many more people would move if they were aware of Manchester’s activism?

2) Exchanging ideas.

I didn’t realize this until last week, since Manchester has no blog, but apparently Manchester has the biggest, most well-organized activist community in New Hampshire. Those of us living in wimpy activist backwaters like Keene could certainly use the tactics and ideas developed by Manchesterites, in order to make our own activism better. We don’t have the manpower to reinvent all of this ourselves. Give us a hand!

3) Competition.

I like to compete. Just the knowledge that Manchester has better-organized political activism than Keene fills me with envy, and spurs me to work harder, so that one day I can one-up you Manchesterites.

It’s easy for me to forget about this vendetta, though, when there’s no blog to constantly remind me. (Manchester who?)

Of course, prospective Manchester bloggers should account for the fact that they will likely lose all competitions with Keene. Sorry, but facts are facts.

4) Influence.

There are some activists in Manchester who like to complain about those Keeniacs and their misguided civil disobedience antics. But do you know why this has been so popular in Keene?

In large part, it’s because the civil disobedience in Keene is consistently promoted on the Free Keene blog. Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of Keene political activism to promote. As a result, civil disobedience is popular here, and politics, eh, not so much.

If a more politically-oriented city had a good blog, promoting political activism, that would help to change things.

I’m working hard to promote politics in Keene, but I need help! I can’t make politics cool all by myself.

(Sometimes I hear people complain that civil disobedience is inherently easier to promote than politics. This is not true. The simple fact of the matter– and a real fact, not me boasting– is that civil disobedience activists have generally worked much harder to document and promote their activism than political activists. Don’t blame the subject matter.)

———

So I wish luck to aspiring Manchester bloggers.

Naturally, a Manchester blog will never be as good as Free Keene, because Keene is just better, and it always will be, and that’s all there is to it. But having the second best liberty blog in New Hampshire is nothing to be ashamed of, and it would do a lot of good.

http://propagandalalaland.blogspot.com/ Julia

What kind of activism, aside from the recent "occupy NH" demonstrations, frequently goes on in Manchester?
K. Darien Freeheart

As a Free State Project early mover and civil disobedient who lives in Manchester, I have one, and only one, response to this article…

We're called Manchkins.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ma…
Skeptikos

The, uh, Manchkins, Julia, do a lot of politics. They have a KAC-like hang-out, too. And I think they chalked the police recently, didn't they?

Beyond that, I don't know, because they don't have a blog!!
Steve

Shhhh, don't tell them our secrets
LiberTEA

There should be a free website for all the citys in the merrimack valley because those were the most opressed workers during industrialisation. Manchester, Nashua, Lowell, and Lawrence
http://propagandalalaland.blogspot.com/ Julia

LiberTEA – don't forget Haverhill.
http://capitalismsmash.blogspot.com/ SMASH CAPITALISM

Dont trust anybody that wears a suit. Also, LiberTEA is me, i was making fun of tea partyers.
Sovereign Curtis

Hey Julia, I tried to explain this to you at the ONE Occupy event I saw you at, but you weren't very much interested in trying to give anyone associated with the FSP the benefit of the doubt. You were only interested in maintaining your belief that you are alone in knowing what is the 'right' course of action (though you couldn't actually explain what you DO regarding your beliefs).

Here is one of the many things I do, which you so studiously attempted to ignore while we were talking

http://www.freemanch.com/a-more-intelligent-form-…

Hey Will, now you know that Manch is home to NH's one and only liberty mock trial group.
http://propagandalalaland.blogspot.com/ Julia

"You were only interested in maintaining your belief that you are alone in knowing what is the ‘right’ course of action (though you couldn’t actually explain what you DO regarding your beliefs)."

And what I was trying to tell you at OccupyNH is that your tactics are problematic for a number of reasons, namely that they ignore social conditioning and do very little to create anti-statist attitudes among non-libertarians. Let me explain:

As it is right now, we live in a very competitive profit-driven society. Right off the bat, this gives tons of people an incentive to keep the state since they have a desire to monopolize the market and beat their competition to resources. If the agorist market focuses on making profit rather than creating a market which serves the community, then there will be a huge incentive to keep the state or bring the state back if the state is effectively "drained" and dissolves.

Like I keep saying on here, read texts by David Graeber and other anarchist anthropologists and understand how cultures which have been stateless since the beginning of history are still stateless mainly due to their social relations and customs, i.e. they have no concept of wealth, private property, social class, etc. and everyone works for the community, shares property, all of that. This means no one has the ability or incentive to have power over others within the community and thus no state forms.

So how would agorists respond to these issues? I'm curious since I'm very interested in mutualist and other kinds of market anarchist economic theory but am unsure how exactly it would deal with the issue of market institutions wanting the state back, especially if profit is the bottom line.
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http://www.nevertakeaplea.org Clyde Voluntaryist

Skeptikos: "And I think they chalked the police recently, didn’t they?"

I might be missing some people, but from my recollection actively at that event was Ademo (currently Keene), Pete (currently Keene), Garrett (Concord), Redneck Nick (Keene), me (near future to be Keene).
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