Jessica Bryant
Despite what some believe, not all Free State Project participants think alike and they even disagree with each other on some matters! That’s one of the things you’ll learn in today’s front page above-the-fold feature story from the Keene Sentinel‘s Martha Shanahan which features new movers Maria, Nolan, and Jessica:
To watchers of the Colbert Report, Keene’s libertarian residents are anything but conventional.
A recent segment of the comedy show depicted local “liberty activists” as angry radicals, harassing the city’s parking enforcement officers as they fill the meters with coins.
Keene’s community of libertarians and participants in the Free State Project — often collectively referred to as Free Keene — have also drawn national media attention for public demonstrations and confrontations with local residents and city officials.
But the national media spotlight the city has received has little bearing on the decision of some members of the Free State Project, which began in 2001 as an experiment to persuade 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire, to make their home in the Keene area.
“I’m not some radical,” Nolan Mann, who is a member of the Free State project and moved to Keene in October, said. “At my job, if people ask why I moved to New Hampshire … usually my answer is ‘live free or die.’ I don’t talk about politics at work.”
Mann is one of several recent transplants to the region who chose the Keene area as their home partially for ideological reasons — New Hampshire became the project’s destination because of its built-in slant toward political and individual independence — but also have more conventional motivations and aspirations for their move.
Maria Korfiatis, who signed the Free State Project pledge to move to New Hampshire several years ago, is now moving from New York to a rented house in the Winchester village of Ashuelot.
She heard about the movement from a friend and was immediately interested in the concept, which Dartmouth College lecturer Jason Sorens developed as a Yale University Ph.D. student almost 15 years ago.
The idea was simple: Get 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire, where they could run for office and promote less government intervention in Granite Staters’ lives.
Since then, the Free State Project says more than 16,000 people have signed up to move, and just over 1,500 people have actually made the trip.
More than 20 Free State Project participants have been elected to the N.H. House, and others serve in municipal government positions.
In and around Keene, local activists have instead made a splash by holding public demonstrations against the government and “Robin Hooding,” or feeding expired city meters before parking enforcement officers can write tickets.
The loosely affiliated group has come to be known as Free Keene, named after the blog founded by Ian Freeman, who also hosts the daily syndicated satellite radio show Free Talk live.
People associated with Free Keene have been arrested and charged with a variety of crimes and misdemeanors. The “liberty-minded” group has drawn the ire of some local residents who protest the activists’ actions online.
They have videotaped public, sometimes violent, confrontations with other people over drawings in chalk on city sidewalks.
Keene officials have taken legal action against various members of the community, in one case charging in the N.H. Supreme Court that the meter-feeders harassed parking officers.
Korfiatis has not seen much of the news coverage of controversies that have followed Keene libertarian activists, she said, and knows about Free Keene only though friends.
“I just heard a little bit about it,” Korfiatis said by phone from New York, where she is arranging her final move to Ashuelot.
Korfiatis didn’t decide to move to the Winchester village because of parking meters or chalk drawings. She said she was drawn to the liberty movement because it aligned with her feelings against the use of police force and for women’s rights to give birth naturally.
But moving to the Granite State also made sense to her for a number of reasons outside her ideological leanings, she said.
Winchester is only a few hours by car from New York, where her children still live. It was less crowded than the city. Korfiatis could attend a midwifery school in Fitzwilliam and continue to work as a doula, or a non-medical assistant who gives emotional and physical support to women giving birth. She guessed the Keene area would likely have a good choice of places to live.
“I’ve been saying for the past year that I’m going to make that move to New Hampshire,” Korfiatis said. “It was the best move for me.”
When a friend and fellow Free State Project mover in the area found a house for Korfiatis to rent, she jumped at the opportunity.
“When she said (she had found a place), I didn’t even really care at that point about looking at the house,” Korfiatis said. “I came right away.”
Almost immediately, she said, she has found a community of other local Free State Project participants eager to help her settle in.
“The whole community is amazing,” she said. “I asked around when it came to furniture and stuff like that, and they’ve even said they’ll help me move in.”
Mann chose Keene for similar reasons. He also moved from New York, and was fed up with the difficulties of being a libertarian there.
“My driving factor was finding a place that’s more free,” he said.
The existing community of like-minded people in the area made Keene both an attractive and convenient place to try to set down roots.
“It really was just a convenient move,” he said. “I just wanted a place where I could save my money and live more freely.”
A friend helped him find a room in a home across from the Leverett Street house where Freeman and several other activists live.
He spends much of his time at work as a paraprofessional and little time doing activism. He prefers to support the movement by supporting the work of fellow movers, he said.
While Mann thinks activism like “Robin Hooding” is beneficial, Mann doesn’t like the aggressive tactics of some Robin Hooding people that landed them on the Colbert Report and in the N.H. Supreme Court.
“I enjoy the activism — I’ve done it, and I’m happy to support it in any way I can — but I disagreed with that (approach),” he said.
Jessica Bryant moved to Bradford a year ago as a member of the Free State project, and has decided to move to Keene this month with her children to live with her boyfriend.
Bryant said her move from Texas brought her closer to people with similar beliefs.
“I’ve always really been liberty-oriented,” she said. “I saw that all of these people with similar ideas are all moving to New Hampshire … I signed up for it right away.”
Bryant said instead of focusing on activism, she prefers working within existing legal and governmental systems to promote libertarianism.
She plans to get her New Hampshire real estate license and wants to start a company targeting Free State Project movers who need help finding a place in the area to live.
She also plans to run for the school board in Keene once she has moved and settled in.
Mann said he and Bryant are like many other Free State Project participants who come to New Hampshire to lead a fairly conventional life. He pays his taxes, he works full time and tries to stay out of trouble.
“I had to pass a background check to get my job,” he points out. “Sometimes you have to be realistic.”
