Footage has now been release from the massive 40+ person 4:20 celebration that happened in Manchester involving a bunch of Keeniacs. This was from the one-week commemoration of Big Mike’s arrest for “assault”. Police threaten activists with arrest and are offered pink panties:
Dave Ridley proves a NH police chief lied during testimony at the state house in regards to cannabis legalization:
We’ve been able to have picnics outside the jail in Westmoreland without issue, but in their visits to Valley St. jail, Manchester activists have come up against intimidation and threats from local police. In this raw video, they actually claim that the jail is private property and that the activists will be arrested should they come back. They plan to return this Saturday. Details on this thread. Here’s the video:
More video from Keene activist Rich Paul’s visit inside the jail: (Read on …)
Liberty-minded people called “Talkback” on WKBK last week to discuss stealing property, agreements, providing unwanted services, arbitrary extractions, and a tax revolt. We also hear from an offended caller, who calls liberty activists a “gang” – actually she calls them *my* gang, as though I’m in charge. The smarmy dartmouth guy also makes an appearance.
Please join us for our weekly chat and calling sessions on Saturday mornings from 11a-12p in the Liberty Radio Network Chat room. If you’re online, you can listen to Talkback streamed live via the Liberty Radio Network and if you’re in the Keene area you can tune in to WKBK 1290 AM or 104.1 FM. The Talkback discussion thread is here on the Free Keene Forum.
Ever sat in an arraignment on a Monday or Tuesday morning in Keene District Court? The room is usually packed full of people, the supermajority of which have never harmed another person. They are there for harmless traffic tickets, drug possession, open container, or some other nonsense “crime against the state”, where there is no true victim. Well, correction, the people who are in court for these “crimes” are actually the victims of aggression by the people calling themselves the state or city. They shuffle in and line up to cut a “deal” with the prosecutor and pay in many cases hundreds of dollars just to make the awful experience go away.
You can almost hear the cash register ring to the tune of thousands of dollars each day. Most of the people who are being caught for these things certainly cannot afford to pay these fines whether or not the economy is doing well. Many of them have to go on payment plans, because they certainly don’t want to go to jail, which is what is done if they don’t pay up. You’d think that with all that cash rolling in from these victimless “criminals” that the system would be in the black. You would be wrong. This is bureaucracy we’re talking about, and they don’t have the ability to run efficiently, period.
The Keene Sentinel’s Phil Bantz reports that the courts are in such dire financial shape, they have to shut down – not completely, but enough to make scheduling and “speedy trials” even more difficult. Many trials of local liberty activists are already set into late spring, and may be delayed even longer with the pending shutdown.
Perhaps if the police would stop aggressing against peaceful people then the caseload would be manageable and they wouldn’t have to be going through this.
Can you imagine what would happen if 5-10% of the victims of state aggression stopped plea bargaining and took their cases to trial? The entire system would crash and burn. Their power rests on your obedience, so set the example and refuse to take a plea. Make them pay to schedule a trial and if you can afford to, take the jail time rather than pay them fines so it costs them even more.
Perhaps they’ll eventually do the right thing and leave peaceful people alone and only go after real criminals who harm others. Here’s the Sentinel story:
Already understaffed and overloaded with cases, Keene District Court and Cheshire County Superior Court, in the heart of the city’s downtown, are bracing for monthly closures and temporary layoffs.
Saying it was the saddest moment of his 37 years in the state’s judicial system, Chief Justice John T. Broderick Jr. met with judges and marital masters last Friday and asked them to take furloughs, an unprecedented request. (Read on …)
A few days back on this blog we posted the news that longtime NH police officer Brad Jardis was no longer going to arrest medical cannabis users. Jardis has shown much courage – far more than the average cop – in first coming out verbally against the insane war on drugs, and now taking the first step into actually doing the right thing and refusing to enforce bad laws.
Despite the courage he has and the support he has earned in the community because of it, the organization known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has unceremoniously booted him from their ranks. Brad posted the email he received from LEAP’s head, Jack Cole, on the Free Keene Forum. In it, Cole takes position that while LEAP members are encouraged to speak out about the horrors of prohibition, as long as they are employed as LEOs, they must enforce bad laws, because to not do so would be “unethical and wrong”. It’s a sad statement that outs LEAP as an organization of nothing more than a bunch of talkers, rather than doers. Of course, Cole is incorrect. Enforcing laws that harm peaceful people is what is unethical and wrong.
Other law enforcement officers, who are members of LEAP, have announced they will be sending in their resignations. Many other supporters of LEAP are sending in revocations of their membership, and explaining why. Some of these messages can be found on this forum thread.
Here’s the message Jack Cole sent to Brad, with Cole’s full contact info at the bottom.
Dear Bradley Jardis,
I have tried but am unable to reach you by telephone.
It has come to LEAP’s attention from the below blog entry, that you have
chosen to violate the oath you took on joining the police department; to
enforce all the laws of the federal and state governments in which your
police department has jurisdiction. And worse, you are calling on other law
enforcement officials to violate their oaths of office. (Read on …)
40+ people, a good portion Keeniacs, gathered in Manchester’s Victory Park today to hold a 4:20 cannabis celebration mid-winter in honor of Big Mike. He was arrested for brushing up against an MPD undercover officer. Big Mike has been imprisoned until the trial in April because he’s using his so-called right to remain silent and refusing to give up his name. Our blogger Sam was imprisoned for 58 days for the same thing last year. Disobey, and you stay in their cage.
Here’s BikerBill’s excellent coverage of the events in the park. Hopefully someone else got footage of the entire MPD being called out later on at the jail…
More from the Keene-inspired activists in Manchester, who have experienced their first civil disobedience arrest in recent memory. More video may be coming, but for now here’s the scene as described by liberty activist Joe Skinner:
Two Activists Arrested in Manchester for a 420 Celebration.
Saturday January 16th 2010 was an unseasonably warm day in the New Hampshire region. Because of this my roommate Mike and I figured it would be a perfect day to go, live free and hold an impromptu 420 celebration at Veteran’s Park in down town Manchester. Celebrations like the one we were planning that morning were held throughout the late summer and fall in both Keene and Manchester, NH. These celebrations, in which the participants partake in the public and open consumption of cannabis, were left completely unmolested in every instance of them occurring in the Manchester area. That is until that Saturday in January.
Around 4:00 PM Mike and I arrive on scene, close to the corner of Elm and Central in down town Manchester. We did not expect a large turnout because of the short notice, so we sat down smoked a cigarette and figured we’d just wait around until the hour arrived to do the public consumption and leave. We had done this dozens of times a few months earlier and it all seemed almost routine that afternoon. By the time it reached 4:20PM there were a total of six of us that had gathered, three of which were actually participating in celebration.
As we were passing around a marijuana cigarette (and may I mention, not hurting, nor bothering any passersby) two gentlemen who were wearing jeans, fleece jackets and baseball caps, entered the circle and asked if we were smoking. As we were not there to hide anything we acknowledged what we were doing without even giving it a second thought. At that moment the two men identified themselves as police and stated that we were observed to be smoking marijuana in public and that we were being detained by the officers. (Read on …)
My parking ticket saga continues (see the other parts here), as today while at court to support Kurt I was “served” by the friendly Peter “Sturdy” Thomas of the Keene police. Here’s the complaint he foisted upon me, alleging I committed a “VIOLATION” of city ordinance 94-152 B1. As you can see, the original was completely illegible so Sturdy took the time to trace over most of it for me – such service! Basically they are claiming I parked at an expired meter and didn’t pay for the meter.
I’ve been meaning to post my correspondence about this incident with the Keene police’s parking bureau head, Ginger Reyes, and this gives me the perfect opportunity. (I believe she’s the angry-looking blonde parking enforcement person so many Keeniacs are unfortunately too familiar with.) Here’s the situation. (Read on …)
Rob Menard from ThinkFree.ca has been posting a series of videos, “Fundamentals of Freedom” to his youtube account, and they’ve been pretty good so far. So good in fact, that FreeKeene.com is going to sponsor some upcoming lessons. Here’s Lesson 4, “Society and Statutes”. In it he discusses creating your own society, as we have been discussing here on the Free Keene Forum.
Part 1:
(Read on …)
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