I don’t really think that statement is true, but it speaks to the influence of the style of liberty activism here in Keene. Thanks to all who have moved here to Keene and gotten active for liberty – you earned this great article from the Boston Phoenix’s Chris Faraone:
The Granite State Gang
New Hampshire transplants live free — or die trying
By CHRIS FARAONE | August 26, 2009Big bucks couldn’t buy the viral awe and ire that the Free State Project (FSP) scored on August 11, when New Hampshire resident William Kostric arrived outside President Barack Obama’s Portsmouth Town Hall meeting with a handgun on his right thigh — “open carrying” is quite legal in the Granite State — and a sign declaring IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY! Kostric, an Arizona transplant who lives in Manchester, has now become a hero in the FSP movement, which, since 2004, has attracted 523 activists to the “Live Free or Die” state in search of “a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.”
Free Staters — a loose amalgamation of Libertarian offspring who resent drug laws, speed limits, bureaucrats, and taxes — welcome both good and bad publicity. To them, there is little difference between the flattering July 25 Associated Press piece on the group’s annual Porcupine Freedom Festival and Kostric’s legal but arguably distasteful demonstration of his First and Second Amendment rights. Those developments spurred surges in interest; FSP President Varrin Swearingen, of Keene, says the central FSP Web portal, freestateproject.org, has seen sizable traffic increases in the past month, and nearly 200 new “participants” have pledged to relocate to New Hampshire during that time — more than doubling their previous best for monthly sign-ups. Kostric, who defended his actions on MSNBC’s Hardball, among other venues, even inspired two Facebook fan pages — “William Kostric for Congress” and “William Kostric Is My Hero” — which so far have more than 650 combined followers.
While most Free Staters are hardly redneck militiamen (as some media coverage has portrayed them), they seem glad and willing to recruit from Glenn Beck’s legions of newly perturbed anti-Obama reactionaries — even if that means rallying behind an accidental spokesman who may have gestured a murder threat at the president. (The Thomas Jefferson quote to which Kostric’s sign referred reads in full: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”) Still, they take exposure wherever they can get it. “The sign might have been a poor choice, and I think [Kostric] recognizes that,” says Mark Edge, a Quaker FSP member who co-hosts the popular online radio show Free Talk Live (and doesn’t carry a gun). “But under the circumstances, it’s good that we got so much attention. There’s no such thing as perfect activism.”
Manifest destiny
The FSP movement was created in abstract in 2001, when its founding father, SUNY-Buffalo political-science professor Jason Sorens, published an article in the Libertarian Enterprise titled “Announcement: The Free State Project.” The declaration inspired frustrated liberty enthusiasts across the country to begin selecting a suitable colony for Sorens’s vision (with his blessing, though he has yet to relocate), and, in 2003, by a wide margin, more than 2500 online voters chose New Hampshire over such other legislatively lax runners-up as Wyoming and Alaska. Some were already in-state; other individuals and families began to move soon after. The FSP now claims 729 members in the Granite State (most of whom live in and around the city of Keene), though some paranoid transplants — who are weary of formally joining groups — do not show up in counts and databases, so there may be more.Organizationally, the FSP has a president in Swearingen (a California native who defected to Keene in 2004), as well as a vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and mascot (the porcupine, which, according to one Free Stater, is “a peaceful animal that you wouldn’t dare fuck with)”. But that’s the extent of their infrastructural formalities. It even has an elected official in its ranks — Republican New Hampshire state representative Calvin Pratt, of Goffstown — but the group recognizes no rank and file (nor does it collect dues). As I discovered on a recent trip to Keene (one week, in fact, before the FSP arrived in the national spotlight), trying to ascertain any hierarchy is about as productive as challenging the Old Man of the Mountain to a nose-picking contest. Some members, however, are better known than others.
Before Kostric, the FSP boasted such municipal martyrs as Andrew Carroll, who was cuffed for displaying a marijuana nugget in Keene’s Central Square. There’s also Sam Miller, of Keene, who, after being arrested for refusing to reveal his identity to police, went on a prison hunger strike. Since the project’s inception, several Free Staters have been fined and jailed for disobeying laws and restrictions they consider petty, from flag burning to puppet shows and public pedi-care.
The protests are rarely organized — they’re mostly random demonstrations for which fellow Free Staters may or may not have expressed mutual enthusiasm. But, as was demonstrated in the wake of the Kostric episode, FSP enthusiasts are quick to back each other. “They say you can’t fight City Hall,” says Free Stater David Krouse of Keene. “Well, we’re fighting City Hall.”
Politics aside, Keene is a glistening refuge. Save for a Subway sandwich franchise here and a Panera Bread there, the five-or-so-block strip and cul-de-sac that make up downtown are populated primarily by cute independent shops, restaurants, and even an apothecary. Culture-wise, the area’s impressive art scene is focused in the well-manicured business district. The non–Free Staters who I meet are welcoming — even when I tell them why I came. Owners of the local trolley diner feed me ham steak and treat me like family; when a bitter, over-caffeinated patron tells me that Free Staters should return to their origins, my server tells her to keep quiet. For most residents in this semi-rural green oasis of roughly 23,000, it seems FSP members are either welcome nuisances or harmless novelties.
My business in Keene is dropping by the unofficial weekly FSP meet-up at the bar Vendetta, where about two dozen members there are happy to chat over chicken wings and craft beers. There are proud gun owners among them (as well as many who do not own firearms), but no one wants to lecture me about the Bill of Rights. Instead, they stress their collective commitment to nonviolence, and insist that FSP fosters intellectual skepticism to question formal power structures.
“We don’t agree on much,” says Jesse Moloney — an FSP activist and Keene City Council candidate who wears a T-shirt with Che Guevara sporting Mickey Mouse ears, and who was recently jailed for digging a 400-square-foot garden in the middle of Keene’s Central Square. “But you can probably say that we all agree that government — and society in general — is too aggressive.”
Ultimately, riders in this gang of like-minded curmudgeons share some common traits — even if members individually identify as everything from anarchists and socialists to independents, libertarians, secessionists, voluntaryists, and mutualists. Because it’s easier for, say, an unhitched software programmer to uproot than it is for an entire family, an estimated 80 percent of Free Staters are self-employed male bachelors. With regard to the lack of women, let’s just say that the scene at Vendetta could have doubled for a Dungeons & Dragons party (with modern weapons, of course).
In the movement, pushes for a better-established hierarchy have always been quickly dismissed. The horizontal ethos can be frustrating to new devotees, but veterans like Krouse and Moloney say the importance of loose infrastructure becomes understood with time. What’s critical, they say, is that Free Staters ultimately support one another, like they have at court trials with 50-person choruses of dissention. There are minor rifts over tactics (particularly a noted struggle between elusive members who wish to work underground and those who are comfortable spilling to reporters), but, as has become evident in recent weeks, porcupines stand up together.
“There’s no need for us to take a specific position on [Kostric’s] action,” says Swearingen, echoing the sentiments of Pratt, who, acting as an FSP spokesman, defended Kostric’s behavior on NECN. “What matters is that it’s clearly bringing people toward the Free State Project,” says Swearingen. “That’s a good first step — if they end up being people who advocate violence, racism, or bigotry [on the community message boards], then we’ll remove them from the participant database.”
Me first — the Hell with you
Not everyone’s a fan. Outside the press, there have been whisper campaigns charging that the settlers are violent camouflaged maniacs, and a recent Keene Sentinel column (titled “Will the Free Staters Please Sit Down?”) marginalized them as a “me first, second, and third and the hell with everyone else” alliance. Some rumors even charge that members have cannibalistic tendencies (doubtful). As for elective adversaries, Keene Mayor Philip Pregent is hardly enthused by persistent FSP interruptions at City Council meetings, while Democratic state representative Chuck Weed — who has criticized the movement since its inception — believes their efforts are misguided.“Sure, they’ve attracted a lot of attention,” says Weed, who also teaches political science at Keene State College. “But it’s negative — it de-legitimizes their issues.”
Free Staters acknowledge their detractors, and are prepared to engage questions about potential problems with the lawlessness that FSP allies advocate. How would infrastructure be maintained? Who would pick up trash? Who would regulate the food-service industry? Yada, yada, yada. Members have some interesting solutions: instead of speed-limit signs, they would frighten drivers with billboard tallies of how many people have died on particular roads. Instead of preventing presidential assassinations by banning weapons . . . well, they haven’t quite figured that one out yet.
“You have to consider that we’ve had a lot of changes in New Hampshire,” says Weed. “The majority party now believes that government has some important functions for the people. [The FSP’s] attempt to take over the state is naive — most people here feel there’s a social conscience that goes along with tax paying.”
Positively shocking
FSP recruitment has been difficult, as Free Staters were largely ignored in their first few years — even by the local Sentinel newspaper — and only began to grab major headlines a few months before Kostric’s gun show. In May, the group was mentioned on a Fox News Freedom Watch podcast; that same month, members were profiled in a prominent Boston Globe feature. Those spotlights — as well as recent Sentinel reports on the arrests of several members — were relatively positive, and the Free Staters I spoke with appreciate the coverage, despite occasional misrepresentations (the Globe profile, for example, implies there have been collective acts of civil disobedience — a major faux pas in the eyes of such proud individualists).As for Kostric, Free Staters agree on a “no harm, no foul” defense; like he told freekeene.com moments after his duel with Chris Matthews, there could not have been a better way to advertise his ideology.
“You need to sometimes present a more extreme viewpoint to pull people halfway between where they are and where you’d like them to move,” said Kostric. “Hopefully it shocked some people into opening their eyes. I would have liked to have seen 100 open carriers standing on the front lawn of that church — that would have given the media something to really notice. Look at what just one person did.”
Chris Faraone can be reached at cfaraone@phx.com.
