This year, for the first time in the over a decade since I’ve lived here, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire put on a real convention. Previous years have been a couple dozen libertarians sitting around a table, with 10% or fewer of the attendees being female. Since principled libertarians Darryl W Perry and Rodger Paxton took over the party’s executive committee in unanimous votes at a special convention late last year, party membership has doubled. Not only was the turnout excellent, with over 70 registered for this year’s convention, but there were more female attendees than I’ve ever seen at a Libertarian Party event.
The venue was the Concord Holiday Inn which was quite nice and spacious compared to last year when we were crammed around a table in the corner of a bar. Jilletta Jarvis, former independent candidate for governor and current secretary of the LPNH did an excellent job organizing the convention. It included a silent auction, multiple speakers, the requisite business session, and social time including a fancy dinner. I had the honor of being the event videographer and videos from the event will be coming out this week on the Free Keene YouTube channel, chronologically.
The opening speaker was the representative for this region of the country on the Libertarian National Committee, Patrick McKnight. After Darryl teased him in his introduction about leaving New Jersey for New Hampshire, McKnight admitted in his speech, “I know personally a lot of people who have left New Jersey and moved here and are like, ‘Why are you still there?’ and I’m like, well, I don’t really know!”. Here’s the video of McKnight’s speech:
Are you like McKnight? Still living in one of the more tyrannical states in the union? It’s time to start planning your escape to join the largest migration of liberty-oriented activists in the world. New Hampshire is already the freest state and will only get better as more libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-loving anarchists move here and get active.
