Thanks to the Equinox’s Corey Smith for this article:
Rain dampens bi-annual Free Keene festival
A steady rainfall and dipping autumn temperatures did not dampen the spirit of participants in the Free Keene Fest at Railroad Square Oct. 18.
One day after Keene’s annual Pumpkin Festival, the small gathering aimed to catch the attention of visitors still lingering in the area. Local residents set up shop underneath tents and sold handmade jewelry, baked goods, tamales and hot apple cider.
In addition, a tent with a FreeKeene.com sign attached to it had informational pamphlets and issues of the Free Keene Press available for visitors to read. The event, held once in the spring and again in the fall, is a collaborative effort.
One of the organizers and a contributor to the Free Keene Fest Web site, Mike Barskey, said to his knowledge none of the merchants or performers at Railroad Square applied for permits, an integral part to the libertarian focus of the event. He said at his first Free Keene Fest, the police showed up and he was charged for the lack of a necessary permit, but they were later dropped. Authorities have not arrived at the event since.
“To my knowledge, no one got a permit,” he said. “Because of the 4:20 events I thought they [police] were going to be pissed and attack us, but nope.”
In the weeks prior to the event, Barskey and others gathered daily at Central Square to smoke tobacco products and marijuana, pushing for decriminalization of the substance.
Only a small number of arrests have been made in connection to the gatherings since they began in September.
Images of the Free State Project (FSP), a movement aiming to bring 20,000 libertarians to establish residency in New Hampshire, were also spotted at Sunday’s event.
A cutout of a porcupine with the signatures of all the presenters at the 2009 Liberty Forum was on display. The porcupine is the symbol of the FSP and is the modern representation of the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ rattlesnake, demanding government to be a servant to the people.
Many visitors to the Free Keene Fest share the ideal that government should be smaller and people should maximize their individual freedoms.
Keene is home to many of the media outlets promoting these views. Free Talk Live, a radio program broadcast from Keene, is syndicated to nearly 50 locations across the country, the Free Keene Press is printed and disturbed regularly and the Free Keene blog is consistently updated with photos, videos and informational postings on libertarian events in town.
Dale Everett, a Keene resident and creator of the comic strip Anarchy In Your Head, said he moved to town a year and a half ago because people were friendly and open to expanding libertarian ideas.
“Keene is going to be a liberty capital of the world,” he said. “There’s a lot of media with a liberty message here.”
Other displays at the event explained various aspects of expanding individualized freedom. A poster entitled Mail-to-Jail instructed visitors to write postcards to Kurt Hoffman, a liberty activist currently imprisoned in the Cheshire Country Correctional Institution for not showing identification to a police officer after being pulled over. Another display detailed the process by which members of the Free Keene Web site, known only as “Robin Hood and his Merry Men,” curb parking fees. They deposit coins into parking meters that have expired, relieving motorists from parking tickets. Despite the level of activism involved in the event, Barskey said the point of the Free Keene Fest was to just get people together.
“Not everyone here is an activist,” he said, indicating the crowd of around 30. “Anyone who wants can swing on by. They came here and set up in the rain. They’re just incredible people.”Corey Smith can be contacted at csmith@keeneequinox.com.
