Rich Paul is the creator of the historic 420 celebrations in Keene who also spent most of 2013 in a jail cell for heroically refusing to take the plea on multiple cannabis dealing charges. He’s out and will take the stage at Keenevention 2014 to tell his story and take your questions!
Get your tickets for the earlybird price now for just $40 USD or Bitcoin!
Rich is the first speaker announcement of many to come, including our returning and brand new panel discussion topics and the various guest speakers (all NH-based activists) who will populate them. Stay tuned to the Keenevention blog, the Keenevention facebook page, or FreeKeene.com for the announcements. (If you’ve liked the Keenevention facebook page, have you hovered over the “liked” indicator and clicked “get notifications”? That will help ensure you see future posts.)
Rude, unidentified, suspected lawyer threatens me with a lawsuit for taking his picture as he gets in his car
This morning as I was handing out “Don’t Take the Plea Deal” fliers at the courthouse, the victims of the system were receptive and happy to take the information, as always. Normally, I open the door for people entering the courthouse, including court employees, but one man in particular did not appreciate it today. As I opened and held the door for him, he says, “Don’t open the door for me and don’t talk to me, you moron.” I told him that wasn’t very nice as the rude man went in the building.
About a half-hour later, he came out and went to his car. As he did so, I snapped a couple of photos and asked him his name, which prompted some comment from him about anarchy (I am not an anarchist.) and then he proceeded to threaten me, saying that if I posted his picture anywhere he’d sue me for “defamation”. Who is this character? I’ve seen him around the courthouse countless times. If you know who he is and have any experiences with him, please post in the comments section.
Dave Ridley has returned to the state house in Concord to confront big government state reps and lobbyists with his camera, ambush-interview-style. Here some lobbyist threatens to call security on Dave and hides out from his dangerous video camera:
Local hater group, “STOP FREE KEENE!!!” received press today from the Sentinel and rather than speak to reporter Kyle Jarvis they released the following statement, according to a comment on the Sentinel’s site by group founder Andrea Parkhurst Whitcomb. In this article, I respond to their statement which appears in-full, in the block quotes below:
“Stop Free Keene is a loosely organized group or 200+ Keene/Monadnock residents who are concerned and alarmed by the goals and tactics of Free Keene and it’s affiliate organizations. This includes the desire for the abolishment or privatization of all government agencies and services like police, fire, and judicial systems as well as the complete dismantling of public education and regulatory oversight of food, medicine, and the environment.
Free Keene is a website – it has no tactics as it’s only a wordpress site. The purpose of the site is to share news, activism, and opinion in the hopes of advancing society to a consensual order rather than one based on institutionalized coercion. Please see our “About” page for details. Each person that blogs for Free Keene has their own tactics and they may not all agree on the best way to go about achieving their goals. Personally, I don’t support privatizing police, fire, and justice. I just want the markets open to competition and have the state agencies no longer funded by the threat of force. I support education, good food, health care, and a clean environment. I just don’t think a monopoly is the best way to provide those services. If you want to know what other Free Keene bloggers think, feel free to ask them.
Free Keene and its affiliates have made it a priority to harass, intimidate, or otherwise silence their critics and those they perceive as “enemies of liberty”.
Jarvis’ article is fair, though it does claim that Keene liberty activists have engaged in nude protests more than once, which is inaccurate. To my knowledge there has never been a nude event in Keene – toplessness is not nudity. Regardless, here’s the article from the Sunday edition of the Sentinel:
Rich Paul is the creator of the historic 420 celebrations in Keene who also spent most of 2013 in a jail cell for heroically refusing to take the plea on multiple cannabis dealing charges. He’s out and will take the stage at Keenevention 2014 to tell his story and take your questions!
