Darryl and I are running an outreach booth this weekend at NH Hempfest in Lancaster at Roger’s Campground. We’re sharing the Shire Society declaration with attendees, along with plenty of know-your-rights propaganda, and a Bitcoin Vending Machine. We’ll be at the booth all day until Sunday and at night we’re hosting Free Talk Live.
Hempfest is packed with dozens of live bands and is kicking off right now. Hope to see you!
NH Hempfest 2016 Day One
Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie recently sat down with FSP president Matt Philips to discuss the Free State Project’s libertarian migration-in-progress to New Hampshire. Gillespie has seen the evidence for himself – he’s visited the Shire on more than one occasion. It’s obvious that concentrating libertarian activists together in the same geographic area leads to success.
Now thousands more are slated to come for the FSP, while others are choosing to join the decentralized Shire Society and move independently of the Free State Project. Regardless of whether you join a movement or not, if you are a libertarian or voluntarist, take Nick’s advice: “Move to New Hampshire, you won’t regret it.”
Former Bedford Cop Joins LEAP as a Speaker!
Lachance recently announced the big news privately to his friends via his facebook profile, which included photos of him in uniform from his days as a Bedford officer. Then, after a final confirmation from the LEAP board late last week, he authorized Free Keene to break the news. He will have his first speaking engagement at the upcoming NH Hempfest and Freedom Rally happening at Rogers Campground August 25th through 28th.
When he started his career in law enforcement, Lachance was totally brainwashed into believing in prohibition. It didn’t take him long to realize that arresting drug users was only making their lives worse. In an email Lachance told me he, “saw first-hand how the war on drugs is a failure…Arresting someone for a small amount of cannabis or controlled substance only adds to the problem. The war on drugs encourages the cartels to make a black market for banned substances and creates a huge profit motive for the underground.”
Rick Naya, NH Hempfest Organizer and Joe Lachance
Lachance gets why prohibition doesn’t work. He points out, “Drug violence isn’t a reason to fight the war on drugs…it is a reason to END the war on drugs. Take away the cartels’ main source of revenue and they too will go away, much like in the 1920s with Al Capone.”
Congratulations, Joe!
NH #1 Most Free State – 2016
At the bottom of the charts, number fifty is New York, which is a long distance below number forty-nine, California. Where did your state rank? You can check out the interactive map or dig into the well-researched nearly 300 page study on their site.
With all the freedoms we have in NH, no wonder so many people who love freedom are moving here. Not only is there the most successful libertarian migration in the world happening here, but before that started there were already over 101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire. Originally a persuasive text list, in recent years it was made into an excellent hour-long documentary which you can watch for free.
If you are a libertarian or voluntarist and don’t yet have plans to move here to New Hampshire, why are you waiting? Thanks to migrations like the Shire Society and Free State Project, there are thousands of liberty-minded people who’ve already moved here in the last decade and thousands more pledged to come.
Concentration of libertarian activists into a small, low-population state like New Hampshire makes all the difference in the world for accomplishing our goal of liberty in our lifetime. If you’re tired of the continued failures of the libertarian movement, get to New Hampshire ASAP.
For more on the study, we dug in deep on last night’s Free Talk Live:
Isabelle Rose, owner Bon Vivant – Gourmet Street Food
Chef and entrepreneur Isabelle Rose is cooking up delicious Vietnamese, French, and Vegetarian fare at reasonable prices. She told me that the food truck had been a dream of hers since 2009 when she started to make Vietnamese food for the local farmers market. Her food was very popular there and she started saving money up to launch Bon Vivant without going into debt. Smart lady! I stopped in this week for the first time and enjoyed a large bowl of steak pho noodle. It was delicious and very filling. I’m excited to have more ethnic food available fresh in Keene!
Not only is the food excellent, but Bon Vivant is accepting payment in bitcoin! Isabelle says she decided to accept bitcoin after reading about it here at Free Keene and being encouraged by Chris Rietmann, the owner of next-door Route 101 Local Goods. Just today she says three customers have noticed the bitcoin sign and asked what it is.
Steak Pho Noodle @ Bon Vivant
Keene’s not the only area of New Hampshire where bitcoin acceptance is spreading. Free Keene blogger Steven Zeiler recently announced that a major Portsmouth restaurant is now accepting bitcoin.
Keene’s Bon Vivant is already visible on the CoinMap – a website that shows the locations of bitcoin-accepting businesses around the world. Per capita, Keene has more bitcoin-friendly businesses than does San Francisco, the supposed #1 place for bitcoin acceptance. With a population of over 837,000, San Francisco has, according to CoinMap, about 114 bitcoin-accepting businesses – that’s one for every 7,342 population. By comparison, Keene has over 23,000 population with 13 bitcoin businesses – that’s one for every 1,769. Keene has four times the concentration than does San Francisco.
To learn more about bitcoin, the amazingly successful decentralized cryptocurrency, visit Bitcoin.com and to join the local network of bitcoin-accepting merchants and customers, check out the Keene Bitcoin Network on facebook.
Bon Vivant and Route 101 Local Goods
The NH Pink Pistols, an LGBT-themed firearms group, practiced shooting targets at Granite State Indoor Range in Hudson yesterday. 8 people came to shoot. Last month there were 5 of us, and the previous month only 4. The range was clean, the staff was friendly, and the range was easy to use. Apparently the facility is less than 2 years old. We each shot individual targets for practice, but we also played a game of Battleship using a creatively designed target. Afterwards, some attended a Liberty Meetup in Nashua, but I had to run — I had a date at Street — a Portsmouth restaurant that now accepts bitcoin!
New, unexpected people came to this event — they must have heard about it from Facebook. The NH chapter of Pink Pistols is “officially closed” because we don’t have board members and bureaucracy to the satisfaction of the national group. I will wait for a few more successful meetups before I re-establish the group as “official”. I had a fun time, we tried out each other’s firearms, we got some practice with our own, and some even learned techniques to improve their shooting. If you’re LGBTQ and live in the Shire, please join the NH Pink Pistols Facebook Page for updates on our group and the location of our next shoot.
Here is video from yesterday’s event
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