On this first day of the New Year, I was motivated to do something I don’t normally, and that is contacting federal ‘representatives’. A website linked on my Facebook feed made it as easy as customizing a form letter to address three congressman and the president. The letter called for the immediate closing of the US Department of Defense’s School of the Americas, also known as WHINSEC, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. WHINSEC is a training facility in Fort Benning, Georgia where primarily Latin American militants loyal to US foreign policy demands are instructed in tactics of controlling and killing. You don’t often (or ever) hear the four politicians who received my message discussing the collateral damage and crimes attributed to graduates of the school, which made it the most fitting way to frame a new year, while talking heads babble on about fiscal cliffs. For more on legislative and other actions to take against the School of the Americas, check out soawatch.org.
Still more footage of KPD’s Ken Meola behaving poorly towards Dave Ridley. Ridley also suggests I am “passive aggressive” and that I’ve wasted my time having breakfast with people like Ken. I disagree that it’s time wasted conversing in a humane manner with government workers and politicians. Ridley may be angry, but I am generally not. If I find myself angry, I’ll do my best to admit it, and work on shifting to better feelings. As usual, when someone accuses me of being “passive aggressive”, I think that’s just projection on their part. Ridley wants me to be angry for him, because he feels, perhaps, as though he would be angry in the situations in question.
I’m long past being angry at the government guys. They are just humans doing the wrong thing by aggressing against their peaceful neighbors. Everyone can change – I know I have. Here’s Ridley’s report:
A Keene-area state representative laments the fact that, “there is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal.” The Other; “them” in this instance refers to participants in the Free State Project, the political migration of liberty minded people to NH. Though the FSP has no central direction and amounts to little more than a promise to move together with like-minded others, freshly elected representative Cynthia Chase has classified her new neighbors as a threat. But not just any threat. “Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today,” she opens with on a blog featured at the Blue Hampshire website. Continuing,
In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here.
One wonders how Ms. Chase plans to make the state “so unwelcoming” for libertarians in such a way that would not be unwelcoming to others. She tips her hand by opening in regret that political purges are illegal, but then suggests that she and her ilk can try.
In the video, Woods provides a ringing endorsement for the Free State Project:
“We should support the Free State Project, I think it’s a great idea. But now I’m doubly enthusiastic for it because now I feel like we have to do it just to drive this woman [Cynthia Chase] crazy.”
District 8 State Representative Cynthia Chase of Keene has made her position clear on liberty-loving activists moving here, and it’s quite the endorsement of the success of the Free State Project. In a post to Blue Hampshire, she reveals that she believes Free Staters are the biggest threat to the state (something to be proud of) and that she and some others on Central Square during the peace vigil attempted to scare away a visiting couple from moving here. (As an aside, what was Ms. Chase doing at the peace vigil? She must be very confused about what peace is. Hint- it doesn’t include using aggressive force on people via “the state”.)
In the opinion of this Democrat, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the “freedoms” that they think they will find here. Another is to shine the bright light of publicity on who they are and why they are coming. They can not put their ideology into our statutes unless we elect them in great enough numbers to take over our General Court. We have already seen them try during the last session of the General Court. Our last election was a repudiation of their extremism.
Here in Keene we had a couple show up on Central Square to take part in our weekly Saturday morning peace demonstration. In the course of the conversation they allowed that they were Free Staters considering moving to Keene. The folks on the Square told them in no uncertain terms not to do that because Free Staters are not welcome here. (more…)
president. The letter called for the immediate closing of the US Department of Defense’s School of the Americas, also known as WHINSEC, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. WHINSEC is a training facility in Fort Benning, Georgia where primarily Latin American militants loyal to US foreign policy demands are instructed in tactics of controlling and killing. You don’t often (or ever) hear the four politicians who received my message discussing the collateral damage and crimes attributed to graduates of the school, which made it the most fitting way to frame a new year, while talking heads babble on about fiscal cliffs. For more on legislative and other actions to take against the School of the Americas, check out soawatch.org.
