A couple months later, Kelly, Derrick J, and I teamed up with Miami photojournalist Carlos Miller and paid a visit to the court on official court business. Sheriff Foote refused to return calls from us, which is what he was demanding in his order before we’d be allowed on the public property for which we’re all forced to pay. All three of us were arrested and Carlos was threatened by Sheriff Caleb Dodson.
Due to facing multiple charges from multiple arrests, Derrick made the tough choice of taking a plea, but Kelly and I didn’t have the same weight of charges on us and we knew we were in the right and the trespass order was wrong, so we pressed on. County attorney David Lauren met with us and offered a pretty sweet plea deal – he’d drop the charge to a violation level (it was being charged as a Class A with up to a year in jail the possible penalty) offense and it’d be a $250 fine, suspended on condition of good behavior. I was out of jail on a nine-month suspended sentence from my last conviction and if I received another misdemeanor conviction I could go back to jail for the remaining nine months. Despite that looming threat, I refused the plea, as did Kelly, and the matter was to continue to trial.
Now, several months after that hearing, Keene district court’s judge Edward Burke has made the right decision. He has ruled in an order that the no-trespass orders, as applied to me and Kelly Voluntaryist, are unconstitutional and dismissed the cases against us! (more…)
Yesterday Truthdig and today Dandelion Salad published an article by Christopher Hedges, who was present at Ft Meade during the hearing in which Bradley Manning delivered his first public statement. Journalist Alexa O’Brien has transcribed Manning’s statement which is also published at Dandelion Salad. Below is Hedges’ entry We Are Bradley Manning:
I was in a military courtroom at Fort Meade in Maryland on Thursday as Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted giving classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as government misconduct. A statement that Manning made to the court was a powerful and moving treatise on the importance of placing conscience above personal safety, the necessity of sacrificing careers and liberty for the public good, and the moral imperative of carrying out acts of defiance. Manning will surely pay with many years—perhaps his entire life—in prison. But we too will pay. The war against Bradley Manning is a war against us all.
This trial is not simply the prosecution of a 25-year-old soldier who had the temerity to report to the outside world the indiscriminate slaughter, war crimes, torture and abuse that are carried out by our government and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a concerted effort by the security and surveillance state to extinguish what is left of a free press, one that has the constitutional right to expose crimes by those in power. The lonely individuals who take personal risks so that the public can know the truth—the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Ron Ridenhours, the Deep Throats and the Bradley Mannings—are from now on to be charged with “aiding the enemy.” All those within the system who publicly reveal facts that challenge the official narrative will be imprisoned, as was John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst who for exposing the U.S. government’s use of torture began serving a 30-month prison term the day Manning read his statement. There is a word for states that create these kinds of information vacuums: totalitarian. (more…)
The Keene police are coming after me for a violation level offense regarding not getting a driver’s license in NH after allegedly establishing “residency”. My arraignment on the charge is this week.
I will be filing the following:
Motion to Dismiss – Claiming right to revolution and pointing out that I am not a resident by their own definitions.
Motion to Recuse – From Brad Jardis’ Burke recusal kit, claiming Burke is biased against liberty activists and should recuse himself from the case.
If you’ve been reading this blog for the past year, you know that the people calling themselves the “City of Keene” raided my tenants’ home, the Keene Activist Center, in the summer of 2012. The city people had claimed, with no evidence current at the time of the raid, that it was being run as a “tourist home” or “lodginghouse” and is subject to the city ordinances regarding interconnected, AC-wired smoke detectors being mandatory on each floor. Here’s an article with some detail and initial court filings.
“The right reserved to the people by this Article is not such a broad and unlimited right of insurrection and rebellion as to permit any group which is dissatisfied with existing government to lawfully attempt … to overthrow the government by force or violence.”
Of course, I have not advocated force or violence as I point out a second time in my response to their objection. I am engaged in peaceful revolution against the idea of “the state”. Though, I prefer to call it evolution.
Finally, the city’s attorney, Thomas P. Mullins, claims in his objection that:
Requesting Defendant to comply with a fire department regulation designed to protect life and property, including those of Defendant and his tenants, can hardly be construed by a reasonable individual as a “perversion” of the government justifying the right to revolt.
Whoa! Hang on. This has all just been a “request”? (more…)
The Fr33manTVraw channel recently received one of its largest uploads to date. The 82 minute video is the first third of a compilation of raw footage from our group’s first day on the ground for the NATO summit protests. The videos have been released first to the raw channel, and then to Free Concord’s youtube channel as they are edited and narrated to give the footage context. For those looking for the entire journey of the camera, the raw footage includes practically everything filmed. The previous day’s release, Day Zero, is just over nine minutes edited and just under ten raw. Within the coming weeks, a shortened, finished product will publish from the following day. In the meantime, the raw first segment of Day One: Boots on the Ground is live:
Yesterday truth-out.com posted an update on the NATO 3 case in Illinois, where three travelling protesters still remain caged on state-level charges of domestic terrorism after their apartment was raided by police days before the historic protest weekend.
A handful of panels featured at the 2013 New Hampshire Liberty Forum were recorded for Free Concord, and raw footage continues to appear on Fr33manTVraw. Embedded below is Pete Eyre presenting on the project of CopBlock.org that he co-founded in 2010. He offers solid advice from an experienced activator. Check out the playlist set for links to other videos from the weekend in Nashua as they publish.
At the very beginning of 2012, several activists including myself were banned from the entire Cheshire “superior” court property by then-Sheriff Dick Foote. Foote’s ridiculous order claimed it was due to “persistent harassment” of court staff. He was referring to some activists wishing the court bureaucrats “happy holidays” as they entered and left their workplace. Additionally, we sang them some Chronic Carols and asked them some questions about the thuggish behavior of their coworkers, the court security agents.
Shortly thereafter, heroic free-speech attorney Jon Meyer stepped forward to take the case on principle and pro-bono. In a hearing held regarding the validity of the no trespass order, Meyer had Sheriff Dick Foote on the ropes. That raw video is long (and entertaining in many parts), but for those with less time, Meyer also summarized Foote’s ridiculous claims regarding the order in post-hearing memorandums, which you can read here.
![smokeDetector[1]](https://i0.wp.com/freekeene.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/smokeDetector11-150x150.jpg?resize=150%2C150)
If you’ve been reading this blog for the past year, you know that the people calling themselves the “City of Keene” raided my tenants’ home, the Keene Activist Center, in the summer of 2012. The city people had claimed, with no evidence current at the time of the raid, that it was being run as a “tourist home” or “lodginghouse” and is subject to the city ordinances regarding interconnected, AC-wired smoke detectors being mandatory on each floor. 
