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.
Posted hours ago to Vice News was an article connecting the zealous prosecutions of Aaron Schwartz and Bradley Manning. John Cornyn, a US senator from Texas authored a letter to current US attorney general Eric Holder inquiring as to whether Schwartz’s FOIA requests related to Manning’s treatment were a motivating factor for his own prosecution. See DJ Pangburn’s article Aaron Swartz and Bradley Manning: How the US Government Contains Those Who Would Free Information.
When Swartz walked into the MIT server room to liberate millions of academic papers (freeing knowledge in the process), he was unwittingly opening the door to his very own cell alongside Manning. One need not be in a tiny room to feel the walls closing in. The law does a great job of that—the shadow of America’s boot heel spreading all around, snuffing out the light. Defendants are forced to deal: plead guilty and serve a short sentence, or fight the system and serve much more time. Justice indeed.
Dave Ridley has produced a summary video the shortly offered CopBlock Protection, which was recently launched and quickly halted, after making an undisclosed number of sales of the media product. The protection plan offer guaranteed response in the event of an arrest or prosecution in the form of media coverage featured at CopBlock.org. An update posted to CopBlock shortly after the halt stated that all memberships so far purchased would be honored, but at this time no more memberships were being offered.
Ridley makes smart analysis as usual, though he seems to advocate coupling one’s insurance package in the event of needing defense against the state to include both attorneys and media outreach. The centralization of defense, to have an attorney and PR representatives sourced from the same organization will make both fronts more responsible to each other than necessary. Almost all attorneys advise their clients to retain silence with the media. By ensuring activists will be set in motion in advance to bring eyes to your case, the defendant is relieved of some of the responsibility for reaching out to others in the event of an attack by the state. (more…)
Recently published was a new Ridleo chronicling a history of arrests of Russell Kanning in New Hampshire. Russell is partly responsible for the reputation of Keene area activists as civil disobedients, as he had originally moved to that area of the state as he made waves over a number of victimless offenses.
Kat and Russell in Keene, NH
The video also features footage from Michael Fisher’s illegal manicuring event from 2005 in Concord. The headline-generating fingernail beautification by a Free State Project participant is referred to by Ridley as a “textbook act of civil disobedience”.
Russell currently faces federal chalking-related charges in Waco, Texas. Though he also had chalking charges from Concord, New Hampshire, Kat Kanning reports that the NH charges were dropped because, “[the] NH court said they thought he could be prosecuted adequately in TX, so they dismissed their charges.” Authorities may have prevented Russell’s legal adventures from taking him back to NH also because he would attract more supporters while in the Shire.
Jan 6 2013: Ridley has released a follow-up video.
Yesterday I called in to Keene’s open-phones local news show, Talkback, after the main host, Cynthia Georgina suggested jail telephone systems were too expensive. She didn’t understand why such an expense was necessary where jails are ‘supposed to be punishment’.
In the program, we were only able to touch on a few aspects of her belief, when there’s so much that could be said about that mentality. People who are not affected by jails can fail to recognize the unnecessary strain on human life created by conditions of caging. In the nation that has 25% of the world’s institutionalized inmates, it is still easy to ignore the plight of others when they are removed from sight and mind.
Because Cynthia was specifying jails, she was endorsing punishment of people held for either misdemeanor convictions (facing a penalty of under a year of incarceration) or those being detained pending trial. Detention pending trial could simply mean one is too poor to afford bail, or that they were in violation of any number of stringent bail conditions. When I brought up that New Hampshire jails are occupied by a large number of individuals convicted of driving infractions, Cynthia was surprised, unaware of the mandatory minimum prison sentence written into state law for those designated habitual offenders. (more…)
Russell arrested in NH, 2006
A report this morning by Kat Kanning relays the unfortunate news that Russell Kanning has been arrested on federal warrants on what are likely chalk related charges (or failure to pay fines related to chalking).
Suddenly alone in a truck stop in MO. We had a headlight go out. They found warrants for Waco and NH chalking incidents. Background checks hadn’t found the warrants, so Russell thought they’d been dropped. Too late at night for me to talk to anyone. They say there’s no bond, they’re dragging him off to TX or NH.
Russell has been arrested and ticketed for chalking FREE BRADLEY MANNING on a retaining wall at the federal building in Concord, NH and he was arrested in Waco, TX while chalking in support of Nazry Mustakim, who was facing deportation at the time but has since won his freedom to remain in the US. Kat was the first person videorecorded being arrested on FreeConcordTV in the blog’s debut video Federal War on Chalk Begins.
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