Towards the end of last week’s Saturday morning episode of the live local call-in radio program SoundOff, a listener raised the issue of Keene parking rate and fine increases. The caller expressed discontent that parking would become more expensive and from his perspective, the rate hikes were enough to disincentivize him from choosing to frequent downtown businesses. The necessity of the rate hike is kicked around for several minutes by host Chris Cotes and guest host Dale Pregent, and the efforts of Robin Hood of Keene are mentioned in passing. Towards the end of the segment, Dale makes an underhanded comment about the parking enforcers, referring to one of the workers as a ‘parking maid’ while suggesting that there previously had been allegations of harassment of city employees by city officials. The audio has been specially set to b-roll footage of the AKPF van occupying various parking spaces throughout the city.
Today there was a rally in Nashua to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. They thought it would be a quick, one-sided media circus to portray the wage hike as an issue with unanimous consent. They thought wrong.
I ventured down to Nashua with a party of counter-protesters including Free Keene bloggers Rob Mathias and Wendy French to make sure both sides of the issue were accurately represented. What we found was a bus full of big government advocates completely unprepared for a turnout of actual concerned citizens.
Our impromptu happy little gaggle of activists made up a full quarter to third of those in attendance, and this made the rest, who had planned on a rally without dissent, visibly uncomfortable. Once the press conference was over we were swarmed by reporters itching to catch the underrepresented other side of the story. One of them couldn’t believe we were just concerned citizens and not “with someone.”
We also ran into a friendly local who worked nearby and stopped in to have his voice heard. He was happy to see that he wasn’t alone in fighting for liberty in the Granite State.
It’s important to note that when it comes to making a difference, 90% of the battle is just showing up. The encroachment of the state relies on its opponents just staying home and not getting involved. Make the time, show up, and make a difference for liberty.
Free Keene welcomes Joël Valenzuela as our newest blogger! Joël is one of the prime content creators in Manchester and he joins existing Manch bloggers Robert Mathias, JJ Schelessinger, and William Kostric to help feature some of the great activism happening there that has gone woefully unreported. Here’s his bio from the Bloggers page:
Joël moved to New Hampshire for the Free State Project in September of 2013 after making a promise to always be on the front lines of liberty. He runs The Desert Lynx blog and writes for numerous other publications. Valenzuela’s undergraduate education is in Statesmanship, and his postgraduate in Global Affairs. He worked for over a decade in public policy for such organizations as the Goldwater Institute, the Alliance for School Choice, the Cato Institute, the Leadership Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and the Western Center for Journalism. When not running The Desert Lynx, Valenzuela is a full-time martial arts instructor.
Another exemplary installment of the AKPF #1 series this week features more quality content from the 2014 New Hampshire Liberty Forum. Opening with a well produced interview compilation captured by recent Chicago-area transplant Rob Mathias, we get insight into the passions and motivations of various activists around New Hampshire and beyond. The segment is followed up by a freshly cut edition of the Nashua duck vigil held on the morning of Sunday, February 23. Finishing out the show are excerpts from a public declaration by Garret Ean at the DPRK Central sub-Committee hearing on a proposal to increase AKPF rates, fees, and fines by hefty portions. Another locally produced CheshireTV program, Black Sheep Rising, discusses the increase proposals, as well as reactive response in a portion of their most recent episode.
1. 00:10 Declaration of the people (Liberty Forum compilation)
2. 15:46 Nashua Lost Ducks Candlelight Vigil Memorial Service
3. 27:20 Questioning the parking commissioner on proposed increases against DPRK civilians (taxation/penalization/criminalization/victimization)
On the most recently released episode of the the after-hours local access program Black Sheep Rising, changes to the schedules of parking fees and fines for the city of Keene were addressed in the first hour. Extracted for the AKPF audience and published to the Aqua Keene channel, in this under five minute segment, viewers learn of proposed changes to boost short term rates by fifty percent. The figures were inaccurately represented in the initial broadcast as not having been divisible except via quarter dollars, but this specially edited excerpt corrects the mathematical errors. To see the full episode, check out the uncensored installment at BlackSheepRising.com.
On the morning of March 20th, 2014, Joe “Liberty Carrots,” Nemi Jones, Riaz Kahan and I went to the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport to support the First and SecondAmendments to the United States Constitution. Joe was the creative star of this activism effort, stopped multiple times by airport security and threatened with arrest for handing out free copies of the monthly liberty newspaper FPPNews from Free Press Publications.
No airport security agents or police questioned the fact that Joe was open-carrying a rifle. They did, however, take great issue with our exercise of free speech and expression:
Towards the end of last week’s Saturday morning episode of the live local call-in radio program SoundOff, a listener raised the issue of Keene parking rate and fine increases. The caller expressed discontent that parking would become more expensive and from his perspective, the rate hikes were enough to disincentivize him from choosing to frequent downtown businesses. The necessity of the rate hike is kicked around for several minutes by host Chris Cotes and guest host Dale Pregent, and the efforts of Robin Hood of Keene are mentioned in passing. Towards the end of the segment, Dale makes an underhanded comment about the parking enforcers, referring to one of the workers as a ‘parking maid’ while suggesting that there previously had been allegations of harassment of city employees by city officials. The audio has been specially set to b-roll footage of the AKPF van occupying various parking spaces throughout the city.
uncomfortable. Once the press conference was over we were swarmed by reporters itching to catch the underrepresented other side of the story. One of them couldn’t believe we were just concerned citizens and not “with someone.”
