by Ian | Oct 7, 2015 |
Portsmouth Gang Symbol
Portsmouth city councilor Brad Lown, in an article at Seacoast Online, claims the city gang, “want UBER to be here”. No, what they want is for UBER and its drivers to bow to their unnecessary regulations. They want CONTROL. They want money. He also probably doesn’t want the negative press they’ll get when the cops eventually target Christopher and anyone else brave enough to face a $500 ticket.
The Portsmouth city attorney claims they’ll begin enforcing the ordinance on UBER drivers in the, “very foreseeable near future”, whatever that means. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest in this saga.
by Ian | Sep 30, 2015 |
This summer, Portsmouth, NH regulated UBER and other ride-sharing services out of the city. UBER’s regional spokesperson described the regulations as, “Draconian” including prohibiting anyone with a misdemeanor conviction within seven years from being able to drive, among other restrictions which have nothing to do with a person’s ability to drive safely. UBER refused to jump through the arbitrary hoops, and as a result is now prohibited from operating in Portsmouth, its drivers facing fines of $500 – $1,000 per day.
In a heroic act of ongoing civil disobedience, Free State Project early mover Christopher David decided to keep driving anyway. Free Keene broke the story when it happened, and he’s since gotten some mainstream media coverage and has launched FREEUBER.org, a site encouraging Portsmouth inhabitants to take action on the issue by contacting city councilors, riding UBER, and driving for UBER. He has even posted fliers promoting his site all over downtown Portsmouth.
Now, he’s coming to speak as our Saturday night Keynote at Keenevention 2015!
Keenevention is Hallowkeene weekend, October 30th through November 1st. Tickets for the third-annual Keenevention are just $60 or BTC for the whole weekend, including the Hallowkeene costume dance party! Pre-event ticketing is limited to 100, so lock yours in now.
Stay tuned to the Keenevention blog for more speaker announcements (you can sign up for emails when the blog has new posts using the signup box in the right column). You can also follow the new Keenevention Twitter, Keenevention’s facebook page and join the official facebook event here.
by Ian | Sep 23, 2015 |
Christopher David, Heroic Illegal UBER Driver
Free Keene broke the news last week about the UBER driver and Free State Project early mover in Portsmouth who has been flagrantly violating the city’s prohibition of the innovative ride-sharing service. Christopher David has courageously stepped out into the limelight and announced to the world, and more specifically the Portsmouth city council and police that he’s continuing to give people illegal rides around the Seacoast city.
Now, mainstream media has picked up the story of Christopher’s heroic civil disobedience in this Seacoast Online story by Elizabeth Dinan. Christopher reports on his facebook that he and another activist have posted 100 flyers around downtown Portsmouth promoting his new website, FREEUBER.org that is encouraging Portsmouth’s inhabitants to contact the city council (it provides their contact info), boycott the snitch cab companies, and sign up as an UBER driver to join the ranks of the civilly disobedient!
Stay tuned here to Free Keene as this saga develops!
by Ian | Sep 18, 2015 |
![uber-app[1]](https://i0.wp.com/freekeene.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/uber-app1-300x146.jpg?resize=300%2C146)
Recently, in the supposed live free or die state, Portsmouth basically outlawed ride-sharing service, UBER. Constantly embattled by city governments in nearly every city they expand to, UBER has heroically fought for its drivers, even to the point of covering legal costs for arrests, vehicle impounds, and other legal targeting of their contractors by the government gangs. See, the taxi companies, who are mostly obedient to their state masters, tend to go running to their regulators crying about UBER, whose business model is not the same as a cab company. UBER merely connects drivers to passengers and takes a small cut for making the connections. They aren’t a cab company as traditionally defined. Cab companies generally own and maintain a fleet – UBER has no cars. Its contractor-drivers provide their own vehicle and are responsible for maintaining them.
Despite having proved to the Porstmouth city gang that their cars are insured, UBER has objected to the “draconian” background check requirement and placard requirement in order to legally do business in Portsmouth.
Christopher David is an early mover for the Free State Project living in Dover. He’s been driving for UBER for a few months in Portsmouth and Boston. Today he publicly announced his intention to commit ongoing civil disobedience and continue illegally providing transportation to willing passengers in Portsmouth. He says UBER driving isn’t his primary occupation and until recently he hasn’t been doing it much at all, but that the, “ordinance crap has gotten me pissed off enough to do it anyway”.
Christopher David, Illegal UBER Driver
Of course, the government does insane, stupid, counterproductive things all the time. This wouldn’t be the first. In fact, the city gang has its sycophants at the taxi companies assisting them as a snitch squad. The cabbies, in an act of slave-on-slave violence, will be monitoring the streets of Portsmouth and ratting out any of the fifty known UBER cars in town. In the Seacoast Online article announcing the snitch squad, Great Bay Taxi owner John Palreiro told the city gang, “All the taxi companies will be writing down license plates and we expect the Police Department to enforce”. Merle White, owner of Anchor Taxi, said in true criminal cartel fashion, “It’s time Uber does it our way, or they get out of the city.” Palreiro told Seacoast Online that all his drivers have the Uber app, so they can see where Uber drivers are located in real time. He said they’ll be taking pictures and calling the police. “We know who they are,” he said. “If the Police Department doesn’t enforce this, I’ll go ballistic.”
If targeted by police, Christopher says he won’t be pleaing out and will go to trial, “I’ll draw it out as long as I can…I don’t see myself admitting guilt to anything.”
It’s great to see civil disobedience spread to the Seacoast! Christopher is currently speaking this weekend at the 2nd annual Freecoast Festival.
Your first UBER ride is free (up to $20) if you click here and sign up.
by Ian | Aug 23, 2015 |
Free the Nipple 2015, Hampton Beach, NH
After making international headlines and despite a major facebook mistake and bad weather, approximately two-dozen ladies persevered and came out to Hampton Beach today to stand against the social stigma associated with women being topless in public.
Free State Project early mover Jessica Wardell traveled all the way from Henniker to join the topless ladies and their male supporters today and had this to say about the event, “It was lots of fun, there were about 20-30 girls participating, and I didn’t receive any negative criticism. Mostly people were curious about what was going on, and everyone that I talked to seemed to support the idea- especially when I brought up breast feeding.”
The event has already received coverage from the Daily Mail, which focused on the dozens of topless equality events taking place internationally, Reuters, Boston.com, NECN, as well as in Manchester’s Union Leader. Seacoast newspaper “Fosters” was dismissive of the event in their article, calling it “a bust” (yuk, yuk) and claiming only a dozen women came out. How many actually attended? Wardell claims 20-30 ladies in her estimate, with 40-50 additional supporters, including topless males. While more than 1,300 had claimed they were attending on the facebook event, facebook event attendance estimates are almost never close to the actual turnout. Many will indicate they are attending on facebook simply to show support for the event.
What day at the beach would be complete without sand boobies?
The ladies who set up the Hampton event, Kia Sinclair and Heidi Lilley, deserve a lot of credit for doing a great job promoting it and fielding media interviews in advance. Sadly, a major mistake was made early this morning when someone canceled the facebook event! The night prior, one of the admins posted a warning that they were going to cancel the facebook event this morning, but told people that did not mean the event was actually canceled. (Apparently, the FB event was canceled due to heavy trolling of the comments, however this could have been solved by only allowing admins to post.) Of course, only a fraction of the event attendees saw that post, so when the event was cancelled, EVERYONE on the event received a notice this morning from facebook saying the event was canceled with no explanation. This, in addition to the cold, rainy weather was likely a major contributing factor to the turnout. Two dozen topless ladies in bad weather actually seems really good, all things considered!
Organizer Kia Sinclair agreed, saying in a Free Keene-exclusive interview, “I am really happy about the turnout despite the weather. There were actually quite a few topless women around the beach at different times throughout the day. Because of the rain, a lot of women took shelter at the seashell stage. I will say that it was slightly intimidating being stared at and photographed by so many people. Its actually silly that just us being topless made so many people want to take pictures. If the weather was better I don’t think it would have been quite like that. But either way there were a lot of supporters despite the rain.”
Free State Project Early Mover Jessica Wardell, Graham Colson, and FSP Early Mover Matt Genack
Of course, all the mainstream media articles have been showing censored photos, or the ladies shot from behind, because the media are part of the problem. The social stigma against showing women topless runs deep, and mainstream media certainly won’t cross that taboo. Free Keene is not beholden to those rules. Share this article on social media at your own risk – you may get reported and banned for doing so. UPDATE: Facebook has targeted this article for censorship, so if you want to share it there, goto this link and hit “share” on it. That will share a version with a censored pic that uses Graham’s breasts to cover Jessica’s.
Congratulations and thank you to the ladies who went out today despite the weather. Stay tuned to Free Keene for the latest on topless equality. You can also join the “Free the Nipple” group for NH on facebook here.
Expected next is an as-yet-unscheduled civil disobedience event in Laconia where the city has illegally outlawed female toplessness.
Photo credits in order of appearance: Ashley Stoddard, Miranda Stoddard, Andrew Wardell
by Ian | May 23, 2015 |
Newer Mover, James Davis
Newer mover James Davis wrote an excellent piece for Freecoast.org recently that describes the amazing experience he and his family have had since moving here to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project. It’s a rare glimpse into the world of liberty families who move here quietly and whose activism doesn’t garner media attention:
The past week on the Free Coast reminded me exactly why moving to New Hampshire was the best thing our family ever could have done.
Being a member of the liberty movement can be discouraging at times. It’s easy to wonder if the whole thing is pointless. The looming specter of an ever-growing state combined with the ongoing “drama” perpetuated by the movement’s most vocal members on social media can be downright dreary.
But on the ground here in New Hampshire? It’s a different case all together.
Last Sunday, six liberty loving families got together on one of the many stunning beaches of New Hampshire for an impromptu birthday celebration. Parents universally treated their children with dignity, and were able to trust that everyone involved understood that people are best when left to be free. Five of these families were free state project movers – people so dedicated to finding a like-minded community that they picked up and moved from all over the US to live near one another and raise their children with others who share their values.
While effecting long term change here in New Hampshire is a goal of everyone involved in the Free State Project, it’s not the only goal by which we measure success. First, and perhaps most important, we measure success by how much freedom and fulfillment we’re finding during our one shot here on Earth. If you ever find yourself wondering why you can’t find other liberty-minded families in your area, or feeling concerned that the people in your child’s neighborhood or school are trying to convince them that their parents are crazy, why wouldn’t you just move to New Hampshire and help us create the liberty community we all dream of being a part of? (more…)
