On Thursday evening, a very large crowd turned out to speak to the city council’s FOP committee on a proposed resolution to make Keene a “sanctuary city”. I’m happy to say that not a single police state xenophobe spoke during the hearing. Every speaker was pro-immigrant. Here’s video of the entire hearing:
Earlier this year, Cheshire County Sheriff Eli Rivera made headlines by announcing his policy to not assist the federal government with immigration enforcement activities targeting peaceful migrants. That made Cheshire county into NH’s only “sanctuary county”.
The resolution is well-intended and everyone in the packed council chambers supported it, but it doesn’t go far enough. First, it allows for Keene police to assist the federal immigration enforcement if they merely have a warrant, which aren’t hard for police to get with rubber-stamp courts. Second, the city’s new manager, Elizabeth Dragon, is claiming the city government can’t tell police what to do, per some state statute. That’s not exactly the whole truth, since the council is able to pass certain ordinances that the police are directed to enforce. While they may not legally be able to tell a police chief what not to enforce, they certainly have the ability to have the city manager fire anti-immigrant police, don’t they? Perhaps there are union protections in place to make that difficult, I don’t know.
MALIC Center Imam Will Coley Speaks to the Committee
According to the Keene Sentinel, new Keene police chief Steven Russo has not specifically commented on the resolution’s proposals, though the group behind the proposal, KIRP, has said they’ve had a positive meeting with him.
At Thursday evening’s FOP meeting, after 100% support from the speakers there and many rounds of applause for those who spoke, the councilors on the committee voted 5-0 to give more time to the issue, specifically asking city staff to meet with KIRP and finalize the language of the proposed resolution.
I’m happy to announce that in the last two weeks not only did we exceed the goal, but also the total number of contributors increased over 40% to over 130. The repairs and upgrades of the house in question that will become the Masjid al Latiff and Interfaith Community Center are ongoing and being covered by both the Shire Free Church and the MALIC Center together. Due to the additional work required, Will has bumped up the goal of his fundraiser to $15,000. While he’ll certainly accept donations in US Dollars, he’s hoping to finish out the fundraiser with cryptocurrencies and become the first mosque in the world to open with half their budget consisting of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Based on our research, it may be the first publicly known bitcoin-accepting mosque in the world. If you know of another, please post in the comments.
Keene’s Bitcoin Community is Front Page News!
“We don’t want to feed the war machine in any way” – Will Coley
Will explained in an interview for Free Keene, that as a peace-oriented religion, using bitcoin is a great way to avoid feeding the violent federal government, since cryptocurrencies decentralize the power of money into the people’s hands. Current bitcoin donations to the fundraiser have gone towards electronics purchases for running live video from the mosque. Soon, bitcoin will be spent on contractors for upcoming improvements to the property. Will describes Keene as a “bitcoin community” and says that he loves how easy it is to spend bitcoin in Keene. (Keene is the as-yet-undisputed number one city in the world for bitcoin-accepting businesses per capita.)
Thus far in the fundraiser Will has received over one bitcoin and some DASH and ether, totaling around $5,000 in cryptocurrencies. Should you wish to give, the bitcoin donation address is 14eFNWDcAhNeT4HPwd7ps2CcAAz7u68ABP
Stay tuned here to Free Keene for more on the MALIC Center’s upcoming launch. There’s no date set at the moment.
On September 27, Mayor Kendall Lane and Robert Call faced off in a Mayoral Debate hosted by the Keene Liberty Alliance, moderated by Darryl W. Perry.
This debate will air multiple times on Cheshire TV channel 8 before the November 7 general election.
Multiple full truckloads of garbage and junk were removed this week, totaling several hundred dollars in dump fees.
It’s been a crazy week, but major progress has been made turning a house that was trashed by its previous “libertarian” tenants into NH’s first full-time mosque. The Masjid al Latiff and Interfaith Community Center (MALIC Center) is Will Coley‘s vision that is becoming a reality, thanks to an interfaith group of people who have over the last week been removing junk, cleaning up a unspeakably disgusting mess, repairing damage to the home, painting, removing trees, and more. Whether Muslim, Christian, Panentheist, or even agnostic or atheist, it’s been awesome to see that the MALIC Center is already creating an interfaith community despite not having officially opened its doors.
When Will, who will be the future mosque’s Imam and caretaker, approached the Shire Free Church about property availability in Keene for a mosque, I’d have been excited about just that opportunity to help him with that idea, but his vision was much bigger than that. In addition to its full-time mosque function, as an interfaith community center, the MALIC Center will also be usable by other smaller area religions looking for a house of worship, like the Quakers. Plus, Will plans to operate a homeless warming center in the colder months.
As the Shire Free Church is an interfaith peace church, the MALIC Center vision dovetails perfectly with the mission of the Church. It’s an honor to have the opportunity to assist with this by both donating the property in question on behalf of the Church and helping clean it up. Thankfully we don’t have to do it all alone, as it’s a big job. We’ve had multiple libertarian community members from across the state come to help us including a mayoral candidate in Keene, Bob Call who joined us early on to help haul out the initial junk and trash, and Libertarian candidate for governor in NH for 2018, Jilletta Jarvis who today was helping scrub the floors.
The interfaith cleanup crew has included Christians working alongside Muslims, and others!
We’ve made great progress, as the video below documents, but one of the challenges beyond the cleanup effort itself has been fundraising. Will and his family have raised nearly 50% of their $11,000 goal at crowdfunding site LaunchGood.com and have made the move on faith despite not having reached their goal.
In order to assist further, the Shire Free Church is going to match donations from now until the $11,000 goal is reached! The fundraiser as of now has $5,256 raised by 93 contributors. Only six days remain. If you donate $10, the Church will double it to $20. If you donate $50, the Church will double that to $100, and so on. Please take a moment and give here at Launchgood. (Bitcoin and Litecoin donation QR codes are on the Launchgood page too!)
Wow, what an incredible day. It began at noon, when a man who had walked in weeks prior to buy his first bitcoin, returned to spend some on a 3D-printer kit to build with his son. Then, nationally-syndicated radio hosts Ian Freeman, Mark Edge, and Darryl W. Perry arrived and set up microphones to record an episode of their show Free Talk Live. Finally, we all headed over to the Seacoast Repertory Theatre for the 5-year Anniversary Screening of Victimless Crime Spree!
Here’s what you missed:
Broadcasting From the Free State Bitcoin Shoppe’s Grand Opening in Portsmouth, NH :: Operating the Store :: Is Bitcoin the Best? :: Bitcoin and Banks :: World Famous Bitcoin Tour :: Derrick J’s Favorite Customer Stories :: Joel Valenzuela from Dash Force News Joins Us :: Cryptocurrency Acceptance in Other Countries :: Bitcoin Vending Machine :: Victimless Crime Spree Fifth Anniversary
