It was almost 8:00am, and I did not have a ticket to enter the expansive, barricaded area of Elm Street and other roads surrounding Veterans Park. Bulldozers and other large construction machines formed a fortification of the streets to vehicles, and metal barricades monitored by suits and badges kept out pedestrians. The gates were slated to begin receiving unarmed civilians on foot at 9:00am. I was unsure if I had missed my opportunity to get a ticket when I received a text message. “Bailing”, it said, “Obama wont be there til noon”.
After a brief telephone conversation, I had learned that a group of occupiers, who had planned to mic check the president, would be ditching their plans to slave for the empire. Almost all willing participants had a taxpaying job that they could not afford to miss at some point later in the day. Many had woken at 5:30 to get tickets from the Radisson at 6:00am, tickets which they would not be able to use with the president not scheduled to speak until after noon. The actual timeframe of events was not revealed until that morning. “The occupy movement has been destroyed by jobs”, one activist joked. (more…)
Here’s additional content from Chalk the Police day in Keene. A remix of yesterday’s video with Keene parks director Andrew Bohannon is below, along with numerous photos.
I have gotten so used to having my camera groped at by authoritative busybodies that I am beginning to feel as though I should question my relative comfort with it. The first article featured on this blog was about a police officer who couldn’t keep his hands off of my phone when it was acting as an audio streaming device. Since then, I’ve had a previous camera clutched so firmly that it automatically powered off, in an escapade that traveled the blogosphere during the first annual lemonade freedom day. My Canon Vixia’s design is much more rugged and durable than the previous Nikon Coolpix I used to utilize for Free Concord videos. And I appreciate the upgraded zoom capabilities and high definition 16:9 widescreen frame. Today, as I celebrated International Chalk the Police day with others, my camera withstained a push from a Keene city parks and recreation director Andrew Bohannon, as he fumbled to conceal his identity from chalkers. After activists had covered most of the central square park in liberty oriented slogans and quotes, a man driving around the rotary yelled from his vehicle at the chalkers to stop. Myself and others waved and invited the person to join us for Chalk the Police day. Moments later, I noticed a man with a phone who had walked up onto the square and begun speaking with people, phone in hand, and an identification swinging from his neck. (more…)
Today I went with the Adam Vs The Man crew to Washington, D.C. (Mordor). I went in order to take video of a rally. Adam Kokesh went to speak on a megaphone and help MC the event. He led a march down from the Treasury Building to the Federal Reserve, where about 60 people marched and chanted, “END THE FED, END THE DEBT, END THE WARS.” Upon arrival at the Federal Reserve building, activists lined up to face the building along its front and symbolically turned their backs in an “about face.” Some activists burned dollar bills in front of the building as security guards watched, hopelessly outnumbered by a crowd of peaceful people armed to the teeth with video cameras.
Here’s some video of a speech I gave about living freer by moving to the Shire today (From Fr33manTV):
John Cho and Kal Penn, known the world over as Harold and Kumar, spent yesterday and today touring the state’s colleges on behalf of the Obama reelection campaign. Of the eight stops on the two day tour, Keene was the only location in which the duo appeared together.
Harold and Kumar are an awkward choice for the young face of the Obama campaign. Their characters are a target of forces within the Obama administration which the president has done little to address. Campaigning in 2008, he had said that medicinal cannabis enforcement would be the lowest priority of his law enforcement. Under Obama, the United States has seen an increase in raids of medicinal cannabis clinics as well as increased enforcement against undocumented immigrants. While many expected change, the result was a slightly worse version of the same. (more…)
Harold and Kumar, the unoriginal Cheech and Chong parody/spinoff team is traveling around New Hampshire colleges tomorrow to promote the Obama campaign, and also to trumpet voting in general. Despite supposedly representing a cannabis consuming culture through their films, Harold and Kumar are fictional characters played by actors who share little in common with the everyman their roles embody. According to Msnbc, the pair have a packed schedule today. They will appear individually at three colleges by 2:15 and will make a joint appearance at Keene State College. Below are chalkings on Wincester Street put out to greet the actor guests.
