It’s been a couple of weeks since the first freedom to assemble event at the New Hampshire state house garnered fifteen protestors. This week I received a flyer graphic that has been shared on social media by an organization called “Health Freedom NH” who has announced they will be holding an event to protest the prison-like lockdowns under which the good people of New Hampshire have been suffering for weeks.
According to the flyer and the event on Facebook, the gathering is taking place at the New Hampshire state house in Concord from noon to 2pm this Saturday the 18th of April.
Bring your signs, bring your friends who aren’t scared, and stand up for freedom. It’s your right to take a risk, your right to assemble, and your right to run your business how you want. See you there!
Over a Dozen Heroically Attended the Right to Assemble Event Today, April 1st in Concord
Donning masks from “V for Vendetta”, more than a dozen activists gathered at the New Hampshire state house in Concord today in violation of “HIS EXCELLENCY” governor Chris Sununu’s “order” banning assembly of over ten people. Not only did the police who passed by the event today use their discretion and ignore the event, one Concord police officer even waved to the group, suggesting that he also supported the human right to assemble. While responses from passing motorists varied, the majority were positive, including thumbs-ups, honks, and waves. Negative responses included middle fingers, shaking heads, a thumbs-down, and verbal “quarantine shaming”. Of course, any protest for any topic always elicits negative responses and this one was not unusual.
Curiously, the only media who bothered to attend was an independent videographer who interviewed me and NH republican primary challenger to the incumbent governor Sununu, “Nobody“. After standing by Main Street for over an hour holding signs like, “Social Distancing is Fear, Not Love” and “Assembly is a Human Right”, we took a group photo by the statue of General John Stark. Stark is known for creating the saying from which New Hampshire selected its state motto:
Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst Of Evils.
Stark is likely rolling in his grave now with Sununu following obediently along with other tyrannical state governors and issuing approximately two dozen emergency orders in the last few weeks, destroying the freedom to do business and the freedom to assemble. While Sununu has not gone as far as some of his counterparts, he is nonetheless presiding over a tremendous increase in authoritarianism as well as economic destruction.
Protestors hold signs and socialize next to Concord’s Main Street.
Thankfully, Sununu won’t be unchallenged in this year’s election. “Nobody” of Keene has thrown his hat into the ring as Sununu’s thus-far lone republican primary challenger for governor. Here’s a recent Boston Globe story that features Nobody and mentioned today’s event at the state house.
Activists joined Nobody from across New Hampshire and even as far away as Western Massachusetts to hold signs and violate “social distancing” rules that are driving people nationwide to suicide from lack of human contact and job losses. Recent news has shown suicide hotline calls are well above normal levels in many places across the United States.
There may indeed be a nasty virus out there. How much worse it is than the flu, which kills tens of thousands in the United States each year, remains to be seen. Fearmongering media and politicians benefit when they ramp up fear in the population. However, the decision on how to handle possible risks in life should be up to the individual, not lying, power-seeking politicians and bureaucrats. Freedom is better than safety or the illusion of safety, especially when the cost is your liberty. Once the government goons take more freedom, don’t expect to ever get it back.
That said, many motorists in Concord seem to be on the side of freedom, and there were a surprising amount of people on the roads, getting life done. Kudos to the police for ignoring the peaceful event. The next Nobody-led assembly event in Concord is the annual 4:20 cannabis smoke out on 4/20, and for the only time – in 2020. Hope to see you there! Nobody’s campaign website is ElectNobody.com.
Mayoral Candidate Nobody and City Council Candidates Ian Freeman and Robert Call toke up at Central Square in 2019.
Yesterday, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu announced that a “stay-at-home” order would be going into effect at 11:59pm tonight. As though he hadn’t already damaged New Hampshire businesses and economy with his previous tyrannical orders, this one instructs all “non-essential” businesses to close, putting even more people out of work.
Sununu claimed on his facebook post announcing the “order” that disrupting Granite Stater’s daily lives is only done in the greatest of emergencies. Really? This Coronavirus thing isn’t even as bad as the flu yet – even if you go by the government numbers, which of course are in no way trustworthy.
What is happening is government goons are grabbing power as quickly and as firmly as they can, and they are using fear to do it. It’s the same old scam, but this time they are going farther than ever. Though Sununu hasn’t gone as far or as hard as New York, he’s made it clear that “Live Free or Die” is just an empty slogan. Sadly, the fearmongering works, and many people are begging to be told what to do under the auspices of safety.
Tonight, Keene-area libertarians will be commiserating and protesting our lost freedoms, by gathering in Central Square at 12:01am, after Sununu’s “order” goes into effect. We will be bringing back a classic event from about a decade ago called “Keene Nightcap”, where participants are encouraged to bring a mind-altering substance to enjoy in the company of others.
Though Sununu doesn’t deserve much credit for his tyrannical moves, at least there are a couple of loopholes in the stay-at-home “order”, which may actually make such a gathering allowed, so long as people practice so-called “social distancing”. That said, it sure would be outrageous for police to arrest people who voluntarily choose to hug each other. If you’re not scared, come on out and join us tonight at midnight!
New Hampshire’s Longest Running Regular Libertarian Social Meetup
The last couple of weeks have been nuts. We’ve seen authoritarianism rising globally at a rapid clip, using health as the excuse and scaring people into total obedience and isolation. It’s tragic. In New Hampshire and several other states, restaurants and bars have been told they aren’t allowed to serve customers inside their establishments with the exception of take out and delivery. Other businesses are having people work from home and “social distancing” has been put in place as the new normal. In other cases, like California, total lockdowns are now in place. In NH, an “emergency order” was issued by the state governor, Chris Sununu, who – no joke – is actually referred to as “HIS EXCELLENCY” in the order which purportedly bans any gathering of over fifty people.
It’s an outrageous order and contrary to a basic right of humans, which is the right to assemble. It’s also a violation of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In order for many humans to be happy, they need to be around other people. We are a social animal. Now the people calling themselves “the state” or “the government” have decided to threaten everyone with violence if they don’t do as they are told and OBEY – for their own good, of course.
Normally, libertarians are skeptical of the things they are told by government goons, however we’ve seen yet another schism in the movement in the last few weeks over this Coronavirus scare. Apparently if an authoritarian puts on a lab coat then many libertarians will fall under their spell.
I don’t know if Coronavirus is the threat the government and media are making it out to be. I do know this, however:
1. Politicians and bureaucrats lie. There’s no reason to believe they are telling the truth now. There is a long history of governments manufacturing a crisis and spreading fear in order to attain more power. We saw this in a big way prior to Coronavirus in the hysterical paranoia fostered by the state after 9/11. As a result we saw the rise of “Homeland Security” and the further elimination of freedom. The response to Coronavirus is even worse. In some cases like San Francisco people are under total lockdowns. They also use the term “lockdown” in prison.
2. Media benefits when it propagates fear. “If it bleeds, it leads!” News is a business. They have advertisers, so the more people they can get to tune in, the more valuable the ad space. If people are in a state of fear, they are more likely to hang on through that next commercial break. Plus, mainstream news sources depend on government for its press releases and usually incorporate them, verbatim, into their on-air copy. Though in theory their job is to expose political corruption, if they are too good at this, the state agents will not talk to them any longer and then they won’t get “the scoop”, so any critique of government from mainstream media is usually highly limited.
3. Whenever government takes more freedoms, it doesn’t cede that ground back to liberty after the “crisis” has ended.
Keene Bitcoin Meetup
Government gangsters say it and the media propagates it. As a result, people are scared to death of another iteration of the flu that as of this writing, has infected just over 250,000 people globally – according to numbers provided BY THE STATE. Some libertarians believe the governments are downplaying the numbers to keep people calm. Others believe the state agents are inflating the numbers to scare people more. Who knows what the truth is.
I do know this, people are obedient and more than willing to do what they are ordered by people wearing fancy hats, uniforms, and lab coats. They are easily frightened into giving up their freedoms, all for the promise that they’ll be able to continue to suck air.
However, what is the point of living if you can’t make your own choices?
If people across New Hampshire don’t stand up and take back their liberties, then we no longer deserve the “live free or die” slogan. To that end, in spite of Sununu’s order, the longest-running weekly social gathering of libertarians in New Hampshire, “Social Sundays” will continue. Previously held at Local Burger on Main St, it has moved to the Bitcoin Embassy NH located at 661 Marlboro St. in Keene. The new start time is now 5pm. Attend at your own risk and bring your own food and drink. If the event gets to over 51 people a special prize will be awarded. No cops allowed.
One year later from their threats against a local Asian cuisine restaurant, I’ve got a Christmas gift for the City of Keene gang – the video they didn’t want you to see where multi-term mayor Kendall Lane reveals his racist view about New Hampshire’s low crime rate:
The clip is from a just-released documentary called “Young Guns“, from a Keene State College student, Reece Dunn who was visiting from the UK. Anonymous sources inside the college informed me that when this video premiered at the Monadnock Film Festival in 2018, there was immediate action from the people calling themselves “the City of Keene” to squash it inside the college. However, the college couldn’t do much as Dunn had already left and returned back to the UK. Dunn ultimately decided to release his student film publicly on YouTube this holiday season. The short documentary is about a young man from a total gun prohibition state exploring a place where there is very little restriction on gun ownership.
In the process, Dunn ended up talking to Lane about growing up with the New Hampshire gun culture and ultimately asks Lane why New Hampshire’s violent crime rate is so low. Lane says, “I have theories about why New Hampshire is particularly safe…” then pauses a while before stuttering and stumbling and then finally says, “part of the reason New Hampshire is so safe is because quite honestly it, the state is 98% white. The state is very homogeneous. There’s not a lot of diversity in New Hampshire.”
Only advocates of peace are allowed to blog at FreeKeene.com
It’s a shocking statement from the same mayor who gave a speech at an anti-racism candlelight vigil in late August of 2017 after Keene resident Christopher Cantwell made international news for being a leader of the Charlottesville, Virgina white nationalist “Unite the Right” protests.
Lane’s ridiculous statement in Dunn’s documentary can be interpreted in a couple of different ways. He could believe that white people are more peaceful than people of other skin colors or he could believe that people of different races living nearby each other and mixing together leads to more violence. Whatever the interpretation, the beliefs he expressed sound a lot like Chris Cantwell’s white nationalist views that Lane appeared to speak against just two years ago.
Lane is wrong for the same reasons Cantwell is wrong. The racists can drag up their statistics and studies all they want to prove their claims about various groups of people, but to libertarians it is the individual who matters. Individuals from different parts of the country and world come here regardless of skin color, perhaps because they value the freedom they can have here. In particular, the freedom to defend one’s self, family, and community with whatever weapons one chooses.
New Hampshire attracts people who value freedom and the freedom to self-defense without having to beg for a government permission slip first is the reason we have more peace and dramatically less violence than other places. Even though New Hampshire has a state gang, they are less oppressive than other states in the area of gun ownership, and so we have less violent crime as a result.
Lane chose to not run for re-election this year and will end his term in January when he’ll be replaced by mayor-elect George Hansel. Hopefully this video will end any chances of Lane trying to run for other political offices. Meanwhile, Lane should stop listening to Chris Cantwell’s radio show and reconsider his dated, collectivist, racist views.
In an email they sent to the Free Keene account, YouTube claimed they removed the video citing their “community guidelines”:
the
Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don’t allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group.
Of course, this did not happen in our debate. Chris was his usual nasty racist self, but the point was to counter him with a strong opposing view. Rich did a great job of defeating Chris’s pro-hate, pro-state views, and really allowing Chris to reveal just how un-libertarian he has become over the years.
That video link is through the LBRY-related site, Spee.ch, but in case that site goes down, the video should always be available directly through LBRY here.
LBRY.io – Content Freedom
LBRY is a decentralized blockchain-based media protocol that is protecting the internet from censorship. Kudos to the LBRY crew. Please visit their site to learn more and get involved. In fact, a little further digging reveals LBRY has publicly announced their YouTube channel backup program! If you know a YouTube creator who might appreciate having their videos archived permanently to the blockchain, send them to this link: https://lbry.com/youtube
With technology like LBRY growing and getting better and better, perhaps we’re at the beginning of the end of the mega tech corporations’ stranglehold over speech online.
In case you were wondering, YouTube did not provide any link in their email that would allow their decision to be appealed.
It’s been a couple of weeks since the first freedom to assemble event at the New Hampshire state house garnered fifteen protestors. This week I received a flyer graphic that has been shared on social media by an organization called “Health Freedom NH” who has announced they will be holding an event to protest the prison-like lockdowns under which the good people of New Hampshire have been suffering for weeks.
