Someone at the NH State Police did me a big favor and sent out a press release about my arrest. As a result, WMUR has published a quick blurb and tweeted and is working on a larger story, a Union Leader reporter has called for an interview (UPDATE: Here’s the UL report.), and the Concord Patch has already scooped the mainstream news with some good coverage!
Thanks for the free press, NH State Police! You’ve managed to make yourselves look really petty and this also seems to be highly political. Or, do you treat everyone like this over paperwork errors?
Here’s the release, which wrongfully misinforms readers that I had obtained multiple identifications from the DMV. At no point did I have more than one ID from New Hampshire: (more…)
In video shot this morning, Keene District Court’s Judge Edward J Burke tells Cop Block Radio‘s Eric Freerock that he’ll accept his thirty-one community service hours as certified by the Shire Free Church. (He volunteered to record hours of panels and speeches at a recent event.) However, Burke warns Freerock that one is not supposed to do community service for agencies with which one is affiliated. That makes no sense. Why wouldn’t one be able to do community service for an agency one has already supported previously?
If one has worked previously at say, the Community Kitchen, does that mean one is “affiliated” and cannot perform community service hours there? Or does “affiliated” mean that one is on a board of directors of said organization? That is not made clear during this hearing, and the community service order that courts issue to defendants says nothing about a prohibition of affiliation with an agency. Regardless, Burke accepts the hours. Case closed.
For the second Monday in three weeks, anti-Robin Hood proponents have issued a denunciatory printout, distributing the flier to car windshields around the downtown portions of Keene. This week’s flier is less profane than the last, which included the ‘f’ word uncensored. Perhaps in response to negative feedback, the flier now bowdlerizes the language with asterisks and includes seldom accurate information listed sequentially following pronouncements declaring the content, ‘Fact’.
One goal of the flier’s author seems to be consciousness raising directed at the home address of myself (Garret) and at least one other Free Keene blogger. I can’t imagine too many of the recipients of the flier will be delighted to read what amounts to a distasteful rant posturing as though it were a serious critique of community activists. In all honesty, could one ask for a more useful opposition?
Last month, myself and Darryl, as ministers of the Shire Free Church, contributed a check in the amount of over $1,400 to the “City of Keene” for services we value, that are not coercive in nature, such as road maintenance. We specifically left out of the check the amount of money the city was demanding for the government school system.
Instead of sending money to a system based on coercion of our peaceful neighbors, we have chosen to send $1,000 instead to a peaceful school that does business by consent, the Monadnock Waldorf School. People have asked how schools can be funded without the state – it’s easy. One method is to pick the school(s) you like and send them the money the state system would have otherwise taken from you. Let the market decide how money should be distributed, not centralized bureaucracy that gets their funding by threat of stealing homes.
This is not a property tax revolt. Churches and their parsonages are not supposed to pay property tax, even under the state’s system. The city people sent a year-end property tax bill to the home I used to own that I donated this summer to the Shire Free Church, and we used the amount of money demanded on that bill as suggested amounts to calculate what we would actually give for the community services we value.
Whether the people calling themselves “the City of Keene” will recognize the Shire Free Church’s freedom of religion and cease sending property tax bills to the church’s parsonage remains to be seen. We delivered their exemption form (the BTLA-9) to the city assessor this week, as a courtesy, not because we feel the church is in any way obligated to the rules of their coercive system. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest.
Yesterday, Darryl W. Perry and I went and paid a visit to the “City of Keene” building and cut them a check for valued services provided, but forbade them from using the money to aggress against peaceful people. Here is a video Darryl shot just after the check was delivered to “the City”:
To our neighbors calling themselves the “City of Keene”:
Greetings! This letter is in response to the letter sent to us on 2013-09-19 by Daniel J. Langille, “City Assessor”. In his letter, Mr. Langille references your society’s statutes (RSAs) and seems to suggest that they somehow apply to the Shire Free Church. The Shire Free Church is not part of your society. Your society is based on coercion, and as a peace church, we cannot be a part of a group that uses coercion against peaceful people. (more…)
Someone at the NH State Police did me a big favor and sent out a press release about my arrest. As a result, WMUR has published a quick blurb and tweeted and is working on a larger story, a Union Leader reporter has called for an interview (UPDATE: Here’s the UL report.), and the Concord Patch has already scooped the mainstream news with some good coverage!
