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!
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
UBER’s app continues to work in Portsmouth and Christopher reports that his first illegal customer was an older gentleman who was elated to be participating in civil disobedience and had several not-so-nice things to say about Portsmouth city council. In an interview exclusive to Free Keene, Christopher said his user rating is 4.85, which puts him in the top 10% of drivers in the region. He says that because of his excellent rating, “the idea of Portsmouth police chasing me down because the city council thinks they need to protect residents from me is insane”.
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.
Derrick’s courage has set the example for countless people and has inspired multiple people to move to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project. Any FSP event we attend, it’s almost a guarantee Derrick and/or I will be approached and thanked for making the movie. Of course, it wouldn’t have been possible without the editing talents of Beau Davis, who has gone on to launch his own media management and production house, Vibrant.Works.
I created this video in the hope that viewers learn how they can gain some accountability for police misconduct. Using this incident to communicate the effectiveness of peaceful, principled tactics is fitting, as today is the three year anniversary of the theatrical release of the epic Derrick J’s Victimless Crime Spree.
To be clear, according to the NY state gang’s own website, businesses who accept bitcoin for payment for product and service do not need to get a bitlicense, but if customers can’t get bitcoin because NY has made it insanely difficult to buy and sell bitcoin, what good is it to accept them?
New York is doing their best to strangle the nascent bitcoin marketplace before it gets out of the cradle. Now only the most obedient and wealthy companies will be able to buy and sell bitcoin in New York. It’s protectionism all the way, and it’s likely not going to get any better for the little guy.
In contrast, New Hampshire has somme of the biggest bitcoiners in the world that are participants in the Free State Project and have moved or will be moving here once the project reaches its goal of 20,000. The FSP even put up a special page on their website touting some of the reasons why New Hampshire is a destination for the bitcoin and liberty-loving community.
No one should really be surprised about the bitcoin crackdown in New York. They call it the Empire State for a reason. The Mercatus Center annual study on the freedom of the fifty states continues to rank New York at #50, below the awful California at #49.
Longtime readers of Free Keene remember the controversial and short-lived “Topless Tuesdays” events from 2010. Many critics in the area still cite it as something they didn’t like that liberty activists have done. It’s relevant to point out that none of the females who participated in that were Free State Project participants. They were all townies.
Now, five years later, the topless equality movement has come again to New Hampshire, this time with over 1,100 saying (on Facebook) they will be attending “Free the Nipple” at Hampton Beach. (Who knows what the actual turnout will be.) The event is slated for all-day on Sunday 8/23. There is no specific meeting time or location besides Hampton Beach. This is an interesting approach and one of the event organizers comments on why on their facebook page:
“Even though there is no meeting spot, I have a feeling we will notice each other and make some new friends. I plan on walking around and I’ll gladly introduce myself, but I want to enjoy the beach as much as all of you! We don’t need a giant gathering or “spectacle.” Our goal is to just be normal about it. We want to show everyone that the breast and nipple can be seen without all hell breaking loose, traumatizing kids, giving old men heart attacks, or causing the apocalypse.”
Things are definitely getting interesting. Stay tuned to Free Keene for the latest on this social change in New Hampshire. Though people are legally free to be topless, there’s a large social stigma that needs to be broken. Thanks to the courageous ladies who will be participating in Sunday’s event, and especially to those who will eventually risk arrest in Laconia at an unknown date in the future.