This year’s fifth of November celebration in front of the state house drew a larger and more motivated crowd than last year. After demonstrating in front of the placid capitol building Saturday evening, a group of activists marched to the liquor store, and once inside, began performing Weeda Claus’ Chronic Christmas Carols, which are songs about the harms of the war on drugs set to the tune of popular Christmas jingles.
A great portion of the festivities were captured by numerous still and video journalists from around the Shire. See the initial demonstration in part one, and the liquor store serenade in part two.
This is a little late, but the video of the Municipal Services, Facilities and Infrastructure Committee meeting, addressing disorderly behavior in Central Square, is available online, courtesy of Cheshire TV and the City of Keene. (The City of Keene has been working, successfully, to make local government more accessible. The video requires Microsoft Silverlight to play, which is frustrating, but a lot better than no video at all. [Update: Steve, a computer whiz, says you can also play it with VLC media player. Download the relevant program at the link.]) See the Video and more
Occupy New Hampshire survived four complete nights as an intentional community. The first two in Victory and the final two-plus in Veterans Park had such a spurious air about them. The environment created by the occupation was that of a foreign presence upon a national ground. A presence foreign in that it was a horizontally organized competitor to the established order in Manchester. And while the occupiers were claiming no ground but that which they’d camped upon (and demonstrated a willingness to shuffle between parks to accommodate previously scheduled events), it still seemed so apparent, and would be confirmed through arrests, that there was something fundamentally challenging to the status quo by people camping out in a park that they are forced to pay for.
The quiet Elm Street in front of Veterans Park on October 19, approx. 2:00am.
I spent two long periods of time at the occupation (more…)
As I mentioned in one of my blogs from jail, I was asked “Why Keene?”. My inspiration was because this was the area in which Russell and Kat Kanning and Lauren Canario were living, also Dave Ridley. These early movers set the pace for civil disobedience and noncooperation in NH and they were all living in the Keene area. I thought it would be a good time to re-release some classic videos from NHFree.com, courtesy of Tom Sawyer. Tom’s videos of the earliest movers were a big motivation for me to move here. I hope you find them as inspirational as I.
This one has over 236,000 views at the time of this writing:
In late 2010 Pete and I were in the mist of our second tour around the country doing LibertyOnTour.com. It was during that time we started shooting Uncle Sam videos. The idea for these videos is, if “Uncle Sam” – the government – was a real person what would he be like? Would he have any friends? Would people voluntarily hand over their hard earned money to this asshole?
He’s been hiding out for most of this year but Uncle Sam was recently spotted in New York City at Occupy Wall Street. He was attempting to strengthen his relationship with ‘the few’ upset protestors. As you’ll see in the video below Uncle Sam doesn’t do very well with the public. Uncle Sam doesn’t understand that you can’t use money and/or force to solve problems. Yet, alot of protestors were willing to give Uncle Sam more of their freedom and money in exchange for just that.
We can’t turn to Uncle Sam to fix our economy, end the war or anything for that matter. He’s the man who wrote the checks for the bailouts, signed the papers sending the troops into other countries. All while demanding more taxes, on all kinds of things, and becoming more and more aggressive to those that speak out against his ideas. He’s the one that steals from one to give to another. After all, government doesn’t have anything it doesn’t take (I mean steal – because that’s what taxation is if you don’t want to pay them) from the productive people of the world.
So would you be friends with Uncle Sam? Would you voluntarily give Uncle Sam your money (ie – taxes)? If yes, would you give Uncle Sam more money to go after those who wanted to spend their own hard earned dollars?
In his latest episode of More Politically Alert, State Representative Steve Vaillancourt (R – Manchester), a libertarian opponent of Occupy NH, debates State Representative Seth Cohn (R – Canterbury), a libertarian member of Occupy NH. The discussion starts at around 10:45.
Vaillancourt, prolific media producer that he is, has also posted a blog about his experience at the redistricting committee hearing in Keene last Tuesday: Joy And Sorrow On The Redistricting Front. (See earlier Free Keene coverage.) Fun fact: I’ve never understood the appeal of the B-52’s.
This year’s fifth of November celebration in front of the state house drew a larger and more motivated crowd than last year. After demonstrating in front of the placid capitol building Saturday evening, a group of activists marched to the liquor store, and once inside, began performing Weeda Claus’ Chronic Christmas Carols, which are songs about the harms of the war on drugs set to the tune of popular Christmas jingles.
