Darryl and I are running an outreach booth this weekend at NH Hempfest in Lancaster at Roger’s Campground. We’re sharing the Shire Society declaration with attendees, along with plenty of know-your-rights propaganda, and a Bitcoin Vending Machine. We’ll be at the booth all day until Sunday and at night we’re hosting Free Talk Live.
Hempfest is packed with dozens of live bands and is kicking off right now. Hope to see you!
Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie recently sat down with FSP president Matt Philips to discuss the Free State Project’s libertarian migration-in-progress to New Hampshire. Gillespie has seen the evidence for himself – he’s visited the Shire on more than one occasion. It’s obvious that concentrating libertarian activists together in the same geographic area leads to success.
Now thousands more are slated to come for the FSP, while others are choosing to join the decentralized Shire Society and move independently of the Free State Project. Regardless of whether you join a movement or not, if you are a libertarian or voluntarist, take Nick’s advice: “Move to New Hampshire, you won’t regret it.”
Lachance recently announced the big news privately to his friends via his facebook profile, which included photos of him in uniform from his days as a Bedford officer. Then, after a final confirmation from the LEAP board late last week, he authorized Free Keene to break the news. He will have his first speaking engagement at the upcoming NH Hempfest and Freedom Rally happening at Rogers Campground August 25th through 28th.
When he started his career in law enforcement, Lachance was totally brainwashed into believing in prohibition. It didn’t take him long to realize that arresting drug users was only making their lives worse. In an email Lachance told me he, “saw first-hand how the war on drugs is a failure…Arresting someone for a small amount of cannabis or controlled substance only adds to the problem. The war on drugs encourages the cartels to make a black market for banned substances and creates a huge profit motive for the underground.”
Rick Naya, NH Hempfest Organizer and Joe Lachance
Lachance isn’t the first speaker that LEAP has had in New Hampshire. Cheshire county jail superintendent Rick Van Wickler has been speaking against prohibition for many years now. There are other LEAP speakers who are former cops from Concord and Durham as well. The more, the merrier! More police coming out of the closet against prohibition means we’re getting closer to ending the insane “War on Drugs”, which is really just a war against our friends and family.
Lachance gets why prohibition doesn’t work. He points out, “Drug violence isn’t a reason to fight the war on drugs…it is a reason to END the war on drugs. Take away the cartels’ main source of revenue and they too will go away, much like in the 1920s with Al Capone.”
LRN.FM – The Liberty Radio Network, airs the best liberty-oriented audio shows 24/7 online and via satellite. Our current satellite coverage includes North and Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The signal is “Free-to-Air”, which means anyone in the coverage area can receive our signal for no monthly cost, providing they have the dish and receiver, which are very affordable. We’ve been on the American satellite since 2010 and have had a signal in Africa since 2012.
Last year we did our first Satellite Fundraiser to gauge the level of support that our listeners have for the platform. While this year’s LRN.FM Satellite Fundraiser did not garner as much in USD as last year’s, we had nearly as many contributors, and that was without the benefit of having a campaign pitch video, like we did last year. (The FBI took the video files in the March raid on the LRN.FM studio in Keene.)
In 2015 we had 46 contributions on Indiegogo, amounting to $4,925. However, $2550 of that came from two individuals. Factoring out those two mega-contributors, the average contribution was about $54. This year we had 40 contributions on Indiegogo for a total of $1760, meaning the average contribution was down a bit to $44.
In addition to the $1760 given at Indiegogo, there were three bitcoin contributions this year, totaling 0.26568 BTC, which is worth about $154 at current exchange rates.
Something new I tried this year that I believe was a mistake was the “Headtalker” campaign that ate up two weeks of potential fundraising right in the beginning. (more…)
According to the just-released 2016 edition of the “Freedom in the 50 States” study by the Cato Institute, New Hampshire is again at number one most free! Alaska is nipping at NH’s heels, but with thousands of libertarian activists slated to arrive here in the next several years, we’ll hopefully continue to solidify our lead.
At the bottom of the charts, number fifty is New York, which is a long distance below number forty-nine, California. Where did your state rank? You can check out the interactive map or dig into the well-researched nearly 300 page study on their site.
With all the freedoms we have in NH, no wonder so many people who love freedom are moving here. Not only is there the most successful libertarian migration in the world happening here, but before that started there were already over 101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire. Originally a persuasive text list, in recent years it was made into an excellent hour-long documentary which you can watch for free.
If you are a libertarian or voluntarist and don’t yet have plans to move here to New Hampshire, why are you waiting? Thanks to migrations like the Shire Society and Free State Project, there are thousands of liberty-minded people who’ve already moved here in the last decade and thousands more pledged to come.
Concentration of libertarian activists into a small, low-population state like New Hampshire makes all the difference in the world for accomplishing our goal of liberty in our lifetime. If you’re tired of the continued failures of the libertarian movement, get to New Hampshire ASAP.