Now in its fifth year, the Memorial Day parade peace contingent once again made an appearance in Keene’s Central Square on Monday morning around the time when the yearly Memorial Day parade was scheduled to begin. However, no parade came. Though this prevented us from joining the parade as has been the tradition for several years, it didn’t stop us from getting the message of peace out to those who were on the road that morning.
As usual, we received many positive reactions including waves, friendly honks, and thumbs-ups. Of course, there were a couple nasty drive-by commenters, including one city employee who claimed “we wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the military”, to which Rich Paul responded, “yeah, I’d still be in bed”. Plus one other guy drove by and rattled off the tired, old comment about the peace sign being the symbol for the American chicken.
Thanks to everyone who was so supportive that drove past – you make it worthwhile!
Here’s a photo of this year’s peace contingent:
Rain on Memorial Day didn’t stop the peace contingent!
The Libertarian Party today nominated two former governors, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld for the offices of POTUS and Vice, respectively. While some Libertarians decried this choice (see Ian Freeman’s opinion on the matter) others, myself included, believe that Gary will be a great spokesman for our ideas. He does not agree with me 100% … I’m an Anarchist, he’s a Libertarian, but he does support reducing government to it’s Constitutional role, and that would be a great start.
Gary is socially liberal and economically conservative. In other words, he believes in letting people make their own decisions, and letting them bear the consequences of those decisions. He believes in letting other countries go their own way and do their own thing, and staying at peace with them, until such time as they attack us. He believes in letting people be free, so long as they do not violate the rights of another.
Gary is not a perfect candidate … I disagree with him on the issue of Religious Freedom with respect to bakers being forced to bake cakes for gay weddings against their will. I think he is more fearful of Islam than he needs to be. But I think he is an excellent, mainstream, well-spoken, impressive candidate, all told.
Best of luck, Gary, and bear our message well. The future of America depends on you … not on your election, but on your communication. Run your leg of the relay race to Freedom well.
After an excellent presidential debate last night, the national Libertarian Party once again proved its irrelevance and nominated another republican as their candidate for president in 2016. According to the official results from the second and final round of voting, there were only two states whose delegates voted for the best two candidates in the race, Free Keene blogger Darryl W Perry and John McAfee. Those two states were New Hampshire and Vermont. Perry and McAfee’s combined votes were higher in NH and VT than the combined votes of the worst two candidates, Gary Johnson and Austin Petersen. In every other state, Johnson and Petersen’s combined votes were higher.
It’s a continuance of a sad trend of the LP delegates selecting republicans – people who do not understand or advocate libertarian ideals – that has been going on since the 2008 presidential election where the LP chose Bob Barr, a republican former US representative (and former CIA boss) from Georgia as their nominee. Then in 2012 they chose Gary Johnson, a republican former governor of New Mexico as their candidate. Johnson was better than Barr, but not by much. He’s not a principled libertarian like Darryl is. Now Johnson’s won the party’s nomination again for 2016 despite the valiant efforts of the “radical” wing of the party.
The party’s been dead, but now it’s even moreso.
The national LP is hopeless, yet activists across the country toil away trying to wrest control of the organization from the hands of the republicans who have had control of the party for about a decade. To those remaining principled libertarians I implore you:
GIVE UP ON THE LP! Your party is dead and has been for years. Your efforts are being wasted on the national and even your state LP. Start planning your move to New Hampshire to get involved with the only proven successful strategy in the liberty movement: concentrating activists in one geographic area.
In New Hampshire we’ve had more political successes in a decade – meaning people being elected who are principled libertarians – than the LP has had in forty years. If you want to keep losing, stay where you are. If you want to see liberty advance, you have to get together with like-minded people and get active here in the Shire.
Free Keene continue to add activists as bloggers from across the state. Now another Seacoast doer and media personality, Steven Zeiler is onboard as our newest blogger! Here’s his bio from the Bloggers page:
Steven Zeiler is a successful software entrepreneur and avid bitcoin user and evangelist dedicated to spreading everyday bitcoin use throughout his community. He was a pioneering engineer building open financial technology with Ripple financial software firm in Silicon Valley and now runs a software business in Portsmouth, New Hampshire dedicated to saving accountants at CPA firms more time to spend with their friends and loved ones. Steven moved to New Hampshire in 2016. You can engage with Steven every Thursday night on the Flaming Freedom, the most glamorous liberty-oriented show in the solar system.
According to the Marijuana Policy Project‘s Matt Simon, the new compromised “decriminalization” bill discussed Tuesday at the state house isn’t going to change much of anything at all”.
On May 24th the senate met with the NH house to discuss a compromised cannabis “decriminalization” bill. The turnout for the meeting was very good, but the prohibitionist senators again stood in the way of real progress. This video contains the full press conference, the very short hearing, a recap by Matt Simon of MPP.org, and Rich Paul and I hounding a couple of prohibitionist police chiefs afterwards. Enjoy!
On Monday’s episode of Free Talk Live we went into detail about Rich Paul’s recent arrest in Salem, NH for possession of cannabis. We spent most of the last hour of the show discussing it. In short, a few weeks ago, Rich and a friend were heading back from dropping an activist at Boston airport and stopped off at a rest area once back in New Hampshire. While there, they smoked a joint before heading back out on the road. They were immediately pulled over before even leaving the rest area, as it turns out they had smoked up in the middle of an undercover police operation that was monitoring the rest area that day for heroin deals.
According to Rich, the police seemed disappointed they didn’t bust any heroin and would have been willing to issue them summonses and release them on the scene, but Rich’s passenger did not have ID on him, so they were taken back to the police station for booking. Ultimately they were released on PR bail and issued court dates. Both have been charged with Class A misdemeanors for possession, which means they could take this to a jury trial, unless the state reduces the charges to Class B.
If it does go in front of a jury, it will be the first time an NH liberty activist has gone to jury trial for simple possession. Rich is looking forward to his chance at a jury trial, especially since he is a minister of the Church of the Invisible Hand and considers cannabis to be a sacrament.
One big, and as-yet-unanswered question is whether the state will motion the court to impose Rich’s suspended sentence from his previous conviction for selling cannabis. Stay tuned here for the latest.
Activists in New Hampshire have used many methods to promote personal freedom in the past years. Many will go into politics to change the system from within, others will use civil disobedience to demonstrate the aggression of the state. Some, such as this blogger, have taken to promoting New Hampshire Independence as a way to promote personal freedom. The federal government represents a majority of the tyranny that we face in our lives and the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence has a mission to educate the citizens of New Hampshire that we can peacefully separate from the control of the federal government. Today it is with great pleasure that I announce that Carla Gericke, former President of the Free State Project, has been appointed the President of the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence.
Press release:
Heading: The Foundation for New Hampshire Independence Welcomes Carla Gericke as President
Sub-heading: Former attorney, activist and writer Carla Gericke is named president of the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence. She is president emeritus of the Free State Project, and spent the past eight years attracting liberty activists to New Hampshire to pursue freer lives.
May 25, 2016: The Foundation for New Hampshire Independence, a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to promote New Hampshire’s peaceful separation from the United States through educational initiatives, is pleased to welcome Carla Gericke as board member and president.
“Carla brings a powerful combination of executive management skills and digital media expertise,” said outgoing FNHI president, entrepreneur Neal Conner. “Her creativity, charisma and commitment to the future of an independent New Hampshire will help take the Foundation’s educational efforts to the next level.” (more…)
