In April I’m starting the Rebel Love Show with fellow Free Keene blogger Robert Mathias.
Our goal is to showcase what’s going on here in the Free State in a friendly and casual manner. We really want to show what a great community we have here and highlight the can-do attitude of activists the state over with the ultimate goal of getting more people to move out.
The Rebel Love Show will air once a week, and will have a blog section with constant updates about happenings in the Free State community. Stay tuned at RebelLoveShow.com!
Deborah Butler, a downtown part-time worker, wrote this letter to the Sentinel pointing out that if the parking rates increase as the city proposes, she’ll have to pay nearly twice as much to park, just to go to her job! She also rightfully points out that the parking fees are a deterrent to shoppers as well:
After reading the Sentinel’s article concerning raising the parking fees in downtown meters, I couldn’t help but wonder why the Keene City Council is determined to make downtown Keene as unattractive as possible to visitors and workers alike.
Reducing the amount of time each quarter buys means that shoppers will spend less time in the stores along Main Street. Visitors to the area, who may park on Main Street to see what the merchants in Keene have to offer, will not know that they should have brought along a pocketful of change in order to park for any reasonable shopping time. They will probably cut their shopping trips short in order to avoid having to pay a parking ticket.
Like many of the people who work in the downtown establishments, I am a part-time employee. Right now, it costs me $5.50 a week to park for the part of the day that I am at work. With the proposed change to the parking fees, it will cost me over $9.
The more difficult and costly it is to park and shop downtown, the more people will avoid coming here. Kris Roberts is quoted as saying, “…people who don’t use parking spots will have to come up with money to subsidize the parking fund …” Well, I don’t have any children in the school system, but I ‘subsidize’ that; it’s the same principle. Does the City Council want happy shoppers spending money in a thriving downtown business district? I would like to suggest that the Keene City Council not be “Penny wise, pound foolish.”
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.
On Tuesday March 25th, 2014, five activists from Manchester including myself and Free Keene blogger Joel Valenzuela drove to Nashua to protest the rally to raise minimum wage. According to the Nashua Telegraph, Vice President Joe Biden was to be speaking at the event. Unfortunately, Joe Biden did not show. However, neither did anyone else. The crowd consisted mostly of activists from Manchester, a friend of the Free State Project (who none of us had ever met), and the local media. The most interesting part of the event was how the “show” went on. There was no real reason to do a political presentation to just protesters, yet they did it anyways. The Union Leader interviewed us and mentioned the protest in their article.
Towards the end of last week’s Saturday morning episode of the live local call-in radio program SoundOff, a listener raised the issue of Keene parking rate and fine increases. The caller expressed discontent that parking would become more expensive and from his perspective, the rate hikes were enough to disincentivize him from choosing to frequent downtown businesses. The necessity of the rate hike is kicked around for several minutes by host Chris Cotes and guest host Dale Pregent, and the efforts of Robin Hood of Keene are mentioned in passing. Towards the end of the segment, Dale makes an underhanded comment about the parking enforcers, referring to one of the workers as a ‘parking maid’ while suggesting that there previously had been allegations of harassment of city employees by city officials. The audio has been specially set to b-roll footage of the AKPF van occupying various parking spaces throughout the city.
Today there was a rally in Nashua to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. They thought it would be a quick, one-sided media circus to portray the wage hike as an issue with unanimous consent. They thought wrong.
I ventured down to Nashua with a party of counter-protesters including Free Keene bloggers Rob Mathias and Wendy French to make sure both sides of the issue were accurately represented. What we found was a bus full of big government advocates completely unprepared for a turnout of actual concerned citizens.
Our impromptu happy little gaggle of activists made up a full quarter to third of those in attendance, and this made the rest, who had planned on a rally without dissent, visibly uncomfortable. Once the press conference was over we were swarmed by reporters itching to catch the underrepresented other side of the story. One of them couldn’t believe we were just concerned citizens and not “with someone.”
We also ran into a friendly local who worked nearby and stopped in to have his voice heard. He was happy to see that he wasn’t alone in fighting for liberty in the Granite State.
It’s important to note that when it comes to making a difference, 90% of the battle is just showing up. The encroachment of the state relies on its opponents just staying home and not getting involved. Make the time, show up, and make a difference for liberty.
Free Keene welcomes Joël Valenzuela as our newest blogger! Joël is one of the prime content creators in Manchester and he joins existing Manch bloggers Robert Mathias, JJ Schelessinger, and William Kostric to help feature some of the great activism happening there that has gone woefully unreported. Here’s his bio from the Bloggers page:
Joël moved to New Hampshire for the Free State Project in September of 2013 after making a promise to always be on the front lines of liberty. He runs The Desert Lynx blog and writes for numerous other publications. Valenzuela’s undergraduate education is in Statesmanship, and his postgraduate in Global Affairs. He worked for over a decade in public policy for such organizations as the Goldwater Institute, the Alliance for School Choice, the Cato Institute, the Leadership Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and the Western Center for Journalism. When not running The Desert Lynx, Valenzuela is a full-time martial arts instructor.
blogger Joel Valenzuela drove to Nashua to protest the rally to raise minimum wage. According to the Nashua Telegraph, Vice President Joe Biden was to be speaking at the event. Unfortunately, Joe Biden did not show. However, neither did anyone else. The crowd consisted mostly of activists from Manchester, a friend of the Free State Project (who none of us had ever met), and the local media. The most interesting part of the event was how the “show” went on. There was no real reason to do a political presentation to just protesters, yet they did it anyways. The Union Leader interviewed us and mentioned the protest in their 
uncomfortable. Once the press conference was over we were swarmed by reporters itching to catch the underrepresented other side of the story. One of them couldn’t believe we were just concerned citizens and not “with someone.”
