(Full transparency – I first crossed paths with Dave maybe five years back when I worked in DC’s libertarian think tank world.)
I was happy to read Dave’s positive overview of the going-ons here – it never hurts when an outlet with as many readers as Slate.com helps to introduce more people to voluntaryism. Thanks Dave! That said, at times I found myself wishing that different words or examples were used to paint a more-accurate picture.
In the first sentence Dave likened Ademo Freeman, Ian Freeman and me as “antigovernment activists” rather than something like “self-government advocates.” This differentiation may seem trivial but I think it’s important to tease out as our lives aren’t reactionary or led by negativity, but are proactive and led ultimately by love.
The Civil Disobedience Evolution Fund‘s Jason Talley talks with Code Pink‘s Medea Benjamin. This video drips with cognitive dissonance, as a nice woman who is committed to peace around the world is shown the violence that is part-and-parcel of the system in which she believes. I hope she continues to think about what Talley.TV shares:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxfHh9fH5j4
Liberty on Tour spent more time than they expected in Manchester after Pete and Ademo were arrested and Beau had his camera stole at Manchester PD during a protest. However, that’s not all they were up to. More videos to come from LOT, but here’s a preview of some of what happened in Manch:
These sorts of hijinks certainly aren’t representative of libertarians in general, or even of the Free State Project itself: as Weigel notes, the Keene wing of that movement is particularly prone to confrontational acts of civil disobedience.
It’s not easy to see what the Keene activists hope to accomplish with these stunts. One of the aims of the libertarian movement is surely to convince others that people can live together peacefully and responsibly without criminal laws forcing them to do so. Holding “Topless Tuesdays” and pot-smoking rallies next to a middle school might not be the best way to achieve this. These sorts of hijinks only make sense if their aim is to persuade all the non-libertarians to move away.
The Union Leader reports that New Hampshire officials intend to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their effort to piggyback on the work of local law enforcement.
The initiative, eerily named “Secure Communities,” would check the fingerprints of everyone who is arrested against federal immigration databases. In the case of a match, the ICE is notified and the agency uses its discretion to decide how to respond.
The ICE says that its priority is the removal of convicted felons, but, according to ICE data, 28% of the 49,638 people deported between October 2009 and September 2010 as a result of Secure Communities were convicted of no crime whatsoever. Many others were charged only with misdemeanors. According to the Immigration Policy Center, “Examinations of ICE’s Secure Communities statistics reveals that those identified by Secure Communities include large numbers of individuals with no criminal history, individuals charged with (but not convicted of) crimes, and legal immigrants with prior convictions that make them deportable.”
The program currently operates in 1,315 counties in 42 states, and the ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in every state by the end of 2011, with total coverage by 2013. Yet they’ve already been rebuffed by state officials in Washington, D.C., Illinois, Minnesota, Washington, New York, and, just recently, in Massachusetts.
The Pew Research Center estimates that New Hampshire is home to 10 or 20 thousand undocumented immigrants, and the Immigration Policy Center estimates that they pay about $5 million dollars in state taxes every year. So when will New Hampshire join the opposition?
Liberty on Tour‘s Pete Eyre took the time to thoughtfully respond to Dave Weigel’s excellent piece on Free Keene that appeared this week on Slate.com.
