Carla Gericke, recently profiled along with me in a detailed piece by NHPR, made an appearance with me and other liberty activists yesterday at the annual Concord, NH 420 rally.
Carla’s the former president of the Free State Project and the current president of the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence, an outreach group that promotes New Hampshire’s peaceful exit from the United States. She didn’t hold back in her short-but-sweet speech at the 420 celebration at the state house steps, telling the federal government, “Fuck you”, as she announced her second attempt at running as a “pro-gun, anti-war” republican for the Manchester NH senate seat against a longtime incumbent democrat.
She looks great, by the way – you can really see a positive change in her between the two rallies. She told me she’s been off alcohol completely for six months – congrats!
More video is coming from other speakers at the rally, including the triumphant return of Rich Paul to the rally he created, so do subscribe to the Free Keene Youtube channel for the latest.
Now we’re proud to announce another major upgrade. As of today, Route 101 Local Goods will now be home to a top-of-the-line General Bytes brand Cryptocurrency Vending Machine selling both BTC and DASH. (You can check it out on the CoinATMRadar site here.) The new CVM is massive and attractive, with a huge touch screen interface and beautiful color-cycling LED lighting. General Bytes is the top CVM manufacturer in the world today and they’ve really earned that distinction.
Keene has also earned its distinction as a cryptocurrency hotspot, having the longest-operating CVM in the Northeast United States and one of the highest concentrations of cryptocurrency-accepting-businesses-per-capita in the world! For a while, our CVM was the only one northeast of New York City, until the Shire Free Church launched our machine in Manchester in 2016.
Route 101 Local Goods sells cool NH-made products and accepts crypto!
In the last several years, people have traveled from across the Northeast United States to use our machine. Its low price in comparison to other BVMs is worth the trip, plus the customer service from its location, Route 101 Local Goods, is unmatched. Store owner Chris Rietmann is a huge cryptocurrency advocate and even gives his customers 5% off any item in the store – if they pay with cryptocurrency – and Rt. 101 accepts a BUNCH of them.
In late 2017, we added DASH (aka “Digital Cash”) to the machine, making it the region’s first Cryptocurrency Vending Machine! In fact, both DASH and BTC are accepted by multiple businesses in the Keene area. More announcements about that will be coming soon, so stay tuned here to the Free Keene blog for the latest on the cryptocurrency evolution happening here in New Hampshire.
By the way, you haven’t seen the last of the Lamassu. It’s still an excellent unit and in great shape after serving customers day-after-day. It’s staying in Keene, but I can’t announce the new location yet. Soon!
New Hampshire Public Radio Posts Feature on NH Freedom Migration
Thanks to New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Taylor Quimby (originally from the Keene area) for his detailed and well-researched report on the Free State Project, which delves into the history of the project, the diversity of opinions of its movers, their effectiveness and impact in New Hampshire, including plenty of focus on Free Keene – one of the top blogs in NH that chronicles the NH Freedom Migration, focusing on Keene.
The audio version of the report is excellent, with audio that doesn’t appear in the printed version. Both editions are lengthy, so settle in for a good long read or listen.
Besides a few minor quibbles, Taylor’s reporting is fair and the audio version is quite entertaining. I laughed out loud a few times.
Last summer marked the beginning of the decentralized, friendly competition to the longtime centrally-organized Porcupine Freedom Festival. Some people called it Somaliafest, others called it Shirefest, still others came up with other names. What it ended up being was a couple dozen liberty-loving people camping with each other, a couple of great parties (one including Will Coley as the DJ), and a nationally syndicated talk radio show recording in the campground.
This year, New Hampshire’s decentralized liberty camping event is back, once again to be held Jun 14th-18th (the five days prior to Porcfest). However, the talk radio shows on LRN.FM have been calling this year’s event Forkfest, a name created by Liberty Lobbyist Darryl W Perry.
Why Forkfest? It’s an embracing of the idea of “forking” or when a movement (cryptocurrency, political, religious, or whatever) has a split, usually when some perceived impasse among a growing group is reached. It’s something that has happened in New Hampshire’s freedom migration over the last fifteen years on multiple occasions. Such schisms are natural with large numbers of people, which most libertarians don’t have if they are outside of New Hampshire, so libertarians aren’t used to it. Given the ever-increasing number of liberty activists moving to NH, they were inevitable.
Ernest Hancock and Will Coley Broadcasting from Forkfest 2017
Unlike Porcfest, which is a great festival in its own right, Forkfest differs in that there is no organizer, no board of directors, and no one in charge. That means that everyone attending must decide how to self-organize. Throw a party, perform music, put on speeches, sell food or merchandise, whatever happens to be your inspiration! Or, if you just want to take it easy and camp around the company of other libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-minded anarchists, no problem! Just lock down your camping, RV site, or Motel Room at Roger’s Campground for June 14th-18th and enjoy. There are no tickets to Forkfest.
If you’d like to plan something for attendees to do, see what else is being planned (there’s at least one party, athletic events, and a marriage already scheduled as of this writing), or just connect with other Forkfest attendees, visit the Forkfest forum (part of the Shire Forum). Also, you’ll find links to Forkfest chat rooms and an event to which you can RSVP on the unofficial Forkfest website at Forkfest.party.
I accept the FSP Award for “Spreading the Message”
In 2016 at the Free State Project‘s yearly “Liberty Forum” convention, there was an excellent awards ceremony called the “Liberty in Action Awards” put on by Andre Rosa and a large cast of volunteer performers. Lots of production value and practice was required to make the entertaining and very funny stage presentation. The awards were given out in several categories where the nominees and winners were selected by popular vote of FSP participants. It was a fantastic show and really well done.
The performers put a lot of work into this, so why did it take until now (over two years since it happened) for video of the awards to be released?
Despite paying a professional videographer to record the whole ceremony with multiple cameras, the official video was never released by the Free State Project. The official videographer, Free Keene blogger JJ Schlessinger, reported he completed the video shortly after the event and delivered it to the FSP per their contract with him. No one outside JJ and the FSP board of directors has ever seen it. Thankfully, there was an independent videographer present who was not hired to be there by the FSP! Paul Gibbons of Red Pill Recording has now released his video of the event from start-to-finish:
I still can’t believe it. I just watched this video by CNN about a New Hampshire man who is able to live his entire life on cryptocurrency. I’ve come close, but he’s got even me beat. Truly an impressive feat. To learn his secret, watch this video:
HB 1283 would prohibit DUI checkpoints in NH. It has already passed the house. This is full video of the senate judiciary hearing on the bill, featuring libertarian rebuttals to the head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving!
