Free State Observer

This year, for the first time in my life, and as a direct result of the Free State Project, I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to a beautifully white world. The first snow of the season began early that morning and continued until around noon. It was a gentle, fluffy snow that “stuck”. I took the opportunity to go for a walk to the nearest Dunkin Doughnuts (FYI, if you don’t currently eat doughnuts and drink coffee in a truly bizarre assortment of flavors (blueberry?!?), you will begin after moving to New Hampshire. It’s a mandatory part of state residency.) Traffic is so light in my residential neighborhood (within walking distance of downtown Manchester) that I was able to walk in the middle of the street. By the time I got to DuDo’s, my hair was dripping wet. On my way home, I passed a neighbor who was out shoveling, and we exchanged hellos. He must have found my wet hair and goofy smile curious, because after I’d continued down the street, he called after me “Where are you from?” I yelled back “California!” He said “Ohhh, so this is all new for you! Congratulations!” People keep telling me I will soon learn to despise snow, but at least for that first time, it was magical. (It has since melted.)

Here’s hoping that you had much to be thankful for this year.

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Last Saturday I attended the second workshop this year of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. To give you an indication of how serious Free State Project participants are about our desire to roll back government in New Hampshire, 20 people spent our entire Saturday crammed into someone’s living room, being trained in the nitty gritty of running political campaigns and tracking pending legislation. The workshop was held in the Goffstown home of an FSP couple, two of the very first movers to New Hampshire, and was led by Don Gorman, a Libertarian who has served two terms in the state legislature as well as holding several other public offices. We got to hear in detail what it was like for three Free Staters who ran for political office in the recent elections. The first speaker was one of the chief instigators behind the ballot initiative to institute a budget cap in Manchester. This was the first successful attempt to get enough signatures for a ballot initiative on the Manchester ballot in 20 years! Infuriatingly, the initiative was then deemed unacceptable by the State Attorney General mere weeks before the election. The second speaker ran for City Council in Dover, and came within only 45 votes of winning! And the third speaker ran for the School Board in Concord, a city with a left-leaning newspaper and strong unions. Considering that all three campaigners have lived in the state for less than two years and were running for significant positions with real influence in their respective new cities, their results weren’t bad at all. Each candidate learned a lot, and shared some of what they learned with the rest of us. We also got training in the amazing bill triage system that has been developed by a handful of NHLA volunteers (and keep in mind, this organization didn’t even exist two years ago!). The web-based software imports data directly from the State of New Hampshire’s website and provides a means for NHLA volunteers to track pending legislation and rate it as pro- or anti-liberty. This allows the NHLA to focus its volunteer lobbyists’ time and energy on those bills deemed most significant and/or most likely to successfully be influenced. They already have a few successes in stopping pending liberty-unfriendly legislation. Senator Ron Paul, the most libertarian guy in Congress, was the keynote speaker at the NHLA’s annual banquet last July. And plans are afoot to publicize their annual legislators report card, in which every single state representative receives a letter grade (just like in school) as to how good or bad a friend of liberty he is, based on his voting record over the preceding year. It’s really phenomenal what these people have managed to put together in only two years. It wasn’t all work, though; we had food and chat breaks (some even had beer), and those who wished petted the gargantuan 6-toed mutant cat that strolled about. I’m not sure what it means that it picked me out of the crowd to jump into my lap; am I a mutant magnet? After the business of the day was over, attendees were free to loiter on the screened-in porch, enjoying intoxicating liquid refreshments while shooting the breeze about life, the universe and New Hampshire.

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update: you can watch a 5 minute video of this incendiary escapade at Political Graffiti !

On Saturday I participated in my first ever act of public civil disobedience. Three Free State Project participants decided to publicly burn their social security cards in front of the Concord SSA office. Their reasons for this were twofold: to protest the social security program, and to protest the new National ID policy. They alerted both the local police and various local media outlets prior to the event. However, no police showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. A reporter from a local radio station attended the event and interviewed several people, and a Free State supporter from Vermont videotaped the burning and made some absolutely incredible signs. A total of 18 Free Staters and friends attended, including stragglers who showed up after the burning was all done.

My own contribution was to show up dressed as the Statue of Liberty sporting a black eye. As usual, I got lost on the way there, and I have to wonder what various residents of Concord thought when they saw the Statue of Liberty hanging U-turns and cursing to herself up and down Main St. By the time I arrived, the actual burning of the SS cards was over, but I did get to witness and participate in burning some oversized mockups of cards. It was an absolutely spectacular autumn day, sunny and warm, and everyone had a great time. We left a memento behind for the govmint workers to find on Monday morning: a sign declaring Social Security to be the World’s Worst Pyramid Scheme, and the charred remains of one of the oversized SS cards.

Curiously, the only run-in with cops occured well after the burn, when most of us had convened at a nearby pizza parlor for lunch. A Free Stater who is in the habit of openly wearing a gun was stopped and questioned by a Concord police officer who was in the parking lot for an unrelated reason. By bizarre coincidence, both the Free Stater and the police officer speak… Bosnian. What started out as a potentially unpleasant incident finished with the two gentlemen chatting amicably in… Bosnian.

The photo is of me and Lauren Ann Canario, Free Stater extraordinaire who is currently renting one of the private homes seized by eminent domain in New London, CT, and who recently spent two weeks in prison for refusing to leave when denied access to a city council meeting. Lauren is one of the three who burned her SS card.

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Last Saturday was the monthly meeting of the Merrimack Valley Porcupines, the local group for Free Staters who have made the move to New Hampshire and have settled in the south central portion of the state, which encompasses the largest cities of Manchester, Nashua and Concord. For the past year or more, the meetings have been taking place at Milly’s, a bar/club/brewery in one of the converted mill buildings in downtown Manchester left over from the 19th century days when the city was the textile manufacturing capital of the world. Milly’s is pretty big, and usually pretty empty in the middle of the day, which is when MVP meetings take place, so we’re able to meet there for free and be served burgers and microbrew while meeting! Until recently the only downside was that brewing beer can be a noisy business, and it’s sometimes difficult to hear the meeting proceedings over the sounds of enormous vats of microbrew bubbling/siphoning/yeastifying/etc. However, the management of Milly’s has recently made a stink about the fact that a few Porcupines choose to exercise their legal right to open carry a gun, and has asked that no guns be brought in. Oh well, that’s what the free market is all about, and if enough of us feel strongly about it, we can meet and buy our burgers elsewhere.

The MVP meetings have exploded over the course of the past year. Just two years ago, at the first meeting, two people attended (if I have the developing legend correct). A year ago, meetings were averaging around 20 people a month. Now they average 40+. With more Free State Project members making the move all the time, pretty soon we’re going to need our own lodge in which to congregate!

MVP meetings are very well-organized, with printed agendas, scheduled speakers, and minutes promptly published to the group’s Yahoo discussion list. Joel, the group leader for the past year, somehow does a great job of keeping things running on schedule while never invoking Roberts’ Rules of Order. Joel’s girlfriend, who is a native of New Hampshire and very supportive of Joel’s libertarian shenanigans, has been producing the meeting minutes and also put together the Porcupine Directory, which provides names, addresses, phone numbers and personal interests of in-state Porcupines (being listed in it is strictly voluntary).

Every meeting provides time for announcements, so that anyone who would like to address a room full of Free Staters/libertarians about their personal project and solicit volunteers has an opportunity to do so. New movers and visitors are introduced and welcomed. Announcements about upcoming liberty-oriented events are made (there seem to be several at every meeting).

This last meeting ran a record 2.75 hours (I missed the first half of it, which is just as well; that’s a bit too much meeting for me!). Don Gorman, the Director of Political Action of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, spoke at a length that only Don can about Porcupines who were running for office in various cities and needed volunteers for their campaigns. Katherine Albrecht, the founder of C.A.S.P.I.A.N. (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), spoke about her organization’s campaign to keep WalMart from foistng RFID chips on an unwitting public; a protest in front of the Bedford WalMart was scheduled for later that afternoon, and several people from the MVP meeting were inspired to join it by her talk. She has a new book out called Spychips, if you’d like to learn more about RFID chips and the threat they pose to privacy.

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Election Day, like everything else, is different in New Hampshire. Where I used to live in downtown Oakland, every time I went to vote, the polling place had, at most, one other voter in it. The volunteers seemed so bored, they were desperately happy to see someone, ANYONE, coming in to vote. They’d hand out little stickers as a reward for voting. Not having been rewarded with a sticker for anything since, well, kindergarten, I’d humor them and stick it on my lapel. It did offer a certain childish thrill.

In New Hampshire, the destination of choice for the Free State Project, people take election day seriously. In order to get to my local polling place, I had to run a gauntlet of politicians, contenders, supporters and even kids holding signs, or totem poles of signs, despite the fact that is was a dark and chilly November evening. Many of them had been at it since early this morning when the polls opened. The polling place was bustling with activity. Friendly volunteers directed traffic, and ushered me to a red, white and blue bedecked booth where I voted the old-fashioned way, with a felt-tip pen! Then I went outside and held a sign for a fellow Porcupine who was running for School Board. The mayor strolled around, thanking his supporters and cradling a cute baby in his arms (no, really!). The opponent of the guy for whom I was holding a sign walked by and gave me a dirty look. A group of Porcupines and their girlfriends, some of whom had taken the day off work in order to work at various polling places all day long, whiled away the time by debating the constitutionality of various issues of the day. The obligatory box of Dunkin Donuts was, of course, close at hand.

But the single biggest difference between voting in New Hampshire and voting in the San Francisco Bay Area is that, 15 minutes after the polls closed, I already knew the results of the election! Anyone who was interested was allowed to linger in the polling place (the basement of a church) while a computer quickly tallied up the ballots cast and spit out the results on what looked like a cash register tape. A sharply dressed gentleman then read the results aloud. If I were back in California, I’d need to wait several days while boxes full of “misplaced” ballots were suddenly located, lawsuits were filed, people huffed and puffed for the news cameras, and I’d finally get to find out that most of what/whom I voted for lost anyway. In Manchester there were three issues on this ballot, and I got what I wanted on all three. Of course, this only pertains to my own ward; I’ll have to wait for the other wards to get tallied to find out the final results.

The mayoral race was rumored to be close, but several people (including yours truly) gasped audibly when we heard that there was a difference of only ONE vote between the two candidates! Who says your vote doesn’t matter??

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Election fever has struck New Hampshire. There are political signs EVERYWHERE: on street corners, lawns, freeway on-ramps, in business windows. One local candidate has parked himself in front of the nearest Dunkin Donuts and smiles and waves at passing cars (I’m sorry, but is this supposed to demonstrate some sort of aptitude for the job…?). One morning on my way to work I was impressed to see the freeway on-ramp absolutely lined with small signs for Republican mayoral candidate Frank Guinta. But yesterday, on the same on-ramp, they had all been replaced with signs for Democratic incumbent Bob Baines. hmmmmmmmm

Numerous Free State Project participants are running for office, and some of them have a good shot at winning. I spent the afternoon delivering flyers door to door for one candidate who is running for City Council of one of the larger cities. He’s running as an independent, but is teamed up with a well-known Republican and his chances look good. He has received financial contributions from so many generous Free Staters and friends, as well as from the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, that he’s actually pushing the limit of what he’s allowed to accept without having to jump through obnoxious reporting hoops. It was a very foggy, misty day, and after 2 1/2 hours of trudging up and down people’s front steps and shuffling through unraked autumn leaves, my hair was dripping wet, my flyers were soggy, and my feet ached in 5 different ways. But a $2 draft at a local pub (OK, so maybe it was two) and a mountain of 25 cent buffalo wings, along with cheery conversation with my footsore compatriots, did a lot to ease the pain and ward off the damp November chill. The election is only a day away… here’s hoping some more Free Staters get their blistered feet in the doors of political power, so they can start rolling back government!

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