March 04. 2015 9:56PM
Drew Cline: If Free Staters can help it, everything in NH will be awesome
DREW CLINE
- See more at: http://www.newhampshire.com/article/...50309532/1047/
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Last year, the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum, held at the Crowne Plaza in Nashua, felt a little crowded. About 350 people attended, according to organizers. Today, the event kicks off in a bigger venue, the Radisson in downtown Manchester. Organizers expect about 500 attendees. Roughly half of them will be “liberty lovers” who do not live in New Hampshire. Yet. - See more at: http://www.newhampshire.com/article/....Yt2RzItx.dpuf
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For the uninitiated, the Free State Project is a movement to relocate 20,000 “liberty-loving” people to New Hampshire. Participants chose the Granite State in 2003 for its low taxes, citizen Legislature, relative independence from Washington, D.C., economy and overall quality of life. Since 2003, 1,438 Free Staters have moved to New Hampshire, according to founder Jason Sorens, a lecturer at Dartmouth College. Counting the 273 who moved here before 2003, a total of 1,711 official Free Staters already live in New Hampshire.
Per the Free State pledge, members do not have to move here until a full 20,000 people sign up. So far, 16,493 have signed, per the official count. But Granite Staters do not have to wait for a wave of 20,000 libertarians to see the Free State Project change New Hampshire. It already has.
The state’s nano brewery trend was fueled in large part by Free Staters. Small breweries in Merrimack (Able Ebenezer), Manchester (Candia Road) and Concord (Area 23) were founded by Free Staters. A few years ago, the state had no law allowing very small breweries to operate. Kevin Bloom of Area 23 helped draft a nano brewery bill, which was introduced by then-Rep. Mark Warden, R-Manchester, also a Free Stater. The bill passed and took effect in 2011, leading to a blossoming of small breweries that has garnered regional and even national attention.
In state poltiics, Free Staters have made themselves a small but powerful force. It is unlikely that Bill O’Brien would have become House Speaker or Jack Kimball Republican Party chairman without the effort of many active Free Staters and their libertarian-leaning allies. Free Staters have won seats in the Legislature and on local boards and commissions. But one of their biggest impacts has come through the courts.
In 2010, Free Stater Carla Gericke was arrested by Weare police for video-taping officers who had stopped a friend’s car (she was in a following car) late at night. An attorney originally from South Africa, Gericke knew she had the right to record the stop. “As an attorney, I thought none of this is right, you can’t do this,” she said in an interview.
Gericke was the wrong person to arrest on a trumped up charge.
“Having grown up in South Africa during the Apartheid era sort of informs my view of what government should be like and how people should be treated,” she said. “Coming from a police state environment, I’m probably hypersensitive to it.”
She filed a 32-count lawsuit against the town, which fairly quickly dropped the charges against her. She proceeded with the suit anyway, hoping to stop what had been a pattern of police officers arresting people for recording them, only to drop the charges later. In a landmark case in federal court last year, she won. The court firmly upheld the right of citizens to make video recordings of on-duty police officers.
Though Gericke’s name is recorded for posterity in a federal civil rights case, she could be considered a sort of moderate in a movement that has more people who want to be left alone than who want to agitate. The antics of some Free Staters in Keene have given a general impression that these people might be spotted easily by their alternative clothing or by their shouting, mostly at government employees. In truth, most Free Staters who have moved here have settled more or less inconspicuously into their communities.
There are large contingents of Free Staters in Portsmouth and in Manchester and its suburbs. They have families and good jobs, and they are not really agitators, either politically or socially. Some have run for and won office, but most just go about their lives. They might open carry a firearm to the grocery store, but otherwise one would be hard pressed to pick them out from a crowd.
- See more at: http://www.newhampshire.com/article/....Yt2RzItx.dpuf
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Some of those movers will be at the Liberty Forum, which opens today in Manchester, checking out the state and deciding whether this is the place for them. As most Granite Staters have done (more than half the population was born outside the state), they are likely to decide that it is. And who can blame them?
Gericke says that even if only a few thousand Free Staters move here, “with the mindset and the energy we can still keep New Hampshire awesome.” The State of New Hampshire has hired professional marketers to come up with slogans that will attract tourists. Gericke came up with one on her own that carries more punch than any of the pricey state gimmicks: “Keep New Hampshire awesome.”
Yes, let’s.
Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader. His column runs on Thursdays. His Twitter handle is @Drewhampshire.
- See more at: http://www.newhampshire.com/article/....Yt2RzItx.dpuf