Last year, a good group of liberty activists made a difference at the “Project Graduation” event. We’re going back this year, but without your help it may not happen! There are different shifts available, but they really need people for 12:15a-4a this Fri/Sat night. (The event starts 6/11 and ends early 6/12 AM.) Here’s the message from volunteer coordinator Christine Kehoe:

We are still very short of the number of volunteers we need to chaperon and run games and activities!!!

Please, if you have not already signed up to cover a 4 hour shift, we need you!! We are only halfway to the number of people we need to make sure we can go forward with the event.

The chaperon shifts are 9pm-12:30 and 12:15-4 am and the clean-up shifts are 4-8am and 6-10am. The 12:15 shift is always the hardest to fill and is where we have the greatest need!

Can you help late Friday night, particularly from 12:15a-4a (technically early Sat AM)? Throw in your name here on the forum thread, and I’ll pass on your info to Christine. Thanks!

An anonymous commenter on the Keene Sentinel site has asked questions, and I will answer them (quoted exactly as they were written) here so they aren’t lost behind the Sentinel’s paywall after a week:

1. are you advocating 12 and 13 year olds drop out of school and self educate?

No, I’m advocating they visit SchoolSucksProject.com and listen to the podcast there.

2, If freedom of life choices and self ownership is the foundation of your ideology when does a person start to make these choices for themeselve?

Consensual interaction between humans and nonaggression is the foundation for me. Of course freedom to choose is also very important. I think people are ready to choose when they are ready. There is no set age.

3. What do you believe the age of sexual consent should be legaly?(Ian please)

I don’t believe in the violent monopoly fantasy of the state, so I can’t answer what should be “legal” as I do not wish to impose my beliefs on others. I think people should be free to make mistakes sexually and that putting consenting people in jail cells and calling them “sex offenders” for the rest of their lives does not help people who make poor choices. I believe ostracism is the proper way to handle people who are behaving in ways you find distasteful. I’m tired of seeing teens sent to jail and given criminal records for consensually experimenting and photographing themselves. Molestation and rape are abhorrent to me, as they do not involve consent.

4. Are you video taping these children and putting it on the web as is per your custom with most of your other actions?

It is common for news organizations to record and playback footage of young people in public. This is not what I am doing and is not a goal, but if I want to record in public, there is always the chance that young people could be captured on video. It’s also possible they could be interviewed. Again, I’m not doing these things, but I don’t oppose them being done.

5. Do you consider it “harming” some one if you approach their child without thier consent to influnce them counter to how their family values are structured?

I don’t consider conversation harmful. If you consider certain ideas to be dangerous it is your job to prevent your child from coming across them or else just help them thoroughly understand why your ideas are the best. Surely if your ideas are so good, they will easily hold up to our horrible, dangerous message of peace and consensual interaction between human beings.

“Curious” wrote with the following questions from the Sentinel Middle School Outreach Story:

On the specifics for evolving the current education paradigm, I’m no expert, and that’s the reason we are holding the School Sucks Project signs. Listen to Brett, a former middle school teacher, who studied the history of the government’s education system, and you may be surprised at what you learn. The earlier link has a great audio introduction to his podcast. This is what we are inviting your kids to learn and consider, please listen for yourself as well. You could even sit down with your kids and listen to it together, and then have a rational discussion, that might teach you a lot about your kids.

5. Do you consider it “harming” some one if you approach their child without thier consent to influnce them counter to how their family values are structured?
Thanks. “

Time for some news from around New Hampshire viewed through the perspective of a person who used to be authorized to use violence to enforce morality.

I welcome your opinions about mine:

1. Lawmakers are contemplating a change to the “Right-to-know” law which would allow greater governmental accountability for the people. The people, you know, who have to consent to the government in order for it to even exist.

“But those who worry about the continued efforts of public officials to restrict public access see this as one more attempt to inhibit the spirit of the law.”

Public servants. People who work for and answer to you. They’ll be the judge of what you should know.  Just trust them.

“However at meeting of editors of New Hampshire daily newspapers Thursday it was unanimous the proposal was an effort to give public officials yet another way to keep the public from gaining information about the workings of public organizations.”

Shut up. Do as you’re told. You’ll know what we decide to tell you, citizen.  Why the hell should you know what is going on in a public organization in the first place?  It’s not like you’re forced to pay for it or anything.

If a “public official” is doing work that is righteous… what the hell are they afraid of the public being privy to it in the first place?  Like police squirming when they’re recorded for public consumption, the only “public official” that should be afraid of public scrutiny is a “public official” who is doing something wrong.

2. The Town of Allenstown, NH wants a new police prosecutor as the current one has caused the department’s conviction rate of non-felony cases to plummet over %51 in two years.

““We’ve never seen a decline like that before,” (the police chief) said at the time.”

This is good news to everyone in the liberty community here in New Hampshire I do declare. Well over %50 of what the police do here is enforce “crimes” with no victims (well… the “state” is the victim).

This type of government incompetence that I think all who believe in freedom should support.

I’ve said before that if the government didn’t attack people who haven’t hurt anyone that there would never have been a Free State Project. Anyone care to dispute me on that?

3. Why are the police so against being filmed?

“You wanna go to jail for some fucking reason I come up with???” (lie.)

“Ever get smart mouthed with a cop again I show you what a cop does!”

Yeah.  They protect and serve, right?

And again— you’re forced to pay for it.

And you’d better believe it is a threat:

I don’t want to pay $892.96 to fund the police attacking people for doing things that haven’t hurt anyone.

I don’t want to pay $1561.55 to fund the local school system that will dumb down kids and teach them that it is okay to use violence to solve problems.

I don’t want to pay $353.24 to fund other school systems to dumb down kids and teach them that it is okay to use violence to solve problems.

I don’t want to pay $400.25 to fund keeping humans in cages for doing things that haven’t harmed anyone else.

………  but I will.  I will because I don’t want violence to be used against me.  I am a believer in karma so I’d say that I’d deserve it.

I used violence all the time to enforce the will of the majority.  If someone didn’t do what I said I’d either slam them on the pavement, put 50,000 volts of electricity through their body, hit them with a baton, or spray them with painful pepper spray.  I hurt a lot of people who never hurt anyone else.  I regret it.  I am sorry.

If I don’t pay the government will sell my home.  If I don’t leave when they sell it they will use violence to get me out.  If I defend myself…  I’ll be killed.

I understand how someone can think that this is acceptable behavior for a supposed “civilized” society.  It is not.

From new mover Adam Mueller – a sample of what REALLY happened at the Keene Middle School outreach:

While doing some outreach at the Middle School in Keene, NH one curious kid had several questions. It was going well when a school official ended the conversation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How can Georgia let a prosecutor tell a judge to kick a defense lawyer off a capital murder case?

It’s rather symbolic of what’s wrong with Washington that a commission ostensibly created to promote deficit reduction is seeking a bigger budget

Equlibrium.  One of my favorite movies of all time and a movie with a message that changed my life.

The movie centers around a government enforcement agent in the future where everyone is forced to take medication to repress emotion.  When the agent stops taking medication he begins to realize all the cruelty that he is inflicting on people.  Once he realizes the cruelty that the government represents, he violently destroys it.  The message, minus the violence (violence is the problem), is one that I wish every person who enforces government laws would absorb, reflect, and find metaphors for.

I too was a government agent doing cruel things to people.  I wasn’t taking medication to repress emotion like in the movie…  but I was led to believe that what I was doing was the right thing to do.  Hurting someone is never the right thing to do.

In the movie the government enforcement agents kill dogs as a matter of routine.  It seems awfully cruel in the Hollywood depiction of a future dystopian society.  It seems even crueler in the actual reality of the now.

I couldn’t find the actual scene where dogs are shot at random… but I did find this awesome scene where, once feeling, the agent (Christian Bale) saves a puppy from destruction:

I share this with you because of this article (which Radley Balko posted today on his own blog) about the police wrongfully shooting a medical aid dog.  This comes not a month after the video went viral about the cruel actions of the police SWAT team in in Columbia, Missouri.

Your heart should tell you that this is wrong…  even before it happens to you or an animal you love.

Some recent news from New Hampshire and beyond …

1. In Bangkok, Thailand the police chief makes misbehaving officers wear “Hello Kitty” armbands while on-duty.  For people who pride themselves on being quite macho I am sure this is quite hard to take.  The C.R.A.P. campaign comes to mind.
2. A wrongly arrested man in Georgia, who spent 32 hours in jail, says an apology by the police isn’t enough.  Well, I am afraid it will have to be.  Should he want to sue for his wrongful kidnapping and subsequent imprisonment while his wife was in labor, it appears that he will fail.  It was a simple mistake that led to his arrest.  The police put the wrong name on a traffic citation.  A simple mistake by the government, even if it violates your rights, is not grounds to sue.  This could happen to you.  If you think that this is acceptable for the government to get away with this stuff without consequence: you are the problem with the world today.  Why would you want to wait for something like this to happen to you or someone you love before becoming outraged that it can happen?  As Pearl Jam says in one of my favorite songs: “Can you feel this world with your heart and not your brain?”  Compassion for others will help you understand what those of us who blog here have come to understand.  You are better than this.
3. It looks like New Hampshire will be punishing tobacco users once again by raising the tobacco tax.  Raise it enough and here comes the black/gray market.  I think it would be a wonderful thing if tobacco users all got their tobacco through whatever alternative markets may exist.  It would starve the state of much needed revenue.  I find it amusing how the state claims to be very anti-tobacco (and liquor) abuse while at the same time it NEEDS people to abuse liquor and tobacco to sustain operations.
4. The NH State Police Trooper (a 21-year law enforcement “veteran”) who used his position to make money by wrongfully giving vehicle inspections remains behind bars at $100,000 bail.  I think that the real problem is that people can be in positions of authority where they can misbehave like this in the first place.  This is just one law enforcer who was caught.  Can you imagine how many remain undetected in abusing the system they are “sworn” to protect?
5. The Town of Merrimack is being pillaged.  As of recent there have been more than 20, twenty, TWO-ZERO burglaries.  It is so bad that the police have decided to warn the entire community: “One police officer said he hasn’t seen this many burglaries in such short time in his more than 25 years with the Police Department. Police said the burglars are not only professional, but they’re also dangerous. Police said the burglars are moving through pleasant neighborhoods in Merrimack and are likely have resumes at ripping people off.” The article then says “Police said they think the burglars are selling the items for drugs or money, and they think this is a serious enough situation to issue a warning to people in town.“  My god, man.  Of course they are.  Any rational glance at property crime statistics would reflect that this is precisely why so much of this property crime exists.  The police really have no interest in preventing this type of crime though.  If they did…  they would remove their head from their less-than-intelligent behind and advocate a change in drug policy which supports harm reduction.  Harm reduction is not about being pro-drug use… it is being smart about the realities of drug use.  People will use drugs.  This is reality.  People will get addicted to drugs.  This is also reality.  When people are addicted to drugs they will do anything to get more.  We see it over and over and over and over again.  I don’t want people to abuse narcotics.  I want people with addiction to get help and for the love of god I want these innocent people in Merrimack and everywhere else in our state to stop being victimized.  Don’t you, police?  Grow a set of balls, think about this crime problem logically, and help fix this problem to make our communities safer.

The Keene Sentinel was out today covering the Keene Middle School outreach event. I sat and spoke with Josh, a new reporter at the Keene Sentinel for about 20 minutes, and I did my best to explain the reason for reaching out to the middle school kids. There seem to be a few discrepancies in his story vs our discussion, so I’ve marked a few very minor corrections in red:

Free Staters protest Liberty Outreach at Keene Middle School

*
Updated June 4, 9 p.m.
By JOSH STILTS
Sentinel Staff
Published: Friday, June 04, 2010

Police were on hand called by school officials, Friday as about a dozen six members participants of the Free State Project stood outside Keene Middle School at school’s end, holding banners and signs that read “FreeKeene.com”  and “School sucks project.”

It was the second time this week the protesters had shown up as students were leaving school.

On Tuesday, Free Keene member blogger Sam E. Miller Dodson stood outside the school on Washington Street by himself, holding a similar sign. He dropped the sign after was attacked when a parent, unable to control his anger, hit his hand holding the sign, Miller Dodson said, and a student ran off with it encouraged by the juvenile behavior of the parent, ran up – snatched the sign from his hand and ran away to rip it in half. Miller Dodson said he needed reinforcements. called for nearby police out of  concern that  pro-government media sources would use the event to skew the facts and warp reality in support of the state that licenses and feeds them news content.

When Dodson called for Police, several of the 40 or so students watching the encounter started yelling “Snitch!”, just like they do in prisons, which are run by the same organization.

“We want to reach out to the kids and show them what they’re being taught isn’t true, isn’t the only truth out there.” Miller Dodson said. “I don’t think it’s fair that I have to pay for kids to go to a ruined failed school system.”

Miller Dodson said privatizing the education system would create opportunities for children to learn in a way that best suits them as opposed to being forced to learn in just one style.

“The government is letting these kids down,” he said. “Private education based on performance instead of test s results would give students the best chance to learn.”

So far the some students haven’t agreed with the protesters.  While others have waved at activists from classrooms  and shouted “Free Keene” while waving from departing buses.

“They haven’t been here and don’t know what they’re talking about,” Kelly Choate, a 7th-grade student, said. “Clearly their middle school experience wasn’t a positive one.”

Many of the students simply ignored the group and walked around them, while others accepted fliers, asked questions, and engaged in discussions with activists. Maxwell Cooper, an 8th-grade student, said he didn’t understand them.

One angry parent approached Dodson to return a flier. When Dodson explained he hadn’t handed anything out, she threw it at him and stormed off.

“They’re wasting their time,” Cooper said. “No one’s going to listen to them. They’re not even explaining what they’re talking about.”

Cooper, along with Choate and two other students, Erick Meyarrose, an 8th-grade student, and Mahad Ahmad, a 6th-grader, sat and watched the protesters activists as they waited for rides home.

Whether it has a n short term effect or not, Miller Dodson said nothing is going to stop him and others from trying to make a difference in the education system explaining the reasons government education is a failure and a flawed idea that costs over $16,400 per student/per year.

“We need to take education out of the government’s hands,” he said. “The more money thrown at it, the worse it becomes.”

More protests outreach events are expected, he said.

Josh Stilts can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1433, or jstilts@keenesentinel.com

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why traditional main stream media is dying a slow and painful death.

From Copblock.org

Today while shopping at the local Wal Mart Pete Eyre and I noticed a Keene Police officer shopping as we left. To no surprise we saw he was parked illegally outside. We waited around so we could ask him why he felt he was privileged enough to park there, while others would be ticketed.

The man with the badge claimed to be on official police business, though that looked alot like shopping to me, and stated that since he drives a different car than most he was allowed to park where ever. Even if he was shopping for the department couldn’t the man, who presumably tickets (fancy word for stealing or ordering) others for parking infractions, just park in a open spot?

There’s a video contest going on now for similar videos.