FSP News - April 2008

FSP News - April 2008

PorcFest 2008

PorcFest is less than two months away. Tickets are inexpensive and required to attend the festival and certain activities. Lodging is available, but our exclusive hold on campsites and hotels will end by April 25th and be opened to the thousands of Bike Week attendees. Therefore, sign up and make your lodging arrangements ASAP.

Also, an essential aspect of PorcFest is the ability to interact with new people. If you have a business, an organization, or simply want a soapbox for your views, please take advantage of the opportunities PorcFest provides and register as a vendor/exhibitor. Our rates are inexpensive and you will be able to reach hundreds of potential customers, volunteers, and supporters.

A new aspect to PorcFest this year will be the outdoor concerts on the weekend. For a taste of the bands that will be performing check out:

 

Last but not least, PorcFest needs your help and there are several ways you can help in the success of the festival:

Donate:

PorcFest is an expensive event to produce and its financial success is based on attendee ticket sales and donations. All donations go to PorcFest (none of the organizers are paid) and will cover expenses ranging from facility and equipment rental to marketing. Especially if you will not be attending the festival, a donation is a meaningful way to support the event and the FSP. To donate, either use the ChipIn widget to the left or become a sponsor when you register.

Promote:

Bring/drag along your friends, co-workers, and family and post announcements to the email-lists, forums, and groups you belong. PorcFest is a great way to show people what this Free State Project and New Hampshire thing (you've hopefully been mentioning) is about. You can put your pitch in your own words (tends to be the more powerful) or use some of our pre-made material: SlimJim Handout, Flyers, News Articles, Website Ad, and Videos. If you'd like any printed material sent to you, email porcfest@freestateproject.org with your name, address, and the amount you would like.

Volunteer:

During the festival, people will be needed to help with and perform a variety of tasks. When you register, please tell us in the Volunteering section of the form where you would like to help. Training and instructions are provided for everything.

Buy & Search:

The Free State Project has account with GoodSearch which enables us to receive donations based on the searches and purchases of our members. All you need to do is use GoodSearch when you search, and GoodShop when you shop. Please use the links provided here which will automatically specify the FSP as your desired beneficiary.

Action of the Month - Become an Advertising Mogul

There are millions of people out there. Out there in the "lower 49", following along with the crowd, unaware of the possibilities offered by freedom and liberty. They walk as neither living nor dead, with empty minds and hearts, the promise of personal gain scrubbed from their psyche by the collectivist chant of "all for all". They are like zombies shuffling along with broken limbs. They work like automatons, repetitious and programmed, with few original thoughts, and no fresh ideas. They know that a new thing, successfully produced, will only lead to derision, envy, and contempt from the have-nots and can-nots that are all too pervasive in big-mouth media and tiny-brain academia. So they work on, day after day, in a slick, well-oiled world where doing as you're told is held up as a reward in itself. And what do we have to offer? Do we say to them, "Come join the shuffling up here? We have metal polish and silicone grease?" No, we say, "Come join the eternal vigil for freedom! Come enjoy the anti-virus for your vassalage! Come free your soul to soar among the clear skies and open air of the Free State!" At first, they may not hear you, they may not understand. Remember they have been taught since birth to go-along and get-along. They may never have had a friend or neighbor tell them that it's OK to think like a citizen with responsibilities and privileges. They only think of themselves as victims and subjects with shifting rights, capriciously enforced. So we say to them, "Come free yourselves from the rigid program of "like-everyone-else". Come peel away the cold, metal shell used as protection from the overly PC, overly vindictive crowds. Replace the wires and steel in your arms and legs with the true flesh and true blood of actual humans." We speak gently, with confidence and truth. "Come to New Hampshire with the Free State Project, come home to liberty."

So, to make a short story long, the Action of the Month is: Advertise! Spread the word to the unwashed masses. Get out ye olde crow bar, break open the wallet and buy some advertising in your local paper. In smaller papers, you can find ways to place ads for little or no cost. You can make a sign and stand on a street corner. Get your local group together and pitch in for a radio spot, set fliers on store counters, pass out leaflets at spring festivals, tax rallies, sporting events, etc, etc, etc. With freed minds like yours, I'm sure you can think of more possibilities than I can. The ads don't have to be some long, drawn out explanation or polemic against The State; maybe just a kindly finger pointing out the shining beacon on the hill. Take a little time and advertise Liberty in Our Lifetime.

Request for Local Media Contacts

To help spread the word about the FSP, Porcfest and other events, we're asking our members outside NH to please send in the email address of their local newspaper(s), TV, and news/talk radio stations. Our membership growth is definitely tied to our media exposure, and making a direct outreach to media outlets across the country (and world) will help. Please send the media outlet's name/call letters and the contact email(s) to publicity@freestateproject.org.

FSP Conference Calls

A bi-weekly FSP conference call has been started. Occurring every other Wednesday @ 9pm eastern, the next call will be April 16th @ 9pm eastern. To participate, simply dial 1-785-686-2400 and use the Participant Access Code 72682. The discussion on the 16th will revolve around the marketing of the FSP, the status of PorcFest, communication with and activism of early movers, and questions or subjects attendees would like to raise. If you have any items you'd like to have added to the agenda, for either this or a future call, please email Rich Goldman or post to the FSP Forum.

Merchandise

Nothing new in merchandise. It's just the same old stuff. Tee-shirts are nice. We have different colors. We have different sizes. They all have porcupines on them. We have a bumper sticker. It has a porcupine on it. We have a bookmark. That has a porcupine on it. We have a pin. There's a porcupine on it. There's a really cool, custom Buck knife. It has a porcupine on it. Oh, and this bright yellow Ultimate flying disc. That has a porcupine on it. And there's these neat Koozie can cooler things from PorcFest '05. They have a porcupine on them. We have these blue, stretchy wristbands with the URL and Liberty in Our Lifetime on them. And a porcupine. My favorite of all are the soft, cuddly plushie animals that come in two sizes. They're porcupines.

Free State Match

Line up your sights and take aim for fun and freedom with the Free State Match #5.

Are freedom and liberty in the cards? Will we once again be kings of our own sovereign selves? Will we end up as queens or queans? No matter what, don't jack around but take part in this challenging shooting match. Here's the deal, place 5 playing cards on a target, a deuce (a 2 of any suite) and 4 aces, now shoot the 6 marks on the cards. You have 15 shots in one minute to "break the ink". If you shoot with a scoped rifle, do it at 200ft, iron-sight rifle at 100ft, pistols at 15ft. Why a two and four aces? It spells out 20,000 (well, sort of), as we're shooting for 20,000 liberty-minded people to lead New Hampshire and the world to Liberty in Our Lifetime.

Scoring change: 1 point for each card hit, 2 points for each center mark (pip) hit.

For all you jokers out there, perfect scores will be highly suspect. :)

Walk for Liberty Update

The start of the Walk For Liberty is almost upon us! Tomorrow, April 14, my wife Brooke, my brother John, and I will start the Walk For Liberty from Seaside, OR. I'm going to be starting the walk right from the water, and will walk all the way across the country to the seacoast of New Hampshire.

We're making this walk to do our part to reverse the trend of the government encroaching on our liberties. We're walking to raise awareness of two freedom-oriented causes: the Free State Project's idea of liberty-lovers all moving to New Hampshire, and presidential candidate Ron Paul's message of freedom and individual responsibility.

Preparations for the Walk

The last month or so Brooke and I had been getting ready to move from Hawaii: purging unnecessary items, figuring out what to take with us on the walk, and packing up the rest of it to ship to New Hampshire for when we move there at the conclusion of the walk.

On April 3, Brooke and I flew to Washington state where we stayed with relatives for about a week. John flew in and joined us on April 8. While there, we bought an RV to use as a support vehicle for the walk and a car to shuttle us back and forth. We made final preparations to get ready for the walk, including doing work on the RV to make sure it's ready for a cross-country trip.

Currently

For the past 2 nights we've been living in our RV in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Lacey, WA. We've been finishing up some maintenance work on the RV as well as getting some supplies we will need.

Today we drive down to Oregon -- in about an hour we will head out for the three hour drive down there. We'll stay overnight at an RV part, and then tomorrow start the Walk!

For More Info

I've shot a couple videos recently to document our last minute preparations: Video 1, Video 2.

John has also written a nice blog post: Starting the Walk for Liberty.

You can visit my blog for more ongoing updates, or visit the Walk For Liberty home page.

-- Will Buchanan

New Hampshire is Once Again the Most Livable State

According to the CQ Press annual state ranking, New Hampshire is the most livable state in the union. This is the fifth consecutive year that New Hampshire has won that honor. To all those liberty lovers languishing in states near the bottom of the list: you're in the wrong place. Come home to New Hampshire.

The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people's rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else. freestateproject.org

In New Hampshire

Governor Meets with NHLiberty

The Governor of NH met with the NH Liberty Alliance to restate his commitment against Real-ID. Thanks BikerBill for the video!

Varrin Swearingen on Ron Paul Radio

FSP Media Spokesperson Varrin Swearingen was interviewed on Ron Paul Radio. Click here to listen!

Dave Ridley Interviews Movers

Dave Ridley is producing a series of videos interviewing Free State Project members who have "made the move!"

The RidleyReport

Videographer, Dave Ridley from NHFree.com is one of our Porcs on the scene in New Hampshire. See some of what's happening in the Free State on the RidleyReport.

Check the NH Calendars

The NH Underground Calendar lists liberty-oriented New Hampshire events. The NH Liberty Calendar also tracks NH events. Check the calendars before a visit or a move - you are welcome to attend NH events!

Manchester one of the "Best Places to Live and Launch"

Fortune Small Business has rated Manchester #13 out of 100 best places to live and launch a business in 2008.

NHLA Day at the Races

Come volunteer at the NASCAR race track in Louden! All funds raised through your hard work will be used to support pro-liberty candidates in the November general election. The more the merrier (and the bigger our bonus!).

The event takes place on Saturday, September 13th. Contact Carol McGuire for more information.

New Hampshire Free Press

The April issue of the New Hampshire Free Press is now available online. The issue contains

  • Civil Disobedience Victory
  • Never put your Fate in the Hands of a Bureaucracy
  • Reader Letters
  • Consent of the Governed
  • $42 Million Question
  • Tombstones Mark Anniversary
  • On 5 Years in Iraq
  • Can the Free Market Secure Airlines?
  • Live Free or Die Celebration
  • Sudoku Puzzle
  • Why I am an Anarchist

Free State Blogs

Free State Blogs is now featured on the Free State Project home page!
What's happening in New Hampshire with the Free State Project? Free State Blogs attempts to answer that question. Here's just a sampling of this month's blog entries:

 

Letters to the Editor

DownsizeDC

Hi, Ian and Mark here from Free Talk Live. We're big fans of DownsizeDC.org. In a recent interview, two-time, Free State Project, Liberty Forum speaker and DownsizeDC.org President, Jim Babka, told Wikinews...

"DownsizeDC.org is an organization that makes it easy for every day citizens, with jobs and busy lives, to express their wishes to their two Senators and Representative. It's free and quite easy to use. The DownsizeDC.org system combines education, recruitment, and activism into one simple, seamless process.

"And once someone sends a message, they begin receiving our free email newsletter, or as we prefer to describe it, they become part of the Downsize DC Army. Voltaire said, "God tends to be on the side of the bigger battalions." And we're looking to build the Downsize DC Army so large that Congress cannot afford to ignore us - so big that we can get our message of small, Constitutionally-limited government out everywhere."

You can read the rest of that interview here.

We strongly believe that DownsizeDC.org represents effective, long-term activism. And that's why Jim Babka is a regular guest on our show. It's also why we recommend that YOU check out DownsizeDC.org, join the army, and make your voice heard.

FSP News Thanks & Statistics

FSP News circulation: 12334. Back issues are available. Got FSP news? Please submit content by the 12th of the month. Thank you to all advertisers and contributors.

FSP Participants - here are some quick links:

  • Check out NH housing and other community & logistical information at NH Info

Are you ready to join the FSP, move to New Hampshire and work with us towards Liberty in Our Lifetime? Join here!

Participants: 8304
Participants in NH: 526
as of April 15, 2008