FSP 1st Annual 'Porcupine Freedom Festival'

For Immediate Release
June 17, 2004

SUBJECT: Free State Project 1st Annual "Porcupine Freedom Festival"

Contact: Amanda Phillips, National Spokesperson
Email: aphillips@freestateproject.org
Phone: 617-763-1996
Website: www.freestateproject.org

Lancaster, New Hampshire – More than 300 participants are expected to arrive in Lancaster, New Hampshire, for the Free State Project's first-annual Porcupine Freedom Festival. The festival will run from Thursday, the 24th of June through Sunday the 27th, with most events scheduled for Saturday the 26th. The weekend's activities at Roger's Campground will include a hike up Mount Liberty, food and fun, the sale of FSP souvenirs, speeches from FSP leaders and libertarian notables, and presentations on issues such as gun rights, home-schooling, taxes, and industrial hemp. The festival is named in honor of the group's mascot, the porcupine. Their website explains, "Porcupines are certainly cute and non-aggressive, but you don't want to step on them!"

Tim Condon, FSP Director of Participant Services, said, "Until now, the Free State Project has been a virtual organization, with participants scattered across the country and connected only by the Internet. For most of them, the Porcupine Freedom Festival will be the first opportunity to meet their comrades in person, and in New Hampshire."

FSP founder and Yale political science lecturer Dr. Jason Sorens commented, "This will be seen as a major milestone in the history of the Free State Project-the time when an abstract plan became a concrete reality, as hundreds of libertarian activists visited their future home together, with a real hope of making a difference."

FSP President Amanda Phillips commented, "Just by crossing the state line into New Hampshire, we are achieving a greater degree of liberty than we had in the states we leave behind. Some are joining us for the weekend, and some for the rest of our lives; the Porcupine Freedom Festival is a chance to discover what our society of libertarians might look like."

The Free State Project (FSP) is a plan for 20,000 or more liberty-minded people to move to New Hampshire, where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government. Participants pledge to work peacefully toward a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property. The non-partisan, non-profit FSP organization chose the "Live Free or Die" state as its destination, and several dozen of its more than 5,800 participants have already moved.

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