Liberty.me - Anarchy in New Hampshire!

[Keith and stuff]

Anarchy in New Hampshire!
By Jeffrey Tucker from Beautiful Anarchy link Jun 29, 2014
http://tucker.liberty.me/2014/06/29/anarchy-in-new-hampshire/

Half of the article.

The plane was late to leave New York, as usual, so I didn’t land in Manchester, New Hampshire, until 1:00am, and I still had two hours to drive to get to the Porcfest campground. All the lights on the cabins were out when I arrived, and there was no way even to find my room in the dark.

With a sense of exhaustion, and nearing despair over whether I would sleep at all that night, I grabbed my bags and headed in the direction of a bonfire just down a slightly muddy hill. I planted my bags at the foot of the fire and stood there bleary eyed and confused, not knowing anyone here. If no one helped me orient myself, I would have been fine with falling on the ground right there and sleeping until sunrise.

But of course this was Porcfest, a gathering of thousands of the happiest, most helpful, and most community-minded anarchists in the world. Dozens of people were standing around and someone whose name I forget immediately took me on as a project. He led me back up, found out my room number, and used his flashlight to get me to my cabin, welcomed me to the greatest gathering of free minds of on the planet, and bid me goodnight.

The kindness of strangers! But as I discovered the next day, the last day in a week-long celebration of liberty and life in the white mountains of New Hampshire, there are no strangers at Porcfest. Friendship, camaraderie, mutual support, and a happy sense of unity in diversity are the themes everywhere present.

It was my first trip to Porcfest, after many years of having been encouraged to attend. By now the event is legendary. Finally the day arrived. My only great regret is that I was there for only one day. It’s not nearly enough.

The atmosphere is like that of a family reunion but the DNA in this case is human liberty. It is everywhere on display, in the wild diversity of the crowd, in the broad sense of tolerance, in the slogans on signs and shirts, and, most of all, in the determination on the part of everyone to make it work for everyone else — a determination that is at the very heart of the event.

It’s not really possible to gather in this way and manufacture liberty, not in despotic times such as ours (everyone still pays taxes and still obeys the police coming and going), but Porcfest comes as close as one can imagine. A first-time visitor is startled, perhaps, to see people walking around with sidearms, and yet not feeling even slightly threatened by their presence. There were huge signs hanging there and there with liberty-minded slogans, and a fantastic array of vendors selling food, clothing, jewelry, and services such as tattooing and chiropracty.

If there is any single uniting theme at this event, it is the moral conviction of the inviolability of person and property. I decided to test this the morning of my first day. I had purchased a number of items from vendors, and when I went back to my room, I found the door locked and I had no key. I left my stuff at the foot of the door, in plain view in a heavily trafficked area, and went back to the grounds, not returning until later than night, this time with key in hand. Sure enough — and I really had no doubts about the result of this experiment — everything was just as I had left it.

Porcfest has matured into something absolutely spectacular, and filled with joy. More than any other event, this one has sought to take the idea of liberty out of the realm of theory and put it into practice. Nor is it politics as such. There were no tedious meetings about bylaws or elections over who was going to be in charge of what. There were no squabbles about where the food was going to come from. The clarity of conviction over what is mine and what is thine led to a beautiful peace.

I’ve come to admire the spirit and confidence behind this experiment. It reminds me of late 19th century versions of utopian communities — or the more obvious comparison with Woodstock — but with a big difference. The theme here is not some fluff-headed notion of unity of religion or communism. It is an intense application of all the things that have always made life grand: property rights, exchange, voluntarism, and mutual agreement. People come here this week just to experience a slight glimpse of what is possible when society is organized along these lines.

Read the other half of the article. http://tucker.liberty.me/2014/06/29/anarchy-in-new-hampshire/

https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t1.0-9/10462962_748398701870045_5518058552730502211_n.jpg

[Keith and stuff]

I'll keep with thread updated with other PorcFest wrap-ups. Here goes one from the Union Leader, the NH state newspaper.

Porcfest XI: Free Staters' gathering in Lancaster focuses on DIY
By BOB HOOKWAY
SPECIAL TO THE UNION LEADER
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140629/NEWS06/140629045

About half of the article is quoted, minus the 2 photos. Click on the link for the rest of the article. It's a good read.


Nearly everyone there Friday seemed to be a self-reliance advocate. The Free Staters are known for proudly marching to the beat of a different drum, or maybe about as many different drums as there are Free Staters.

So naturally many of the 300 or so workshops and classes throughout the week at sprawling Roger's Campground in Lancaster had some topics not found on the usual DIY home-improvement menu of weather stripping and carpet installing.

Sure, there was a Knitting 101 class on Tuesday, but later in the week came the popular instruction session on building one's own AK-47 rifle.

One of the reasons the Free State Project - a main reason, in fact - made migration to New Hampshire a priority around 2002 was the state's laws that favor gun ownership. That, coupled with the Granite State's perceived disdain for government regulation of all sorts proved a powerful draw for many of the movement's members. More than 15,000 have, according to organizers, pledged to move to New Hampshire eventually.

Taking a break late Friday afternoon from the steady parade of seminars and instruction sessions in several nearby tents, Nicole Miller of Brooklyn and Finn Bruton of Manhattan - not Free Staters but curious, they said, about the movement - took in the overall scene in the shadow of the White Mountains foothills.

They said they couldn't help but note the constant cheeriness and good nature of the attendees and agreed that it would be hard to imagine a fight breaking out among them, especially under Friday's perfect summer weather.

"They can't get in a fight; they're all packing heat," Miller said with a laugh.

Continue reading http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140629/NEWS06/140629045

[ZENemy]

Porcfest would be even MORE Fantastic if it traveled.

A traveling "Freedom fest" is what we need.

[Keith and stuff]

Porcfest would be even MORE Fantastic if it traveled.

A traveling "Freedom fest" is what we need.

It sort of has. It was in Gilford, NH for 2 years. Liberty Forum, the other event the Free State Project puts on as a way for people to test drive New Hampshire before they move here, also moves around. It started in Concord for 1 or 2 years, then moved to Nashua. In 2015, Liberty Forum will move to Manchester. So between the 2 events, we are talking 5 locations :)

Then there is Burning Porcupine. This August will be the 7th annual event. It's always been in Grafton though, because it's about test driving Grafton, NH before people move there. http://burningporcupine.org/

There is also the Bardo Farm Fest. It always happens in Croydon, NH. However, since those folks recently started both a CSA and a firearms company, they are taking the year off :( http://bardoproject.com/events/bardo-fest/

There was even a Live Free or Die fest for a few years. It moved around to various parts of southwestern New Hampshire. Sadly, it no longer happens but there are always the memories. Maybe it will come back some day. http://livefreeordierally.com/

[Keith and stuff]

The most moving PorcFest 2014 write-up. I shared the whole blog post. Well, there are a bunch of photos that you will have to click on the link to read.

Surprises, Friends, and Porcfest...WOW
http://jenncoffey16.blogspot.com/2014/06/surprises-friends-and-porcfestwow.html


I don't even know for sure how to write this blog entry. So I guess I will have to start with, it all started about 1am last Friday morning...

I couldn't sleep, so I was using Facebook like so many others. I usually don't have the chat turned on but watch for people who message me and just chat that way, or message others...you know it depends on the moment. Some days I am more awake than others to do a lot of typing. It hurts my left arm so I take it as it comes. However; I feel so amazing right now it is hard to put into words. That night I had the chat turned on.

So... as I said about 1am Friday morning, almost all my friends and family are in Lancaster, NH for the annual Free State Project, Porcfest XI. Years ago we use to camp there every summer, but in the most recent years I have had to work so we have not gone in a long time. This event is so amazing, and even more so now than I remember it. My very first one was the 2nd Annual Porcfest, and I had no idea what to expect and this city girl wasn't to sure on the whole camping thing. I had the best time and loved hanging out around a camp fire just laughing and chatting with friends. After that we went year after year for a long time.

I have to take a moment to say that often people who are associated with the project or have libertarian ideals are portrayed as selfish and uncaring. That is what the media would like you to think any way. People who want to work hard and keep what they earn are looked at as some kind of bad person simply for wanting to have a happy life. Let me share how it really is from a first person perspective. Well let me say I will try, because there really are not any words to justify what mutual aid looks like in a free society. I can offer a glimpse.

From the moment I was diagnosed my community rallied around my family and I. I have walked this last year will so much support that comes in so many different ways. You may remember the Liberty Ladies Calendar fundraiser, the online meal train set up that people just would sign up and feed us, to things like watching out for me at public events. People have given me rides to appointments, and I kind of live in the "sticks" as they say. Others have done runs for us to pick up medications at the pharmacy or deliver groceries. Have you ever asked for help and instantly within moment have anywhere from 3 to 30 responses? I have, and I have never felt more loved, cared for, or wanted in my life. It is humbling when you realize how much you mean to someone else, things you never saw before become so much clearer in your mind. Trust me, this is what has and continues to happen to me. I wish everyone who ever gets this suck ass disease could be as lucky as I am.

Sometimes that bothers me, I feel like thank you is just so small and I struggle to make sure that people know how much they mean to me and just how much all the support gives me strength to keep fighting for everything I believe in and to get my body back to work, dammit! On a side note, I have to say it was really neat when they played their own version of the Family Fued and one of the bills I sponsored and worked hard for was the number one answer on the board. :-) There are so many people that where there that I and others call "doers", they are the people willing to simply do something instead of just talking about it. If your interested we have room for more, visit www.freestateproject.org (http://www.freestateproject.org).

I don't think it is any secret that in the last few months, things got harder for me mentally and physically. I am burnt out and wiped out by this recovery gone bad. I have spent a lot of time, to much time, with little to do or people to talk and started creating my own things to keep me busy. Like the radio shows and college class work. Nothing I can do would ever come close to what my friends did for me. You just can't put a price tag on it.

After messaging me that they wanted me to come join them in the beutiful moutains of New Hampshire, and be apart of the largest group of Liberty Activists in the world. One friend, Riaz agreed to drive an hour to my house from his, then two hours back up to the mountain, he also went out of his way to make sure I got home. My friend Chris, who has an electric and manual wheelchair, let me use one of her's instead of the transport chair we have. It made it so I was able to be more confortable and spend time with friends. I would go back to our room and rest and then get to go back out! Chris, who also let me share her hotel room with her, and Amanda worked together to pull it all together. They even paid for me to have a weekend pass to the event. I messed up and left my cell and still more people drove it to my house. Who does that for people these days? These people do.

I am still smiling this morning, I think the corners of my mouth are glued to my earlobes. I have not laugh, smiled, and just felt so relaxed in forever. I can honestly say I don't remember ever feeling that at home at an event in my life. Being surrounded by so many people who do so many different things to preserve, protect, and take back our Constitutional Rights and Natural Human Rights is just amazing. Over 1,5000 people no fights, no injuries, just good times, educational opportunities, and many free market ideas to explore.

These "freestaters" took care of me, helped me, and watched out for me, like Bumps making sure I stayed cool and hydrated, a fellow Breast Cancer Survivor Sister.

There are things that are hard. Seeing others you know have lost a loved one to cancer and almost feeling guilty about it. It is something other survivors can understand, and hard to explain. The missing ones not with us anymore because of it. Seeing two other friends diagnosed within the last year, and knowing just how they feel. We held each other and cried tears of joy to be with one and other. We gained strength from each other, and I know I can say I felt like a weight came off my shoulders.

For this past weekend I didn't worry about anything! I let myself just have fun and forget everything in the outside world for those few days. It is like getting a shot of adrenaline to attend Porcfest or for that matter Liberty Forum, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance Dinner, and other events run by people who simply believe in protecting our civil liberties and basically just want to be left alone and not interfere with anyone Else's way of life.

I plan to take advantage of every moment I can between now and August 15th, then I will allow time to recover and move onto whatever is coming next. I know I still have a long road ahead but I also know, I know I have this moment and this life there is nothing else but now. With that comes the deep desire to succeed in anything and everything. The shot my friends and family just gave me over the weekend has created a renewed energy in me. I just can't wait to get back out there and make a difference again.

I wish there was a way to list every person at Porcfest I am so grateful and honored to know, but you would be reading this blog for the next week if I tried.

[Keith and stuff]

PorcFest 2014: The Intellectual Woodstock of Liberty by Bill Buppert
http://zerogov.com/?p=3485

I'm sharing the beginning and the end of this article here. Click on the above link for the meat of the article.


We traveled the two-plus hour trip to Lancaster from Manchester with our driver, Riaz, who was a recent émigré from Florida and happy to be in a less policed state. We stayed at the hotel at Rogers Campground the entire week. Lilo and I got to see and mingle with all the modern rock stars of the libertarian universe such as Carla Gericke, the President of the Free State Project and Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine. I got to meet Tony Stiles and appeared on Jeff Berwick’s Anarchast, Ernie Hancock’s show and Free Talk Live. Got to hang with my new best friend, Ben Stone and the crew at Michael Dean’s Freedom Feens. Michael even caught my demo of a modified clutch flag on the stripper pole at Buzz’s Big Gay Dance Party on Friday night at PorcFest. Buzz does an amazing job on this party, where everyone is free to be whatever or whoever they are. A truly free experience. Lilo and I enjoyed talking and dancing with Angela Keaton from Antiwar.com, as well as a lot of other fun individuals romping about.

Got to see Larken Rose again and meet Josie the Outlaw in the flesh.

Jeff Tucker was there in all his sartorial splendor and did a magnificent job in the rendition of Ayn Rand’s play that was featured at PorcFest. Robert Anthony Peters was there, my close friend from Tucson who has toured the liberty festivals with me for years. He is one of the only libertarians on Earth who truly groks the relationship between art and liberty.

I met an amazing assortment of interesting folks and reunited with others I had met on the liberty trail over the years. I could hardly traipse around the grounds without running into someone I knew or striking up a conversation with someone new.



If you haven’t been, I highly recommend considering a trip to NH next summer.

This is not a revolution; this is the purposeful evolution of man at the atomistic level. PorcFest, the Free State Project and the abolitionist movement are the seedbeds of the philosophical terraforming of planet Earth.

I want to go again.

Evolve.

[Keith and stuff]

There is the write-up by Popular Science magazine.

Guns, Drugs, And Partial Nudity: PopSci Goes To A Techno-Libertarian Bash
At the 11th annual PorcFest, technology and freedom romp hand in hand
http://www.popsci.com/porcfest

Here is the first half of the article. Click on the easy to remember link above to read the recent of the article and see the photos. I inserted bold text in a few places.


LANCASTER, N.H.—As the sun goes down north of the White Mountains, lasers flare on and Buzz’s Big Gay Dance Party begins. It’s the end-of-week blow-out for the 2,000-odd people who have been at Roger’s Family Camping Resort and Motel for the festival affectionately termed “the Burning Man for libertarians.” Inside, as true dark falls, flushed bodies move below the winking disco lights, surrounded by brilliant strobes, a whomp-whomp beat, enough haze to make you think this is already a dream.

Mark Warden, State Representative of New Hampshire, District 39, is dancing in a red boa and man-skirt. Michael Sylvia, New Hampshire District 6, is there too, and both former senator Robert C. Smith and Andrew Hemingway, candidate for New Hampshire governor, have been seen floating around camp, looking to pick up libertarian votes. [As were 2 candidates for President, 2 other candidates for US Senate and a candidate for US House.]

This is the 11th summer “liberty-minded” folks have ventured into the mountains for the bacchanalia of the Porcupine Freedom Festival (http://porcfest.com). Nights can get rowdy at PorcFest, but under clear summer skies, vendors’ tents cluster near maple trees and families fire up grills or listen to clean-cut kids play kickass bluegrass in the shade. Ashes from several bonfires smolder in the main meadow. The only thing separating PorcFest from any other summer festival are the guns, bristling from thigh holsters and slung casually across sunburned shoulders.

PorcFest is the largest and most visible program of the Free State Project (http://freestateproject.org/), which started in 2001 when a 24-year-old Yale grad student wrote a manifesto suggesting that people stop complaining about mainstream politics and do something about their fears: “establish residence in a small state and take over the state government.” By 2003, the F.S.P. was recruiting members and voting on which state should be home base for the “libertarianvasion” [That word has nothing to do with what the FSP is about. It is a slur and an insult.] that was scheduled to launch once 20,000 people signed on to move. (While the “Live Free or Die” state might seem like the obvious choice, Wyoming was actually a close runner-up. [For 1st place votes, the results were 60% for NH and 40% for WY.] ) Several thousand members have already moved to New Hampshire, and the F.S.P. says it's only 4,000 signatures shy of setting the move-date for the rest of the members.

As Free Staters trickle into New Hampshire, they’ve begun to make their mark on local culture. It’s no longer unusual to see Bitcoin ATMs and 3-D printers here, 3,165 miles from Silicon Valley. PorcFest sponsors have included such tech-notables as Bitcoin big-shot Eric Voorhees, and from the Satoshi Salon to Bitcoin Not Bombs and the Liberty Hackathon, the tech world is inescapable at PorcFest.

As high-tech meets rural New England, the state has become an interesting proving ground. Despite the irony inherent in a community of isolationists, F.S.P. has gathered some of the country’s brightest minds in the pursuit of a do-it-yourself life philosophy, a quest that has led to the cutting edge of both politics and technology.

PorcFest
About 2,000 people paid $45-100 dollars in order to camp out for the week at PorcFest. The festival has been held here for the last 11 summers.
Internet Cowboys, Bang-Bang

Cody Wilson has a cleft chin and a jawline prone to stubble. He spent his childhood in Little Rock, Arkansas, and told the Guardian he was named for a town in Wyoming, a sort of nomenclature-as-manifest-destiny. Cody, the town, was named after William Frederick Cody, more commonly known as Buffalo Bill, and Cody, the person, certainly embodies the Wild West spirit. A self-identified “crypto-anarchist,” Wilson’s an Internet cowboy who made headlines last year by releasing the first plans for a 3-D printed gun. Before the State Department took the file down, one hundred thousand copies were downloaded within two days.

Bill Domenico was one of the F.S.P. members [The FSP doesn't have members. The FSP has participants and I am not aware if Bill is a participant or not.] who got a copy of Wilson’s file. “I spend every day of my life with electronics in a 4,000-square-foot lab,” Domenico says. A compact man with wire glasses, he built a 3-D printer of his own design last spring in Manchester, mostly with parts he already had on a shelf. “You start out getting blobs,” he says. “The first thing you try to print is anything.” By chance, the same week Domenico got his printer working, Wilson released his CAD files. Seven days later, Domenico had successfully printed a copy of Wilson’s gun.

He thinks he’s the first to have done so. He hasn’t fired it. The point seems to be that he should be allowed to print whatever he is able to innovate.

For Domenico, his technologist's outlook meshes well with Ayn Rand's argument that individuals should act in their own self-interest, unbounded by government. “I’ve asked myself why this is such a technology-heavy crowd. The number of software engineers is off the charts,” he says. “When you think about things from a cause-and-effect vantage point, you see, wow, this [mainstream government] isn’t working out the way it’s supposed to.”

3-D Printed Liberator
Bill Domenico's 3-D printed gun

Mark Warden—who, when he’s not wearing a boa, splits his time between a real estate office and the New Hampshire legislature—also noted F.S.P’s tech-heavy demographic. “A larger than normal percentage of libertarians are tech-savvy,” Warden says. Known as the Free State Realtor, he has a broad perspective on who’s actually moving to the Live Free or Die state. “It’s easier for [tech people] to relocate because they can work remotely or from home,” Warden says, “but secondarily, Free Staters are generally tech-savvy because they’re very rational creatures. There’s quite a bit of natural overlap between the liberty mindset, which is empirical, and IT people.”

According to Warden, increasing gun legislation in the aftermath of a tragedy like Sandy Hook is “hysteria.” Bearing arms is important for many libertarians, and the idea of restricting personal choice, even to increase safety, is a tough sell. 3-D guns is just a fresh head on an old argument. As the price of printers plummets, the technology is becoming fairly accessible, even for non-geeks. A basic 3-D printer now retails for around $500, and while a gun is just one of many shapes, as Wilson’s fond of putting it, for those worried about gun safety it’s a frightening trend.

While Domenico can’t legally transfer—sell, trade, or give away—guns, he’s had several potential buyers, and it irks him on principle to have to turn them down. To what extent the rights of an individual like Domenico should be protected as they come into conflict with societal goals (like school safety) is the unanswered question at the core of most of our recent national controversies, underlying the debate on everything from the Hobby Lobby decision to Obamacare to marijuana legalization. Forget red or blue. In terms of the zeros and ones of politics, there are those who think the building block of society is individual action—and those who don’t.

Continue reading. http://www.popsci.com/porcfest