LISTEN NOW… The New Hampshire Primary brings candidates and national media from all over the country to our little state every four years. While many see it as a boon to the political (and economic) culture of the state, is it really a net positive? Get the inside scoop on the New Hampshire primaries and some analysis on this cycle’s Democratic slate from your hosts on this week’s Told You So! LISTEN NOW…
I’m working on a summary of yesterday’s proceedings regarding the City of Manchester’s proposed plans to put up several surveillance cameras downtown. In the mean time, here’s today’s coverage from local media sources…
We want more privacy,” plaintiff Carla Gericke said. “We want the government’s role to be limited and restricted as it’s constitutionally supposed to be. Let’s not turn into a big brother Orwellian surveillance state.”
Gericke, a liberty activist who has sought state and local office, said she would have no issue with a storeowner installing a camera and voluntarily sharing video with police. ‘Everyone’s working together. That’s a decentralized approach,’ she said. ‘What we’re talking about here is a very centralized approach where it’s centralized in one group of people’s hands. We don’t know really what’s going to happen to the data and I think it’s naive to just say we should trust them.’
Carla Gericke, president emeritus of the Free State Project and a Manchester activist who led a protest against the cameras last April outside City Hall. She is concerned about the cameras having a chilling effect on future protests. She questioned whether the cameras would record future protesters and if the police would use the information to make a database of trouble-makers and renegades.
I have suffered from stage fright my entire life. When I say “fright,” I mean a full-blown, out-of-body experience during which time I have zero recollection of what is happening, and cannot recall a single word I said. It is terrifying. Imagine having a blackout on stage, in front of an audience. This is me. Every single time.
Forget about imagining the audience naked or, if you’re more polite, in their undies. Forget about emulating your favorite public speakers. Forget about Ouma’s ‘Five Ps’—Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance!—because you are about to go on stage, and you are not prepared!
Again.
At PorcFest 2011, I looked around the main tent, trying to still my breathing. The space is filled with people I know. Donors. People who want to see the Free State Project succeed. People who want to see me succeed… I think?! I glance across the field, watching brightly clad teenagers playing pick-up basketball. I try to sync my breathing to the bounce of the ball. It doesn’t work. I glance at the notes I’ve jotted down over the past hour in the VIP tent while downing three gin and tonics: “Yankee Hong Kong!!!!” “Success stories!!!” “Gimme your money!!!”
I’m fucked.
Again.
The first time I experienced a blackout speech was at Mafikeng Primary School. I must have been eight or nine. I was two years younger than my classmates, which came with its own set of challenges, but mostly manifested itself in me trying too hard. I won’t lie: I was a Smart Aleck.
(As smart as you can be when you are constantly playing catch-up.)
As part of our curriculum, we did a public speaking course. Half your grade came from prepared speeches given over the term, and the other, from impromptu talks where the teacher gave you a topic, five minutes to prepare a short talk by jotting down your ideas on flash cards, and then you were expected to give a three minute speech to the class.
My topic that day was about what would happen if the drought we were experiencing never ended. I wrote ‘World Wars!!!!’ on my card.
That was it.
When I came to, when I reentered by body, no longer hovering above myself watching my mouth move, when the electrical charges coursing through my insides left, and the shooting starbursts in my peripheral vision disappeared, when I could again identify my peers and friends sitting in front of me, and I returned to the stuffy classroom trailer that smelled of dust and chalk, the teacher was on her feet, giving me a standing ovation.
She had never reacted like this before. I could tell my classmate were confounded, perhaps even a little jealous. They were clearly not as impressed with whatever had come out of my mouth as the teacher was, but, being polite and intelligent enough to understand her enthusiasm should translate to theirs, they joined in, clapping. I have no idea what I said, but apparently, my doom and gloom rendition of a world without water and the perpetual wars that would follow had struck a nerve with Miss.
The next distinct memory of such an out-of-body experience was during my interview to become a Rotary Exchange student. I was sixteen, a senior in high school. I was dating my first boyfriend, Stephan Le Roux, and had become ambivalent about leaving South Africa (him, really) for a whole year to lands unknown, but the competitive part of me wanted to prove that I could win. That I could be picked over my more mature (and likely better balanced) compatriots.
Being a Rotary Exchange student from South Africa in 1988 came with baggage. Big White Apartheid Baggage. Even if you were anti-apartheid, as I was, you had to be able to frame the despicable Nationalist policies with some semblance of nuance. Like being able to defend the homelands—the shithole areas designated as “tribal lands”—by arguing that most of South Africa was a shithole, so they weren’t being especially punished by being banished to these inarable places.
My parents, who both worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs at the time, prepped me good and hard, sitting around the kitchen table every evening after dinner.
Ma: “What percentage of South Africa is arable?”
Me: “Less than 27%”
Pa: “Good, good. Remember to point out that means lots of areas are less than optimal for human occupation, not just the homelands. Now, let’s go over Nelson Mandela again.”
I went into that interview with the Rotary Club of Hatfield as well prepared as Pik Botha–imagine a mashup between Robert McNamara and Dick Cheney: charming and dangerous, and not only when hunting–the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs would have been.
I nailed the interview. Except, once again, I have no idea what I said. The interviewers were concerned about my relative youth—there’s a big difference between sending a sixteen year old versus an eighteen year old overseas on their own, as we know from the Permissible Age to Murder Citizens (AKA, the draft)—so the Rotary committee decided I would be ineligible for a full year scholarship, but offered me six weeks in Germany instead.
I’d been to Germany before. The boyfriend won out.
Stephan and I wrote and performed anti-establishment plays during our ‘Varsity years. One, called “Die Klein Krul Swart Haartjie”—The Tiny Curly Black Hair, which referred to a pubic hair, not an afro, as people who refused to attend failed to grasp—was banned on campus, and pushed to the Fringe of the Grahamstown Arts Festival, the largest arts festival in the Southern Hemisphere. Relegated to a 2 p.m. slot at a primary school miles from the downtown action, we were not the greatest of successes, although I did learn the meaning of a new word from a review we received—one that said the show was in the spirit of “Not the Nine o’Clock News.”
“Scatological?” Stephan asked, reading the review, English being his second language. “Is that good?”
“Very,” I said firmly, making a mental note to consult the Oxford English when I got home.
During that Grahamstown performance, my stage fright took an even more alarming turn, in that I literally forgot my lines. The final coup de grace of the scene was supposed to be mine, a zinger at the end, in a devastatingly critical and clever piece about the power of individuality as it triumphs over the state.
“You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole,” I was supposed to say.
But nothing came out. My mind dissolved into blankness, my synapses reaching out, searching for the answer, the words I knew came next, but all there was only a blindingly chasm of nothingness, a dark, empty blackboard stretching in my brain. Every word I knew, any word, just beyond reach.
Other times, it happened in court. When I started practicing law during my articleship, I took Legal Aid Board cases in the townships that no one else at the firm would touch. The country was on the cusp of radical changes, with a new Constitution in the works. One time, I represented a nineteen year old boy-child, who had been in jail since he was sixteen, who had not even been given a trial date yet. Even though the Constitution had not yet been adopted, we’d learned about all these newfangled, shiny human rights in Law School, and I made an impassioned plea in Court as to why the judge should release this young defendant on bail. Except I don’t recall a word. For me, that day: Blankety, blank, blank.
You cannot fit a square peg in a round hole.
You cannot fit a square peg in a round hole.
You cannot fit a square peg in a round hole.
Will it ever end?
Part of the issue is I have an artist’s heart and a lawyer’s brain. I once saw a Venn Diagram with two circles. One was, “Overwhelming Narcissism,” and the other, “Crushing Insecurity.” The part where they overlapped: “Art.” And so, I disregard my betraying brain, and I keep pushing through my fears towards my heart, towards my art.
Now in 2019, eight years from that time I took the stage at PorcFest, I get ready for my talk, which officially kicks off the 16th annual Porcupine Freedom Festival. In these ensuing years, I have quit drinking alcohol, which means I no longer get to drown my stage fright in amnesia-inducing booze. It means I no longer have to take a swig of tequila in the car in the parking lot at 8:30AM before heading into the NHPR office to be pilloried for believing in freedom, peace, and prosperity. I also no longer take prescription beta blockers to alleviate the stage fright, which helped with the symptoms of my anxiety, but for some reason made me sweat like a junkie in withdrawal–not a great look for TV! And, I haven’t vomited prior to an interview since 2016!
My positive life choices over the past two years (Keto diet, Bikram yoga, and ENOUGH SLEEP) means I have a new clarity, and yet, I am still nervous as hell, and, of course, not as prepared as I should be. But whyyyyyy!?!? On the Ouma scale, I’d say I’m at: “Partial Preparation Makes for Somewhat Passable Performance.”
I ask myself why I keep pushing. Why subject myself to this terror? Why don’t I just give up and say, Public Life is Not for Me (says the woman who wants that Senate seat!)? But I know why… Because I have important ideas to share and a unique voice to share them with. A voice that may tremble, a woman who may cry on stage when talking about what brought her to New Hampshire, and what broke and healed her on the journey to where she is today. I keep pushing because to give up would be to admit defeat, to say I can’t improve, when I know, and have proved to myself, that I can. Better… not perfect. But improving, consciously, actively, by choice, and hard work… I am becoming a better me.
[Stay tuned for the video of my 2019 PorcFest talk coming soon, “How I learned to stop faking it and become a better me.”]
Last week, we were ready, willing and able for arguments regarding the illegal police cameras being proposed downtown. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, the matter has been postponed and another judge was assigned to the hearing, which will now take place on July 9th.
The Union Leader covered the delay here, mentioning the fact that the City of Manchester has argued that several other jurisdictions are already using cameras, so it must be A-OK. Following this logic, if a cop bust you for speeding, you can argue it’s OK because other people were speeding and breaking the law, too… right?
Police Department’s latest defense for its downtown surveillance cameras: At least five other communities do it. A wrinkle to their argument: Milford, Concord, Exeter, Salem and Claremont stream their video feeds on the internet for all to see — usually for promotional reasons. Manchester city officials named the five communities in a 10-page legal brief filed Monday in Hillsborough County Superior Court. The brief is a response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by civil libertarians challenging plans for police surveillance cameras on Elm Street.
The hearing for injunctive relief in the matter of NEAL KURK et al. v City of Manchester is taking place today. Having now read all the rather technical pleadings, it’s difficult to predict what may happen.
On the one hand, you have us four intrepid privacy advocates, the petitioners, holding strong that under RSA 236:130, it would be illegal for these surveillance cameras to even have the capability to identify motorists or motor vehicles, since such identification is expressly banned if it “can” occur under the section entitled, “Highway Surveillance Prohibited.”
On the other side, you have the City of Manchester and its police force, who argue they can do what they want (and they usually do–remember the recent tax cap override?). The City makes several technical arguments, including that some of us lack standing under Duncan, a bad court case that lead to the successful Constitutional Amendment which passed by a whopping 83% margin last fall to restore taxpayer standing. They also seem to make the argument that we should just “trust them” to use the cameras in lawful ways. Color me skeptical.
You can read more about the case here:
Union Leader
Manchester Ink Link
Granite Grok
Follow me on Facebook to stay up-to-date on today’s developments.
The Free State Project is doing great:
Politically, NH is in a weird situation right now, with the flip in 2018 to Democrat in the House and Senate, but still with a Republican Governor. Free Staters have been in the unique situation of furthering libertarian goals, by working with both sides of the aisle on issues we care about: criminal justice reform, legalization of recreational MJ (sadly, tabled by Senate), annulment of misdemeanor drug charges, pushing back on irresponsible Democratic high tax/spend budget, pushing back on attempt to backdoor an income tax masquerading as “family medical leave,” holding the line on business tax cuts, and a huge one for many of us: repealing the death penalty (which passed by ONE vote, phew!).
Our ideas are gaining traction, for example, at least 7 Republican House members said “Taxation is Theft” from the well during session speeches (and only one was a free stater!), and essays like this, “My Turn: Taxation is theft – and here’s why” have appeared in local newspapers. I even got to say “less and less is more when it comes to taxes” and plug the FSP on the BBC recently (listen to The Why Factor “Why is it so hard to get people to pay taxes?” I’m near the start).
I have also been working on new projects which continue to further Liberty in Our Lifetime:
Remember, donating to the Free State Project is your opportunity to support a living libertarian experiment with the potential to change the world. We’re doing it, but right now, we can use a little help! Thank you!
Fond regards and deepest thanks,
Carla
Today, the ACLU-NH filed a lawsuit on behalf of 4 petitioners (and I’m one of them! :)) to block the use of police surveillance cameras on Elm Street in Manchester. Here is the ACLU-NH’s press release:
Surveillance cameras would violate a NH privacy law because they will capture motorists’ identifying information
CONCORD, N.H. – Today, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire filed a lawsuit challenging planned surveillance cameras in downtown Manchester. The cameras, which would capture live video of traffic on Elm Street, are illegal because they violate a state privacy law that specifically disallows cameras that capture a motorists’ identifying information, such as their face or license plate.
“The surveillance cameras proposed by the City of Manchester are troubling: driving down Elm Street shouldn’t include recording video of your face, license plate, and passengers,” said Gilles Bissonnette, Legal Director at the ACLU of New Hampshire. “New Hampshire is a state that staunchly defends its right to privacy, and this plan is a direct violation of that by needlessly capturing the information of thousands of Granite Staters simply going about their business.”
The current installation plan includes three permanent surveillance cameras in the area of City Hall that will look north and south on Elm Street, with a live feed transmitted to the Manchester Police Department’s dispatch office. The images captured would be recorded and stored for fourteen days. Although the intent may not be to monitor traffic, the high quality of the cameras allow users to zoom in and out, and would inevitably capture faces and license plates.
Former Representative Neil Kurk, who drafted the law in 2006 and is a petitioner in the case, said:
“The statute we are defending in this lawsuit is unique to New Hampshire and, unlike other states, provides our citizens with a right to be free from government intrusion that is tantamount to a surveillance state. The goal of this statute is to prevent New Hampshire from becoming like New York City or London where government surveillance through cameras—regardless of whether the surveillance cameras capture criminal activity—is pervasive. I am deeply disappointed that Manchester is going down the path of government intrusion by installing surveillance cameras on Elm Street. This is exactly the type of surveillance that the statute was and is designed to prevent.”
Carla Gericke, a former New Hampshire State Senate candidate and petitioner in this case, said:
“How can the police simply start surveilling downtown people and motorists without any input from the community? When I learned about the Manchester Police Department’s plan to put up surveillance cameras downtown, I organized a protest rally, and about 40 people attended. I am deeply concerned about this government intrusion. I am confident that Granite Staters do not want this type of surveillance because more than 80% voted to protect privacy when they amended the New Hampshire Constitution last year.”
Last year’s pithy joke popped up in my “Memories” on Facebook this morning, and it reminded me, I’ve made a lot of progress over the past year. The quote holds true… My confidence has grown (or mostly, returned); I feel physically strong and healthy–my blood pressure is 98/62; I’m practicing Bikram Yoga regularly again after an eighteen year hiatus (yeah, OUCH!); and I am so, so, so, eternally grateful I DECIDED to make myself my #1 priority. I hope you will make yourself your #1 priority, too.
Follow me on Insta and Facebook for tips on how YOU can live The Good Life, free and happy, following an active, Keto lifestyle. Let me help you master The Art of Independence!
Five years ago today, I won my First Amendment First Circuit civil rights lawsuit against the Weare PD affirming YOUR RIGHT to RECORD POLICE in PUBLIC. Remember:
1. Record EVERY police encounter you see. This is a powerful way to keep everyone accountable and safe! If you are just passing by, see your role as being a “witness.” Don’t get involved or confrontational, simply record. If you use Facebook, using the “LIVE” feature can add protection in the event your footage “disappears” later.
2. Creating a local culture of filming police officers in NH is an excellent way to keep our police accountable to the people. We have now been waiting for YEARS for body cams, which, where introduced, strangely, only seem to record “parts” convenient to the official narrative, so ALWAYS BE FILMING FOR YOUR OWN PEACE OF MIND, YO! 🙂
2. Even if your phone is not working, pretend to film because as stated in #1, it helps keep everyone on better behavior when they think they’re being recorded.
3. The police have NO RIGHT to take your phone/recording device without following proper procedures, and if PD tells you they’re taking your recording, or that you are not allowed to film, you have a lucrative lawsuit waiting, so be sure to consult a lawyer immediately… because…
4. Police have NO CLAIM OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY (their “get out of jail free” card) and WILL be held liable for violations of your right to record them.
In Rialto, CA, where they introduced body cams years ago, they found:
“But Rialto’s randomised controlled study has seized attention because it offers scientific – and encouraging – findings: after cameras were introduced in February 2012, public complaints against officers plunged 88% compared with the previous 12 months. Officers’ use of force fell by 60%.
‘When you know you’re being watched you behave a little better. That’s just human nature,’ said Farrar. ‘As an officer you act a bit more professional, follow the rules a bit better.'”
Don’t rely on them to provide the recordings… DIY!
A New Hampshire state Senate committee recommended the Senate put off action on marijuana legalization until 2020, in a blow to a legalization effort that has sputtered in recent weeks.
A few thoughts regarding the objections listed in the Concord Monitor article:
1. Unless you plan to ban children from ever watching TV again, where shows about MJ are freely available, you really need a better excuse than “we need to protect the chillun”. If we can successfully protect children from a much more dangerous **drug**… ALCOHOL… methinks we can do the same for a safer, natural alternative.
2. It’s “illegal federally” is an excuse in NH now? For shame! What about states’ rights and the 10th Amendment? Or does that only apply when y’all want to circumvent federal stuff you DON’T like… Wayfair and internet taxes spring to mind. Don’t get me wrong, NH should be nullifying the nonsense coming out of DC left, right and center, but this a BS excuse, and y’all know it! I will add, I hope Trump de-schedules cannabis… I assure you he would win reelection in a landslide!
3. Speaking about crack-pots (haha), the most dangerous part of this whole issue is THE PEOPLE WHO STILL BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT’S EIGHTY+ YEARS OF LIES AND PROPAGANDA. Here are some facts: Cannabis has NEVER been the cause an overdose fatality. It is a PLANT found in NATURE. All human beings have cannabinoid receptors in their bodies. Maybe, just maybe, y’all can stop MEDDLING with peaceful people’s lives and stop criminalizing people’s personal choices. You have done enough harm. Stop, just stop.
PS: Can you imagine if someone tried to “legalize” an amusement park like Six Flags in America today? “You want to strap kids to what and do what???” Stop treating children like hopeless, helpless, delicate flowers, stop coddling them and treat them with the respect they deserve, which means telling them the TRUTH about things. Yes, even “scary things” like drugs, but also the destructive, racist history of the War on Drugs, a war waged by our own government on US.
