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We Are All Essential: Concord Rally 4/18

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

Wake up, New Hampshire! 124,000–ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND!!!–Granite Staters have lost their jobs–that’s the equivalent of ALL of Manchester and Amherst! This is ?% UNACCEPTABLE!

It is NOT the government’s job to pick winners or losers in the economy. It is NOT the government’s job to lockdown free people. It is NOT the government’s job to destroy the economy. It is NOT the government’s job to tell us who is essential and who is NOT.

On Saturday, I will stand with my fellow Granite Staters against the destruction of our lives and livelihoods through this outrageous government overreach.

Free people move freely! We are ALL essential!

Fwiw, I will be wearing a mask and gloves and open carrying because you can CRITICIZE THE GOVERNMENT’S AUTHORITARIAN RESPONSE and still take reasonable precautions based on YOUR OWN RISK PROFILE AS A FREE HUMAN BEING. If you are scared of getting sick, please stay home.

FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY: People have asked whether the police will arrest us. I doubt it, but that is a lawsuit I am willing to fight all the way to the Supreme Court, baby! Based on my past experience protesting at the State House, law enforcement will likely send an unmarked drone to take photos (although people will be masked, so good luck with your “we don’t use facial recognition software”). Based on my reading of the AG’s memo to law enforcement, the police are only authorized to issue verbal warnings. If they’re feeling particularly Big Bro and dick-ish, they might try to escalate the situation by telling the First Amendment protected assembly to disperse, and then issue misdemeanor citations, followed by trying to arrest people who do not leave. I have already decided I will not disperse and will peacefully submit to being arrested if it comes to that–but again, it probably won’t. You should decide beforehand what your appetite for risk is, and act accordingly–but don’t be afraid! I am confident you will be given an opportunity to leave first. My intent is to be courteous and peaceful at all times, and I encourage you to be the same.

Sign the petition to #ReOpenNH, HERE.

Event link for the rally on Saturday to #ReOpenNH at High Noon. RSVP HERE if you like being on lists, or just SHOW UP, pretty please!  

Petition:

To Gov. Christopher Sununu and the N.H. Legislature

We the undersigned, understand that SARS-Cov-2 (Covid-19) is a highly contagious and potentially dangerous virus;

We understand that N.H. Gov. Christopher Sununu declared a state of emergency on March 13, 2020 in response to the outbreak of Covid-19 in New Hampshire and renewed that order on April 3, 2020 until April 24, 2020, as authorized under RSA 4:45;

We also understand that prior to March 17, New Hampshire had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, and since March 17, at least one in seven New Hampshire workers have lost their jobs and many businesses have shut their doors, perhaps permanently;

We understand that the People of New Hampshire are guaranteed certain Natural Rights, such as the freedom to assemble, the freedom to associate, the freedom to engage in commerce, the freedom to worship, and the freedom to freely travel, among many others, and that a state of emergency does not suspend these Natural Rights;

We believe free adults should be able to make their own decisions and assume the consequences of their actions, and people who are at risk or fear they are at risk have the right to isolate and protect themselves;

We believe the emergency orders issued by Gov. Sununu are arbitrary and unbalanced, particularly in determining “essential” and “non essential” organizations and allowing people to assemble in the supermarket but not in their place of work or community, which are equally susceptible to transmission of the virus;

We believe that the occasion of this virus does not warrant the suspension of liberty that has been attempted, and that many citizens of New Hampshire are suffering undue hardships from loss of livelihood, purpose and community, and that such suspension of liberty is unwarranted, and now, the “public liberty is manifestly endangered;”

Now therefore, we the undersigned hereby petition Gov. Sununu to end his declared State of Emergency on April 24, 2020 or prior, and allow free adults to make their own decisions about whether they want to open their businesses or other organizations, seek gainful employment, or patronize businesses and other organizations, as is their right.

SIGN THE PETITION

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Keep Calm, and Carry Arms

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

Free Staters, have you considered what you would do if you were governor of New Hampshire right now? Because I may well one day be, I have, and I understand why Sununu has issued this “stay-at-home” “order,” currently effective 5PM today, March 27 through May 4, 2020. That’s not to say he is right from a moral, legal, or Constitutional perspective, just that I geddit, and am willing to adopt a “watch and wait” attitude for now. 

My takeaway from this week’s press conferences, sitting in on calls with Sununu, reading the various orders, and reading posts by his staff, is the following: “The Control Freaks Who Only Understand Coercion Are Demanding We Issue an Order for People to Stay-at-Home,” “I don’t want to do that, but I am scared of making the wrong call and thousands of people dying,” “Here, I know! I’ll play both sides like the excellent politician I am. I’ll give The Control Freaks the order, but also tell The Sanes that ‘this is NOT a shelter-in-place order’ and, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, ask to add your business to the ‘essential business’ list,” and, finally, importantly, “we’re not calling out the National Guard to force people back into their homes.”

Yet. 

For now, I am employing a “Keep Calm, But Carry Arms” approach. Not much will change for me. I already work from home. I already shop predominantly online. I already stockpile toilet paper. I already take long isolated walks in the woods. But I will be much less accommodating if, at any stage, for any reason, the population of New Hampshire is ordered to “shelter-in-place.” If martial law is declared, if habeas corpus is suspended in America, I doubt I will comply. 

In the meantime, I suggest we use these Stranger Days to:

Volunteer: You can sign up for official NH volunteer programs to help during the coming weeks here, or, like my husband and I have been doing, you can go out and do neighborhood litter pickups, reach out to infirm neighbors to make sure they have what they need, and generally be a decent human being–from six feet away (or, wear a mask and gloves)! 

Get healthy: If the possibility of getting sick in the future is now a “legitimate” reason to suppress millions of citizens’ rights, shutter and destroy businesses, and crash the economy, let’s use this time to get healthy. Stop eating carbs. Stop eating sugar. If this sounds too hard, try approaching it this way: Cook from scratch until this is over and eat every meal together at the table until then. I bet this simple step will noticeably improve your life! 

Turn in early and get 8 hours of sleep: Our brains detox while we sleep, keeping us healthy and sane. Sleep deprivation is a recognized form of torture, so if you aren’t sleeping well, you are… literally *torturing* your body and mind, which might explain some of the serious health problems in this country. Honestly, if The Control Freaks really wanted to make an impact on the health of Americans, let’s get some SWAT police flash-banging down doors to ensure you are getting enough sleep! (Please don’t do that.)

Try something new every day: Use this opportunity to foster curiosity–curiosity is the antidote to stupid. Take a virtual museum tour in a foreign country. Watch all the TED Talks about a subject you are passionate about (I want to learn more about the brain). Learn to cook or bake something new. Last night, I made 90 second microwave paleo mug buns to go with our Broccoli Cheddar soup, and slathered in butter, these rolls were delish! (I’ll post the recipe later.)

Turn off your TV: The mainstream media wants your attention… it’s how they make money. They don’t care about your feelings. They don’t care about making you anxious. They don’t care about scaring you. In fact, the more anxious and scared you are, the more money they make. If you want to improve your life, the #1 thing you can do is TURN OFF THE NEWS. Make this change permanent; I have, and it radically improved my life!

Meditate: No time like the present! There are a slew of YouTube videos of guided meditations, or apps like Waking Up or Calm that can be downloaded straight to your phone. Meditation is something you can even start practicing as a family. Ten minutes a day can make a vast difference and set your kids up for success in life. Start today! 

Encrypt your communications: Make sure you install encryption messaging like Signal or Telegram in order to securely communicate with the loved ones in your life. 

Live! Free people move freely. If you need to go about your business, be considerate and make an effort to comply with safety instructions, but also, while keeping things in perspective, remember YOU are the captain of YOUR LIFE and you, and only you control your life, the government does not own you. Use this time to take charge of your life, grow, and change for the better! 

[Does this sound hard? Nah. I did it, and so can YOU! Learn more about my journey is this essay, How to Change the Color of Your Aura (that has nothing to do with auras but everything to do with being a happier you! :-)).]

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A Little Island Rebellion…

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

Wondering what’s cooking in Hong Kong? Watch the documentary “Rebellion: On the Front Lines of Hong Kong’s Uprising,” available on Amazon. Also check out Netflix’s “Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower,” if you want to feel David vs. Goliath inspired about what your own human action could accomplish if you just got out there and tried.

“Rebellion” covers what began as spontaneous protests against an extradition law to allow suspects to be deported to mainland China, but has now blossomed into a full-blown popular uprising. Why now? Because as the protestors themselves state, they understand they have only one shot, one chance to resist, otherwise Hong Kong will be subsumed by the Chinese Communist Party, and despite what many misinformed Americans think, Hong Kongers know there ain’t no party in the Communist Party.

Just ask this guy, who was recently brought in for questioning by Chinese authorities, placed in some kind of weirdo jail chair, and questioned because of something he posted in a private chat group. Says Canadian Erza Levant:

“China spies on social media conversations. Then they bring dissidents in for a real-life chat. I’d say we’re AT LEAST five years away from that over here, so no worries.”

Erza Levant’s Tweet

In “Rebellion,” police and hired thugs, literally the Triad–funny how police worldwide always seem to know where to find helpful criminals, almost like, hmm, never mind–start to escalate the violence, eventually maiming and blinding a lady by shooting her in the eye. This shocks Hong Kongers, who, generally speaking, are a peaceful and polite lot, and brings more ordinary people to the streets in protest against police brutality on top of the demands for political reforms.

The most poignant moment for me is when the movie cuts to street graffiti that simply says (translated):

You have taught us peaceful protest is not enough…

Street Art

As a police accountability activist, I have to wonder: When American law enforcement watch the events unfolding in Hong Kong, or watch a documentary like Rebellion, who do they root for? The young, idealistic freedom fighters hoping to keep their quasi-independence from the murderous Commie Motherland, or do American cops now root for “law and order” so hard that they support the vicious, teargassing, bludgeoning police furthering Communist goals and hurting innocent people expressing their right to live free? I’m genuinely curious…

ADDED 12/4/19: Read Pat Buchanan’s take, In Hong Kong, It’s US vs. China Now.

Love learning stuff? Wonder why I think the way I do? Start with these: 7 Documentaries that make you go, “Hmm…”

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Podcasts

Is Deplatforming a Threat to Free Speech? Told You So Ep. 18

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

LISTEN NOW… Twitter is banning political ads, Facebook will drop the ban hammer on a whim, and YouTube has been booting creators left and right in pursuit of a less volatile political brew – but does that mean that free speech is under fire? Dive into the complexities of deplatforming and what it means for the First Amendment with your hosts on this week’s Told You So! LISTEN NOW…

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Who Picks Which Words Get Banned?

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

The following first appeared on September 30, 2015 in response to “On Banned Books Week.”

Censorship has always fascinated me–who gets to decide what someone else can read? Why? By what authority can one person tell another what they are “permitted” to know? I reject the legitimacy of censorship out of hand. No one has such authority, and history proves those who wish to control what others consume are, without exception, eventually exposed as the bad guys.

Growing up in South Africa, many things–music, literature, art–were outright banned and censored, from ANC symbols, to most international music, to the movie “Black Beauty” solely because of its title, to certain words in newspapers, yes, literally blacked out on the page like you see in dystopian movies (and, say, in the 9-11 Commission Report), words like “Casspir” (the South African equivalent of “BEARCAT,” the armored trucks now being seeded by the Federales into peaceful communities across America, including more than 20 in New Hampshire) because if you banned the mentioning of the vehicles being used to fight illegal border wars, well then, reporting becomes problematic and difficult to do, and therefore, perhaps, journalists will stop writing about such pesky things, neh?

Under apartheid, South Africa had the “Jacobsen’s Index of Objectionable Literature” which contained a “Complete List of All Publications in Alphabetical Order, Together with Authors, Prohibited from Importation Into the Republic of South Africa, and All Other Banned Literature.” The list is long, and difficult to find online. I have ordered a hard copy of “A Culture of Censorship: Secrecy and Intellectual Repression in South Africa,” secondhand for $0.02 plus shipping from Amazon, which reminds me of two things:

1. How soon we forget our histories; and

2. Thank god for the free market. If only said book could be delivered by an aerobot drone to my door, but alas, the FAA has been spending its time on such important issues as licensing paper airplanes for flight.

South African author Nadine Gordimer wrote in 1968, republished in The New York Times Books section in 1998:

All the work, past, present and future, of an individual writer can be erased by a ban on his spoken and written word. The ban not only restricts his political activity, which is its avowed intention, but negates his creativity–he becomes a non-person, since his form of communion and communication with the society in which he lives is cut…. And so long as our society remains compartmentalized, our literature will be stretched on the rack between propaganda, on the one side, and, on the other, art as an embellishment of leisure.

Some people wonder why I take issue with so many things I see happening in my adopted country, and, frankly, why I refuse to shut up about it, to give up, to cave in, to just say, Nah, this crap is too hard to change, the difference we can make too infinitesimal, so why try?

It’s because I have lived through a police state before, and America is lock-step marching there. This is not hyperbole. I will grant you: America is doing its police state right, “better,” more subtle, more comfortable, of course, it’s what America does, after all. This police state is hidden behind both the “propaganda” arm, and mostly, the “embellishment of leisure”: The sports, the reality TV, the Christmas carol commercials to consumers in September, the debates, the joke of it all.

The bread and circuses, the tinny music piping from the organ grinder while the monkeys dance, while MILLIONS of peaceful people rot in prisons for voluntarily inhaling a plant, while MILLIONS of peaceful people in far away lands are being murdered under the cloak of the Stars and Stripes, while MILLIONS of people are being displaced by state-funded terror raining down from the skies.

Why does Banned Books Week matter? It matters because it creates an opportunity to talk about the bad guys. And, I am afraid to inform you, the US government is a bad, bad guy, he’s the boyfriend who beats you then tells you he can’t live without you–or you can’t live without him?–and you go back. Me? I decided a decade ago that I wasn’t taking the Fed Gov back, that I would take my chances with a smaller wife beater (the state of New Hampshire), and see what kind of difference I can make on a local level.

Given what happened a few weeks ago at the Kilton Library in West Lebanon, NH (in 2015), where America’s first Tor relay node was made operational again after the community decided to disregard the DHS’s scare tactics, I know I made the right decision to make New Hampshire my home.

Will you join me, and fight the good fight with thousands of other freedom fighters in New Hampshire? Join the Free State Project today.

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Podcasts

The Climate Change Episode: Told You So Ep. 14

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

LISTEN NOW… As the climate change debate heats up on the global stage, is there still room for rationality in the discussion? Most of the arguments rely on either radically restructuring global society or totally ignoring the possibility of human-caused climate change – but there are more than two options when it comes to dealing with such a nebulous problem. Join your hosts for an in depth discussion on the evidence for climate change, the madness of the public discourse about it, and what a sane policy approach might look like. LISTEN NOW…

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Recording cops is a good idea

by Carla Gericke
written by Carla Gericke

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!

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