http://www.wirenh.com/features-mainmenu-18/cover-stories-mainmenu-53/5549-free-association.html
Now a decade old, the Free State Project is one of several social movements across the nation seeking to ignite change.
Amid the growing number of new economic and political movements cropping up all over the United States in recent years, the Free State Project claims to have been working for more than a decade to motivate Libertarian-minded individuals to migrate to a central location and “create a freer, better society through the electoral process and cultural change.”
That location, as chosen in 2003 by Free State Project member votes, is New Hampshire. According to the Free State Project, the movement’s 1,000th member recently relocated to New Hampshire, and approximately 11,600 persons have signed a statement of intention to move to New Hampshire within five years of the group gathering 20,000 signatures.
They’ll be promoting the movement, its ideals, and the benefits of living in New Hampshire at their upcoming Liberty Forum in Nashua this weekend, Feb. 23 to 26. The forum will feature investment broker, author and financial commentator Peter Schiff, food freedom fighter Joel Salatin, and marijuana reform advocate Jodie Emery.
Events like this and their annual summer Porcupine Freedom Festival not only serve to promote the Libertarian mindset, but also create conversation that Free State Project president Carla Gericke says is of the utmost importance to the group’s goals.
“We are striving to live as free as possible,” Gericke said. “With freedom comes great responsibility. Sometimes, when I think about the movement, it’s almost like a form of localization on steroids.”
Gericke believes the Free State Project is attractive to people because the idea of collecting Libertarians to make a difference in government is a practical one. She added that, since her election as Free State Project president in 2011—three years after her own move to New Hampshire—she has been less focused on getting signatures on the statement of intent.
“Some of my focus has actually moved toward attracting people to move,” she said. “It’s great that they signed the pledge, but in terms of things on the ground, the more bodies we have here, the more we can actually accomplish.”
Members say the Granite State provides the perfect base for a number of reasons. National media often rates the state and its towns as among the most livable in the country, based on factors such as median household income, crime rate and business tax climate. The Legislature has 424 members, making it the largest state government in the country and providing the highest ratio of representation. And the state’s “live free or die” motto is deeply representative of the Free State Project goals.
But, like other social movements around the nation, the Free State Project has also taken its share of criticism. Some residents think Free Staters are attempting to subvert the very traditions and values it claims to admire.
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, who served in the N.H. House from 1986 to 2004, said he finds it difficult to discuss the Free State Project and their mission without sounding like he’s telling the story of a science fiction film.
“I think that they are radical extremists who chose New Hampshire nine years ago to infiltrate and take over,” Buckley said. “Their philosophy is to impose this sort of extremist, cult-like ideology onto the people of New Hampshire.”
Those who want to join the movement and are willing to migrate are asked to sign a state of intention which reads: “I hereby state my solemn intent to move to the state of New Hampshire. Once there, I will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.”
The Free State Project adopted its mission statement in 2005. “The success of the Project would likely entail reductions in taxation and regulation, reforms at all levels of government to expand individual rights and free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world,” the statement concludes.
Gericke says the project identifies as being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but it is not a political party. She said the Free State Project is just a vehicle to get like-minded people into New Hampshire, though it is common for Free Staters to get involved in political and non-profit work. Gericke said many Free Staters want to be as apolitical as possible, while others believe true social reform can only be accomplished through a democratic process.
In Gericke’s view, the movement has already made serious progress. In addition to the 1,000 members who have already moved here, approximately 12 to 15 Free Staters are now members of the N.H. House of Representatives, and some people associated with the movement have taken other public offices.
Among those who agree with their goals is Republican Jack Thorsen, a member of the Portsmouth City Council. Thorsen also serves as the Area 2 vice chair of the state GOP’s Executive Committee, responsible for Rockingham and Strafford counties. Although Thorsen does not officially identify as a Free Stater, he has taken the movement’s pledge to support smaller government and a freer society. Thorsen already lived in New Hampshire when he took the pledge.
Thorsen said he first learned of the Free State Project during an Internet search in 2006 for groups that shared his concerns about loss of privacy, foreign wars, and intense government growth following the 9/11 attacks.
“I was appalled at the Patriot Act,” Thorsen said. “I was appalled at the financial cronyism in government, the destruction of the wealth of the common man and the potential for an economic crisis, which of course occurred. The system appeared to me to be corrupt and I wanted to know if anyone else felt the same way.”
Thorsen also found several other Libertarian and taxpayer groups that felt the same way. As a Republican, he said he opted to work within his party to make changes rather than working directly with any emerging movements. He has found that these concerns are not just Republican or Libertarian in nature, however.
“I’ve discovered that many people who are Democrats and independents also have the same concerns,” he said. “Not surprisingly, freedom and peace are nonpartisan ideas.”
Free Staters in the Legislature have been working to push reform legislation like House Bill 442, aimed at the legalization of medical marijuana. They have also introduced or championed HB 330, which would decriminalize the act of carrying an open or concealed firearm without a permit, among other proposed bills.
“To some extent, I think we’re just starting to open the debate about what it means to ‘live free or die,’” Gericke said. “Who owns your body? Does the state really have the right to tell you to smoke or not smoke a plant?”
According to Gericke, Free State Project members were also instrumental in cutting the state budget.
She also cited the passage of HB 146 as a significant accomplishment. The bill states that in all criminal proceedings the court shall instruct the jury of its inherent right to judge not only the facts of the case, but also the application of the law in relation to those facts. Known as jury nullification, the measure is intended to allow people to vote their conscience if they feel a law is unjust. It will take effect in 2013.
Brinck Slattery, a political volunteer who moved to New Hampshire in 2007 to support Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, said he thinks these issues are pertinent to individuals across the board, regardless of political or socioeconomic background.
“I think that (the Free State Project) has been an interesting tool for people to meet each other where they wouldn’t have necessarily ever networked together,” Slattery said. “I’ve met a lot of people who I never thought would be my political friends.”
Currently, Slattery is working with Standing Up for New Hampshire Families, a bipartisan group dedicated to protecting the state’s marriage equality law. The Legislature is considering a bill to repeal the same-sex marriage law that passed in 2009, and Slattery is one of many citizens working to prevent that repeal from happening.
“People see (same-sex marriage) as being not a Republican issue, but it is a personal freedom issue and that’s why we need to be in favor of it,” Slattery said.
House minority leader Terie Norelli (D-Portsmouth), is serving her eighth term as a representative. She said the addition of more than a dozen Free Staters to the House has led to the introduction of legislation that aim to subvert New Hampshire’s traditions.
For example, she said, several bills currently in the House would deplete public education, which does not reflect the preference of most state residents. A WMUR Granite State Poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center within the last month, found that among all voters across the political spectrum, 56 percent were at least somewhat satisfied with the quality of education in their local high schools and elementary schools, 27 percent were at least somewhat dissatisfied, and 17 percent were neutral or had no response.
Norelli said each member of the House represents approximately 3,300 citizens. Since there are more than a dozen Free Staters in the House representing just 1,000 Free State members, their influence is disproportionately strong.
“I have never before had so many people stop me in the grocery store or the coffee shop —people that I know or people that I don’t know—who say things like ‘What is going on in Concord?’ or ‘How are you able to deal with these people?’” Norelli said. “These are citizens that are asking me these questions. So I hope that the public is paying attention. I do not believe that this is what people were expecting when they went to the polls last November.”
According to UNH philosophy professor Willem deVries, who is interested in the intersection where politics and philosophy of the mind meet, Free State members have not been totally open and honest about their intentions. He said the Free Staters “basically scammed the Republican Party in the last election,” running on Republican platforms while holding ideals that only partially overlap with those of traditional Republicans in the state.
“I’m pretty sure that the voters of this state did not know what they were getting when they put the current legislature in office,” deVries said.
Buckley and Norelli both said they believe Free Staters took advantage of the economic climate in 2010 to run for offices in the state Legislature. Buckley Free Staters typically didn’t claim their association with the movement, which seriously misled voters in those districts.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” Buckley said. “Their state of intent was to move into the chosen state and infiltrate it, starting with local government and slowly moving their way up until they had the ability to shut down all of the government entities. Thank God, none of them so far have been elected to a major office.”
Gericke said such criticism is familiar territory for the Free State Project. She said she wishes to start a dialogue with residents to change these perceptions.
“We’re not some bogeyman,” she said. “We want to see the world in a better place than it is right now.”
Slattery said the Free State Project has become a scapegoat for both the Republican and Democratic parties. He said critics have a tendency to target the movement for any “crazy” bill proposal, even as they celebrate some other bills supported by Free Staters.
“The ultimate crime in New Hampshire is to be an outside group that’s trying to influence the state,” Slattery said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s become a scapegoat for extremism.”
Gericke, who moved to New Hampshire with her husband in 2008, is a South African immigrant who moved to the United States about 20 years ago. According to data from the N.H. Center for Public Policy Studies, fewer than 50 percent of New Hampshire residents are natives of the state. Gericke said Free State Project migrants come here for similar reasons as other migrants who move to the state on a yearly basis.
“(New Hampshire) is awesome, and we want to come here and keep it awesome,” she said. Gericke said her internal goal for the movement is to get another 1,000 individuals to move to New Hampshire within the next two years. “We are seeing that both the signup and the moving is accelerating,” Gericke said. “I think it’s going to start going a lot faster.”
Norelli herself moved to New Hampshire 35 years ago. She said there is a vast difference between people who move to New Hampshire because they like the state, its school systems, its political values, and its economic climate, and people who move with the intention of working as a collective to change those elements of the state.
“This has been a two-year period of some really dramatic changes in our state laws and in our way of doing business,” Norelli said. “If they liked (New Hampshire) and they were moving here because they liked the way it was, why do they find so much that needs to be changed?”
Since the Free State Project started, other social movements like the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street and the Internet-based Anonymous have garnered national media attention. While these movements have different goals and means of achieving them, a common thread seems to connect them all: unrest, over the state of the economy, governmental decisions that appear to benefit only the nation’s wealthiest citizens, bank bailouts, war debt, anonymous donations to political campaigns and outsourcing of jobs.
Gericke thinks economic pressure, combined with easy-access, free exchange of information on the Internet is changing people’s outlooks and expanding the dialogue beyond the left-right paradigm of U.S. politics.
“I think people are dissatisfied and struggling and starting to question what they’ve been taught and what they’ve been told,” Gericke said. “The more people who rise up and make their voices heard, the better.”
Gericke said she is pleased that people are beginning to look at the issues the Free State Project explores in a more critical light. The Free State Project might not have inspired these other movements, she said, but the problems are certainly being examined across the spectrum.
Slattery said people are more capable of coming together and uniting under a particular cause because of advancing technology like social media. Therefore, more movements are cropping up all the time.
“People are finding out that they’re not alone in the way that they think in all sorts of different ways,” Slattery said. “There are independent minds and self-governing individuals who tend to want to make things more free for everybody. The driving passion comes from a desire for individual liberty.”
A hindrance to such movements, Slattery said, is that they often lack focus. He said if more issue-based, specific-goal-oriented groups started to take precedence, change might happen more quickly.
Thorsen said people’s movements often fade over time, whether they are “absorbed into the status quo” or marginalized completely. He believes the reason for the upsurge in movements at this time is due to people’s extreme dissatisfaction with the government.
“My hope is that people will retain their love for freedom, peace and honesty in government, along with the need for personal responsibility, and that these eternal ideas will guide us into the future no matter what organizational form we might employ to achieve them,” Thorsen said.
