"Supportive Disobedience"

[Dave Ridley]

Ok here is another thought I had:  "Supportive Disobedience."   Instead of initiating some new thing, one or more of us openly repeats a victimless "crime" that has recently been in the news.   The idea is to show support for people who've just defied the bad law.  Other than that it's the same as Civil Dis. The goals would be to:

- Draw positive attention to the "criminal"
- Draw attention to the idea that this shouldn't be a crime
- Reshape the public image of people who commit that crime
- Draw publicity and new activity to NHfree.com
- Inspire more freedom lovers to move here
- Force the authorities to punish more people for the "crime" including nice neatly dressed folks with gadsden flags and reporter friends.
- Ultimately...*deter* victimless arrests for fear they will generate an "SD" event. 

For instance, if we had been thinking along these lines when Nashua P.D. came after Mike Gannon for audio/videotaping them...and sufficiently willing to sacrifice ourselves...

One or more of us could have gone to audio/videotape NPD ourselves, or maybe entered their offices with the announced intent of borrowing *their* surveillance cams until they return the ones they seized from Gannon.

In the case of Common Man, where the restaurant owner was fined by Feds for allowing youngsters in his charity program to work at 5 a.m....One or more of us could hire some kids to pick up litter in front of the Fed building in Concord during the traffic-safe early morning hours.

Maybe ultimately we could have a sort of "squad" of people willing to do these things, frequently enough to start having a deterrent effect.   Maybe there could be follow up legislation to reduce or eliminate the penalties for such "crimes."

We've done this stuff to some extent before, but we can hone it down to a finer art, make it go further.

It's like FSP-Ohio said (I think that's who it was):  The thing to go after is the point of force initiation.   That may be an easier target than the law, the legislature, the bureaucracy, the individual bureaucrat-perp.

Other ideas?  Feedback?

It may be months or years before I'm ready to do something like this kind of disobedience myself, but I'm moving that direction or I wouldn't be cranking out all these CD ideas.  I suspect by then there will be closer to ten or 15 of us doing CD rather than the current four or five.   I know at least two other Free Staters already moved who are plotting their eventual CD activities and haven't even done one yet.  They aren't talking about it on the forums

[Kat Kanning]

I think that's a good idea.

[d_goddard]

This is brilliant.
The spice I'd like to add to the soup is:
- Use the attention drawn, to help eliminate the bad laws under which the person is being prosecuted

This is exactly the tactic that has worked in reverse for the Remocrats and Depublicans. For example, where they enact a smoking ban -- by trotting out children with cancer. Or when they push Real ID -- by pointing to 9/11.

Our case would be doubly stronger:
1. The damaged party was ACTUALLY damaged by the existing legislation, not a debatable point ("did this child really get cancer from this restaurant? would real-ID stop the terrorists?")
2. The damaged party is a real, actual neighbor that people and press can call up and chat with, not somebody bussed in from out-of-state by high-paid lobbysists to make their point.

[Dave Ridley]

This is brilliant.
The spice I'd like to add to the soup is:
- Use the attention drawn, to help eliminate the bad laws under which the person is being prosecuted

This is exactly the tactic that has worked in reverse for the Remocrats and Depublicans. For example, where they enact a smoking ban -- by trotting out children with cancer. Or when they push Real ID -- by pointing to 9/11.

Our case would be doubly stronger:
1. The damaged party was ACTUALLY damaged by the existing legislation, not a debatable point ("did this child really get cancer from this restaurant? would real-ID stop the terrorists?")
2. The damaged party is a real, actual neighbor that people and press can call up and chat with, not somebody bussed in from out-of-state by high-paid lobbysists to make their point.

We tried that on the outlaw manicure bill with mike fisher in the room, and tho it was a hit in terms of publicity it didn't come anywhere close to becoming law.

The reason was that eliminating or mitigating a law can have unintended consequences and unintended "victims."  Howeve if you merely mitigate the enforcement or penalty, that should have fewer unintended or harmful consequences for people who benefit from the current legal framework.   In the case of the outlaw manicure bill, it tried to reduce the number of hours you had to study to get a license.  We'd have done beter if it had left the licensing regime in place but reduced the *penalty* for practicing without a license.   That way all the folks who had the license would not be freaking out as they did.

Same thing with a drug bill maybe... leave it all illegal but just mitigate the penalty or enforcement somehow.   That way the only thing you're going after is the force initiation and it forces them to defend that instead of some other unexpected thing. 

[Michael Fisher]

Thank you, Dada, for bringing this idea back into the light. This was suggested immediately after the manicure event, but nobody had the interest / guts to copycat, even when it would have enormously powerful to do so.

[lildog]

This is brilliant.
The spice I'd like to add to the soup is:
- Use the attention drawn, to help eliminate the bad laws under which the person is being prosecuted

So rather then continually getting more people put in jail, why not make an effort to get people elected who would actually do the job of eliminating these bad laws?

Don't get me wrong, sometimes government must be shamed into doing the right thing, but it's a heck of a lot easier to just seek the right people to do the right thing for the right reasons.

[d_goddard]

We tried that on the outlaw manicure bill with mike fisher in the room,

No offence, but Michael ain't a local boy, and a lot of the media was about these "Free-Stater people".
Moreover Mike is extremely intelligent, a computer geek, with esoteric tastes. Which makes him not so different fro mvery cool people like myself and many of my friends, but unfortunately, not likely to get voted prom king.

Take as a counterexample the case of Michael Gannon. He has lived in Nashua forever. He has a sister, cousins, relations of all kinds, and these people know people. He exudes "average blue-collar neighbor next door". I bet you anything he hangs out with other Nashua old-timers and watches pro sports on TV. He may not be everybody's friend, nor for that matter Prom King, but when Local Guy gets roughed up by the System, the other Local Folks will rally to his side, I bet. Just like we did (and are) doing.

We'd have done beter if it had left the licensing regime in place but reduced the *penalty* for practicing without a license.   That way all the folks who had the license would not be freaking out as they did.

Excellent, excellent point. Reduced penalties are a great way to whittle away at bad laws and ACTUALLY GET SOME MOVEMENT in the pro-Freedom direction.
There would no doubt be those, ostensibly on our side, who attack any such incremental step as merely "enabling the system". Their attacks would be the best ammunition for the statists :-|
[/quote]

Same thing with a drug bill maybe... leave it all illegal but just mitigate the penalty or enforcement somehow.

Yeah, that's why I like deprioritization. But in this specific case, we seem to have traction with memers of the Legislature for full legalization of personal-use amounts of MJ. I bet the press would back this as well. I am hoping we could also energize people to make a MASSIVE effort to contact the legislature -- think "smoking ban times 10".

The biggest roadblock to legalization, the Republicans in the Senate, will quite possibly be gone next year. As i said before and will say again, a Dem-controlled Senate will SUCK and we will have to fight like hell to oppose an income tax -- and the Republcians people love to hate on Real-ID will be our ONLY friends o that issue -- but it will mean MJ legalization has a very good chance.

We live in interesting times. Thank goodness!

[d_goddard]

- Use the attention drawn, to help eliminate the bad laws under which the person is being prosecuted

So rather then continually getting more people put in jail, why not make an effort to get people elected who would actually do the job of eliminating these bad laws?

It's not either/or.
Did you notice my signature or my avatar?
Getting good people in office is where I spend 80% of my energy.

[David]

I support the free state project.  but once I move to n h , I do not intend to go out of my way to tell anyone that I am one of 'those' freestaters intent on 'taking over' the gov't. 

I may have written this before, but i'll repeat myself;
There is two approaches to civil disobiediance;
1.  to create a planned situation, the biggest advantage is you can control the situation better.  the biggest disadvantage is you can lose some credibility for 'creating' problems.
2.  learn to react very quickly once an arrest or harrasment of one of ours or an innoscent person in the community occurs.  You lose some of the control.  on the other hand, you keep some additional credibility.