Russell arrested 3/6/07 for having no "papers"

[Dave Ridley]

btw i would urge not calling police officers names even on this forum or in private conversation.  ideally gandni would say don't even do it it your head.

the civil part of civil disobedience is just as important as the disobedience part.

[John]

kpd is 225 1423

let's light the phones up guys!

That one is the US District court

[Kat Kanning]

No Freedom to Travel in Keene
http://www.keenefreepress.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=463&Itemid=36
By Kat Kanning

Last night men with guns stopped us and attempted to steal our money and threatened to steal our car.  I guess it would have been a routine highway robbery aka traffic stop, except my husband, Russell Kanning, doesn't have a driver's license.  Russell doesn't want a driver's license.  He says he doesn't need the government's permission to drive.  The piece of paper from the government doesn't make him a better or worse driver.  In fact, he's the safest driver I've seen.

As we were leaving our weekly Keene Free Press meeting, one of our buddies told us our headlight was out.  It hadn't been out earlier in the evening.  It was late so we couldn't fix it that night.  On the way home, when a Keene policeman stopped us and demanded his equivalent of "Your papers please, citizen."  Russell said that he didn't have any papers.  He told the policeman his name and where we lived.  He wouldn't give him the social security number he's renounced using.



When Russell pointed out that having us stopped in traffic (people were having to go around us in the dark) was much more dangerous/disruptive than us driving home with one headlight, the officer acknowledged it.  When the officer walked away to radio in his info, Russell said he wanted to go home and suggested leaving.  The officer said that wasn't a great idea.  I talked him out of the idea as I didn't really want the thugs shooting at us.

When the highway robber came back, he said he was going to take Russell with him.  Since the guy had a gun, Russell went with him, despite just wanting to go home.  I got out of the car too and the other office ordered me back in a couple times.  I ignored him and he dropped it.  Russell said he wasn't paying any bail or fines, and for me not to bother to come get him tonight.  (This was kind of funny since a topic of conversation at dinner had been 'making the police state unprofitable'.)    Officer #2 threatened to take our car if I didn't have a driver's licence to drive it home.  They let my daughter, Kira, and I drive off after checking that I had a license, which I'll have until it expires.  I won't renew it because of Real ID.

At the police station, they asked Russell some more questions, some of which he answered, some of which he didn't.  He didn't get fingerprinted and didn't sign anything.  They let him go right away, telling him he had to show up in court.  He told them he wouldn't willingly come to the court.  Presumably, they'll issue a warrant for him after his court date, which we don't know when is happening.

On the way to and from the police station, we saw several other people pulled over on traffic stops in sleepy little Keene.  It's the beginning of the month, so it looked like the Keene Police were getting their quota of revenue out of their highway robbery.

When Real ID national ID card is implemented, there are many people who have said they're also going to refuse to have a driver's license.  If that is true, there will be many people going along the same path as Russell.  Hopefully, his willingness to stand up to them now will make it easier for those of us who follow.  The question is, do we have the right to travel without the permission of the government?  Russell Kanning says, "Yes, we do."  I agree with him.  Nazi Germany showed us clearly what happens when the government decides who can travel and where.

[Dave Ridley]

In my msg. to chief walker I said that altho this was just a minor violation it was a bigger deal than he might first think, not in a bad sense because russell never hurts or endangers anyone...but in the sense that russell is making a stand on principle and doesn't believe in driving with a license.  the above was not exactly what I intended to say but that's the way it came out.    I said if I had my druthers I'd like to see them let russell go.  But I said I recognize that most of the KPD officers are good folks and that I hoped that would become additionally clear as this situation plays out.

I said if he wants a sense of why Russell is doing what he's doing he should go to embassyofheven.com and that will also give him a sense of what russell is likely to do as the sitution unfolds.   Hopefully his desire for "intel" on an opponent will get the better of him and he or other officers will read a lot of the website.

Later if need be maybe it would be a good idea to update the chief on what happened to the people who went after the Revere family....two prosecutors quit rather than continue persecuting them.

[John]

Maybe the communications center  603.357.9813

I spoke to the pleasant young lady there before she put me threw and I left a short and polite message for Mr. Beola.

[Kat Kanning]

That's great, Dave and John!

[Russell Kanning]

The bad thing is that we are not free to travel in Keene .... yet.
The good thing was that I was not worried that that cop was going to taser me or shoot me.

They were giving out lots of tickets last night (Kat saw 3 pullovers), so they were in revenue collection mode not kick people around mode.

When he took me in .... all he did was paperwork and let me go. He was like a data entry worker with a gun, handcuffs, and a shaved head. He was in a hurry to get back out on the streets.

[Russell Kanning]

btw i would urge not calling police officers names even on this forum or in private conversation.

I am not too worried about this. There are some appropriate names to describe cops. These guys threatened things and detained me for about an hour total. It wasn't horrible, but they were determined to subject me to their system. I kept letting them know they were not getting any money are acknowledgement from me.

[Russell Kanning]

the civil part of civil disobedience is just as important as the disobedience part.

In some ways the civil in civil disobedience to me refers to that you are disobeying government. But I agree. The most important thing for me to do in life is to treat people like I would like to be. Disobeying the government is hopefully a temporary thing, because of how bad they are right now.

It is easier to keep calm and to communicate easily with the cops, if I remember why I am doing these things and when I am not clinging to anything. I am free.

[Russell Kanning]

Good quotes that apply to this situation would be appreciated. It will help readers understand what we are doing and give us good examples for our own behavior.

"Whenever you take a stand for truth and justice, you are liable to scorn. Often you will be called an impractical idealist or a dangerous radical. Sometimes it might mean going to jail. If such is the case you must honorably grace the jail with your presence. it might even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent life of psychological death, then nothing could be more Christian."
Martin Luther King,Jr.

[Raineyrocks]

No Freedom to Travel in Keene
http://www.keenefreepress.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=463&Itemid=36
By Kat Kanning

I like the article and I hope it gets people thinking about the fact that it runs deeper than just not having a license. I always had the frame of mind that it's just, (normal procedure) , to get a license so I can drive but actually it is "our citizen papers" like Nazi Germany and who are they to tell us we need their stinking papers and permission to travel?  My husband and I talked about what we'd do when the real ID cards come out and I'm not getting on that's for sure!
I have learned so much from alot of people on this forum and I usually end the day after spending time on here thinking alot about what's going on and how alot of people have so much courage to stand up for what they believe in.
Russell you are an inspiration, (along with others too), and I admire your courage and your familiy's also!  I think in the times that lie ahead it's going to get worse but if I don't stand up now how in the world do I expect to have the fortitude to stand up when it does get worse?

[Russell Kanning]

But I said I recognize that most of the KPD officers are good folks and that I hoped that would become additionally clear as this situation plays out.

Good conversation with the police guy. All of this will help our cause over time. We want people to be free to live and move around in Keene.

I think that the officers in the kpd are paid thugs working for an organized crime group, based on their actions I have seen, read about, and experienced. They hassle people over parking in their own yards. They hassle college kids with backpacks. They hassle almost anyone that comes out of cumbys at night. They thought it was important to stop me from going home last night. They asked for my "papers". Calling me sir while they do this doesn't change the basic situation of their coercive force.

[Kat Kanning]

Dare to do things worthy of imprisonment if you mean to be of consequence.  ~Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)


Laws control the lesser man.  Right conduct controls the greater one.  ~Chinese Proverb


Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.  ~Albert Einstein


No radical change on the plane of history is possible without crime.  ~Hermann Keyserling


When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.  ~Veterans Fast for Life


It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.  ~Voltaire


If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.  ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849


You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality.  Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.  ~Malcolm X


Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.  ~Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion


Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.  ~Mark Twain


Integrity has no need of rules.  ~Albert Camus


If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.  ~Louis D. Brandeis


Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen.  Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher.  Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.  ~John J. Miller, And Hope to Die


Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists


Every actual state is corrupt.  Good men must not obey laws too well.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."  ~Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait, 1963


We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong.... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.  ~Alexander Bickel


It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.  ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911


I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.  ~Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849


As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.  ~Clarence Darrow


It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.  ~Edmund Burke, Second Speech on Conciliation, 1775


I am free, no matter what rules surround me.  If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.  I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.  ~Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress


Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face.  But I left with a smile.  I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.  ~Martin Luther King, Jr., March 22, 1956


If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.  If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.  ~Bishop Desmond Tutu


It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.  If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.  ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

[money dollars]

In a police state, no person is permitted to drive five minutes with a broken headlight on the coldest evening of the year.

I was pulled over for that on Sat., and got a written warning, but I had my papers. It was just a loose connection....I had just passed inspection the day before. The cop even said that is was probably a loose wire from the bumpy roads.

[Tom Sawyer]

No Freedom to Travel in Keene
http://www.keenefreepress.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=463&Itemid=36
By Kat Kanning

Well done article Kat.

Great job on making contact with the KPD Dada and John.

When I got home and read the thread I was disappointed that ya'll had gotten nabbed... I guess I've been conditioned to fly below the radar and my first thought is 'damn how senseless to get busted over something that could have been avoided'. However Kat's article and Russell's beliefs that the revolution has to start somewhere have changed my first impression.