Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
New Hampshire - The men and women who waged a protest this weekend on Library Hill were bound by a philosophy of personal liberty as much as by a shared belief that marijuana should be decriminalized, said a city resident who participated in the demonstration.
Three people were arrested at the demonstration, which was deemed as a “420 celebration,” said Ryan McGuire, 29, who moved to the city two years ago from Utah as part of the Free State movement.
The term 420 refers to the consumption of marijuana, though its origins are disputed, with theories ranging from a group of California teenagers who would smoke pot at 4:20 each afternoon, to 420 denoting a police scanner code for suspected marijuana possession. The demonstration included some people openly smoking marijuana while others carried signs and chanted in support.
The protest wasn’t organized by one person or group but came about through a loose network of people connected through social networking, McGuire said. It included members of an organization called Free Keene as well as some Free Staters, he said.
Nashua was picked as the site because the New Hampshire Liberty Forum was being held at Crowne Plaza Hotel, McGuire said
“We took advantage of the fact that there were a lot of liberty activists here,” he said.
The protest started peaceful but became heated when Nashua police arrived. One man resisted arrest, and a police officer threatened to mace him, an encounter caught on video and posted on the Free Keene Web site and elsewhere on the Internet.
Arrested were Lewis Labitue, 17, of Nashua, for possession of a controlled drug – marijuana. His mother, Denise, told a reporter her son was arrested after someone handed him a roach.
Two others were arrested, including Catherine Bleish, executive director of The Liberty Restoration Project, a national pro-liberty organization represented at the N.H. Liberty Forum. Bleish, 25, of Kansas City, Mo., was charged with disorderly conduct. Nicholas Krouse, 28, of Keene, was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. All charges are Class A misdemeanors.
McGuire wasn’t arrested and he doesn’t like to smoke marijuana, he said. But he supports the decriminalization of all drugs, and every Free Stater he’s spoken to favors at least the decriminalization of marijuana as a matter of personal liberty, he said.
McGuire did capture the attention of police by openly carrying a sidearm, which is legal in New Hampshire.
“Yes, I was carrying on Sunday. It’s a Glock 30 in a very secure side holster,” McGuire said in an e-mail sent to The Telegraph on Monday.
“I normally don’t openly carry while doing the 420 celebrations, preferring not to mix my activism. However, on Saturday, at least one of the cops was freaking out about the fact that some were open carrying that day,” McGuire wrote.
“One cop was shouting out, ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’ and several people, including at least one other cop, had to stand in front of this agitated cop and tell him that it was OK. I carried on Sunday to reinforce that idea to the cops: it’s OK to carry a gun as a peaceful person,” McGuire wrote in the e-mail.
“Aside from the obvious benefit of personal protection, I choose to exercise my rights in order to preserve them. In the case of carrying guns, it’s about exercising those rights that are still considered legal (though diminishing every day.) In the case of marijuana activism, it’s exercising those rights that the government thinks that I shouldn’t have,” McGuire wrote.
“I should also point out that the person the cop was shouting ‘He’s got a gun!’ at was not one of the people being arrested and was someone who was not impeding the cops in any way,” McGuire wrote.
McGuire said he believes in civil disobedience and doesn’t believe in working within the political process.
That runs contrary to the New Hampshire Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy, a group currently advocating for marijuana to be decriminalized here.
“It’s certainly not something that we encourage,” Matt Simon, the group’s executive director, said of the protest in Nashua.
Simon said he didn’t know what the protesters’ goals were, “but if the goal was to change the law in New Hampshire, I don’t think that’s a good way to go about it.”
A bill to decriminalize marijuana in New Hampshire has passed the state House of Representatives and will have a hearing before the state Senate Judiciary Committee in April, Simon said. However, Gov. John Lynch has said he would veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
In case you missed the first Telegraph article by Dean Shalhoup regarding the mass arrests, here it is,:
Police stormed a downtown Nashua rally Saturday afternoon, arresting at least one person for marijuana possession as many participants smoked the drug openly in protest of current laws.
Nashua police didn’t return calls requesting information Saturday night, but the mother of a teenager who was arrested said he was taken into custody after someone next to him handed him a roach.
Lewis Labitue, 17, was arrested at the Library Hill incident and later released on bail, his mother, Denise, said Saturday night.
“They were putting him in the (police) car by the time I got there,” she said, adding that her daughter, who was also at the rally, called her when police approached her son.
Two other people were said by witnesses to have been arrested, including Catherine Bleish, the executive director of The Liberty Restoration Project, a national pro-liberty organization that is represented at this weekend’s New Hampshire Liberty Forum at Crowne Plaza Hotel. According to WMUR-TV police reported two arrests including Labitue.
The rally, which took place on Library Hill, is believed to have been organized as part of the three-day forum. Called “Nashua 420” by a contributor to the Free Keene - New Hampshire's Liberty Activist Destination - Keene, NH Web site blog, the rally began at 4:20 p.m. and began, the blogger wrote, “as peaceful, and drawing a lot of local support, for around 30 minutes.”
After that, the blogger and other witnesses said, police stepped in, and soon a reported dozen or more police cars, motorcycles and police dogs had arrived on the scene.
Lewis Labitue’s mother said his bail money was raised by his fellow protesters, who assembled at Nashua Police headquarters following the Library Hill demonstration and “took up a collection for his bail,” she said.
She said police, who she described as “acting very aggressively” at the scene, know who her son is and may have targeted him for arrest for that reason.
“They know him from the neighborhood,” she said. “He’s had some trouble in school, but he’s not a criminal or anything like that. I don’t know why he was picked out. It was pretty crazy down there,” she said.
Manchester resident Joe Skinner, a protestor who watched the incident unfurl, wondered about the necessity of arresting people. “If you don’t comply with the man with the gun, he’ll put you in a cage,” Skinner said.
NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: freekeene.com
Author: Patrick Meighan
Copyright: 2010 The Free Keene Press
Contact: Free Keene - New Hampshire's Liberty Activist Destination - Keene, NH
Website: Free Keene Nashua Telegraph Coverage of 420 Crackdown - New Hampshire's Liberty Activist Destination - Keene, NH
• Thanks to MedicalNeed for submitting this article
Three people were arrested at the demonstration, which was deemed as a “420 celebration,” said Ryan McGuire, 29, who moved to the city two years ago from Utah as part of the Free State movement.
The term 420 refers to the consumption of marijuana, though its origins are disputed, with theories ranging from a group of California teenagers who would smoke pot at 4:20 each afternoon, to 420 denoting a police scanner code for suspected marijuana possession. The demonstration included some people openly smoking marijuana while others carried signs and chanted in support.
The protest wasn’t organized by one person or group but came about through a loose network of people connected through social networking, McGuire said. It included members of an organization called Free Keene as well as some Free Staters, he said.
Nashua was picked as the site because the New Hampshire Liberty Forum was being held at Crowne Plaza Hotel, McGuire said
“We took advantage of the fact that there were a lot of liberty activists here,” he said.
The protest started peaceful but became heated when Nashua police arrived. One man resisted arrest, and a police officer threatened to mace him, an encounter caught on video and posted on the Free Keene Web site and elsewhere on the Internet.
Arrested were Lewis Labitue, 17, of Nashua, for possession of a controlled drug – marijuana. His mother, Denise, told a reporter her son was arrested after someone handed him a roach.
Two others were arrested, including Catherine Bleish, executive director of The Liberty Restoration Project, a national pro-liberty organization represented at the N.H. Liberty Forum. Bleish, 25, of Kansas City, Mo., was charged with disorderly conduct. Nicholas Krouse, 28, of Keene, was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. All charges are Class A misdemeanors.
McGuire wasn’t arrested and he doesn’t like to smoke marijuana, he said. But he supports the decriminalization of all drugs, and every Free Stater he’s spoken to favors at least the decriminalization of marijuana as a matter of personal liberty, he said.
McGuire did capture the attention of police by openly carrying a sidearm, which is legal in New Hampshire.
“Yes, I was carrying on Sunday. It’s a Glock 30 in a very secure side holster,” McGuire said in an e-mail sent to The Telegraph on Monday.
“I normally don’t openly carry while doing the 420 celebrations, preferring not to mix my activism. However, on Saturday, at least one of the cops was freaking out about the fact that some were open carrying that day,” McGuire wrote.
“One cop was shouting out, ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’ and several people, including at least one other cop, had to stand in front of this agitated cop and tell him that it was OK. I carried on Sunday to reinforce that idea to the cops: it’s OK to carry a gun as a peaceful person,” McGuire wrote in the e-mail.
“Aside from the obvious benefit of personal protection, I choose to exercise my rights in order to preserve them. In the case of carrying guns, it’s about exercising those rights that are still considered legal (though diminishing every day.) In the case of marijuana activism, it’s exercising those rights that the government thinks that I shouldn’t have,” McGuire wrote.
“I should also point out that the person the cop was shouting ‘He’s got a gun!’ at was not one of the people being arrested and was someone who was not impeding the cops in any way,” McGuire wrote.
McGuire said he believes in civil disobedience and doesn’t believe in working within the political process.
That runs contrary to the New Hampshire Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy, a group currently advocating for marijuana to be decriminalized here.
“It’s certainly not something that we encourage,” Matt Simon, the group’s executive director, said of the protest in Nashua.
Simon said he didn’t know what the protesters’ goals were, “but if the goal was to change the law in New Hampshire, I don’t think that’s a good way to go about it.”
A bill to decriminalize marijuana in New Hampshire has passed the state House of Representatives and will have a hearing before the state Senate Judiciary Committee in April, Simon said. However, Gov. John Lynch has said he would veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
In case you missed the first Telegraph article by Dean Shalhoup regarding the mass arrests, here it is,:
Police stormed a downtown Nashua rally Saturday afternoon, arresting at least one person for marijuana possession as many participants smoked the drug openly in protest of current laws.
Nashua police didn’t return calls requesting information Saturday night, but the mother of a teenager who was arrested said he was taken into custody after someone next to him handed him a roach.
Lewis Labitue, 17, was arrested at the Library Hill incident and later released on bail, his mother, Denise, said Saturday night.
“They were putting him in the (police) car by the time I got there,” she said, adding that her daughter, who was also at the rally, called her when police approached her son.
Two other people were said by witnesses to have been arrested, including Catherine Bleish, the executive director of The Liberty Restoration Project, a national pro-liberty organization that is represented at this weekend’s New Hampshire Liberty Forum at Crowne Plaza Hotel. According to WMUR-TV police reported two arrests including Labitue.
The rally, which took place on Library Hill, is believed to have been organized as part of the three-day forum. Called “Nashua 420” by a contributor to the Free Keene - New Hampshire's Liberty Activist Destination - Keene, NH Web site blog, the rally began at 4:20 p.m. and began, the blogger wrote, “as peaceful, and drawing a lot of local support, for around 30 minutes.”
After that, the blogger and other witnesses said, police stepped in, and soon a reported dozen or more police cars, motorcycles and police dogs had arrived on the scene.
Lewis Labitue’s mother said his bail money was raised by his fellow protesters, who assembled at Nashua Police headquarters following the Library Hill demonstration and “took up a collection for his bail,” she said.
She said police, who she described as “acting very aggressively” at the scene, know who her son is and may have targeted him for arrest for that reason.
“They know him from the neighborhood,” she said. “He’s had some trouble in school, but he’s not a criminal or anything like that. I don’t know why he was picked out. It was pretty crazy down there,” she said.
Manchester resident Joe Skinner, a protestor who watched the incident unfurl, wondered about the necessity of arresting people. “If you don’t comply with the man with the gun, he’ll put you in a cage,” Skinner said.
NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: freekeene.com
Author: Patrick Meighan
Copyright: 2010 The Free Keene Press
Contact: Free Keene - New Hampshire's Liberty Activist Destination - Keene, NH
Website: Free Keene Nashua Telegraph Coverage of 420 Crackdown - New Hampshire's Liberty Activist Destination - Keene, NH
• Thanks to MedicalNeed for submitting this article
