Via Reason’s Hit & Run blog, come this hilarious story about the New Hampshire branch of the Occupy Wall Street. The Granite State also happens to have a fairly large contingent of libertarian-minded people thanks to a movement called the Free State Project. It hopes to make Hampshire a libertarian state by convincing like-minded people to relocate there.
As it happens, many of the Free Staters agree with parts of the Occupy agenda and had been showing at the latter group’s events. This annoyed Occupiers who apparently decided didn’t need the help of those people, thank you very much. The Occupiers’ solution to this situation was … ironic, to say the least:
Given the Facebook discussions since [Mark] Provost and the others filed corporation papers, it’s not likely to be an amicable split. More likely, this is the start of a tug of war over what the Occupy movement becomes in New Hampshire.
“If the people associated with the (Free State Project) want to move here, fine,” wrote Occupy member Julia Riber Pitt of Salem in a Facebook post last week. “But when they do things that upset the rest of NH’s 1.3 million people, they deserve to be called out and shunned.”
Ryan Glen Hirsch, an Occupy member from Pelham, responded to Pitt and others on the same Facebook thread: “You have no authority over me. I have no authority over you. You can choose to associate with me or not, but I am still just as much a member of OccupyNH as you.”
Reason’s Jesse Walker’s notes that to join this newly incorporated Occupy New Hampshire, “you must sign a ‘solidarity statement‘ that requires, among other things, that you support a tax hike and oppose Citizens United.”
Because what could be more progressive and grassroots than a corporation that requires its members to sign a loyalty oath?
