Free Town Project

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Free Town Project is an unofficial splinter group of the Free State Project that was started in 2003 to encourage libertarians to move to Grafton, New Hampshire. At least one member of the group, Larry Pendarvis, advocated ending "enforcement of Laws prohibiting victimless crime acts among Consenting Adults, such as Dueling, Gambling, Incest, Cannibalism and Drug Handling." ^[1] However, other members of the group, including Robert Hull, Tim Condon, and Mike Lorrey, publicly disavowed such positions (although Condon called it a "scandal" that cannabis has not been legalized, especially for medicinal purposes).

The project founders, who included Larry Pendarvis, Robert Hull, Tim Condon, and Mike Lorrey, studied 21 towns before deciding on Grafton. All of the candidates were New Hampshire towns with small populations and no zoning laws. The founders decided on Grafton as a result of many factors, including available land, a generally low level of commercialism and industrialization, and local support for libertarianism.^[2]

Whereas the Free State Project has generally attracted positive or neutral public attention, Pendarvis's radical writings on a Free Town Project project email list attracted attention from a Grafton resident (who no longer lives in the town) who publicized them through an anonymous letter sent to the town's residents.

The result was a meeting in Grafton ostensibly for residents to learn about the project, but organized mainly by local Democrats hostile to libertarians and the Free State Project; that group, calling itself "The Grafton Focus," organized the meeting for June 19th, 2004 and invited representatives from the Free State Project, Free Town Project, and the New Hampshire Libertarian party to clarify their intentions to concerned citizens. Despite the apparent bias of the meeting organizers, the then-president of the Free State Project, Amanda Phillips (now a Harvard Law School student) attended, as did John Babiarz, a Grafton resident and then-chairman of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. Tim Condon flew up from his residence in Tampa, Florida at his own expense to address the group on behalf of the Free Town Project, and Mike Lorrey, a native of New Hampshire, attended and spoke in favor of the project. Bob Hull, who had already moved to Grafton and purchased several hundred acres of land, attended but did not speak. Larry Pendarvis, who lived in Florida, did not attend.

The meeting attracted between 200 and 300 Grafton residents (out of the town's approximately 1,000 population). However, two out of the three town selectmen did not attend; nor did the town clerk or other leading citizens, apparently because the meeting was organized by the Grafton Focus Group and was seen to be "stacked" against the Free Towners. Several of the speakers who attended the meeting were shocked to see that someone had brought a casket to the meeting and propped it up on the back of their car; inside the open casket was a faux corpse and a sign that said "Free State Project." Despite the hostility that had been generated by the Grafton Focus group, Amanda Phillips, Tim Condon, and Mike Lorrey all explained that the extreme views of Larry Pendarvis were not shared by any of them (Tim Condon drew a laugh when he was asked if he personally believed in polygamy, saying "My wife would kill me if I publicly endorsed polygamy, so I say no!"). John Babiarz also spoke. Although the mood of the crowd was often hostile, several people spoke from the audience saying that an influx of people who believed in privacy, individual freedom, and property rights would be good for the community.

The Free Town Project is not very active at this time, due to lack of participation, funding and "bad publicity". But a handful of Free State Project/Free Town Project members have moved to the town of Grafton. Of those who attended the meeting, Robert Hull and Tim Condon are now residents and landowners in Grafton, while others have also migrated to the small town where they are making friends, showing themselves to be good neighbors, and becoming politically active (including by helping local activists fight against increased taxes, local government privacy intrusions, and property rights incursions).