By noon on Saturday in southern New Hampshire, the snow had begun to turn into rain as temperatures increased into the forties. Even before the official 12:00 start time of the Facebook-organized rally, around a hundred people were gathered outside of the State House in Concord. Many of them brought flags and signs with them, and all of them brought lots of passion for their freedom to choose how to respond to the Coronavirus.
Currently, Governor Sununu’s executive order prohibits dine-in at restaurants and prohibits non-essential businesses from operating at all. After a few weeks of this lockdown, nearly 130,000 NH workers have filed for unemployment, bringing unemployment in the state near the 16% mark.
As of April 17, the State report showed that 37 deaths in New Hampshire have been attributed to COVID-19. Many citizens who attended the rally believe that 0.0028% of New Hampshire residents losing their lives to a virus does not justify a 10-15% increase in unemployment. Nearly every person at the capitol today seemed to believe that politicians should not control the economy or personal decisions at all. *
Among the protesters were conservative groups, pro-gun groups, health-freedom groups, and around a dozen state legislators. Many were simply individual people with no agenda at all other than freedom and getting back to work.
Though some protesters openly carried firearms (and many more may have concealed carried) and 5-10 showed up in full battle-gear, no arrests were made. As far as we could tell, police did not even show up at any point.
The spontaneously organized group of around 300 protesters brought a few megaphones and speakers. A number of citizens spoke to the crowd and were answered by cheers and chants of ‘Live Free or Die’. New Hampshire is sending a strong and clear message to Governor Sununu: It is time to let workers get back to work.
* The Liberty Block conducted several interviews with participants which will be uploaded shortly to TLB’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheLibertyBlock
