New Hampshire

No Coal No Gas Builds On Recent Victory With Focus On Community

October 6, 2024 Siobhan Senier, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Community, Fossil Fuels, New England, New Hampshire, Oil and Gas, Victory

David Graeber once posited that “the biggest problem facing nonviolent direct action movements is that we don’t know how to handle victory.” He observed that, by the time activists recognize some of our initial successes, those gains tend to be obscured by infighting and/or repressive backlash. More to the point, he said, activists unsatisfied with anything short of a total revolution miss the steady gains that our movements make. A New England-based campaign to phase out fossil fuels provides a helpful counter-example. Activists with No Coal No Gas, or NCNG, have shown that we do know how to handle victory.

Educators Celebrate As Judge Strikes Down ‘Banned Concepts’ Law

May 30, 2024 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. Resist! Censorship, Education, Free Speech, New Hampshire, Victory

Education and free speech advocates cheered Tuesday's federal court ruling striking down New Hampshire's classroom censorship law, one of several so-called "white discomfort" bills passed in Republican-controlled states in recent years. U.S. District Judge Paul J. Barbadoro's 50-page ruling says that the New England state's so-called "banned concepts" law is "unconstitutionally vague" and contains "viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement."

Palestine Action US Activists Hit With Felony Charges Over Elbit Protest

February 29, 2024 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. Resist! Elbit, Israel, Legal System, New Hampshire, Palestine Action, State Repression

Three activists have been indicted for participating in a protest at Elbit Systems of America in Merrimack, New Hampshire last November. Elbit is Israel’s largest private arms supplier. Sophie Ross, Bridget Shergalis, and Calla Walsh are facing charges of riot, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary, and conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence for climbing onto the company’s roof and defacing the building with paint. Each charge is a Class B felony and could carry a three-and-a-half to seven-year prison sentence. A fourth woman, Paige Belanger, was arrested in January over her involvement in the protest.

NH Voters To Pressure Biden With ‘Cease-Fire’ Write-In On Ballots

January 20, 2024 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. Resist! Ceasefire, Democratic National Committee, Democratic Party, Elections, Israel, Joe Biden, New Hampshire, Palestine, US Imperialism

With less than a week until New Hampshire's presidential primary on January 23, critics of U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza are urging voters in the state to put "cease-fire" on the write-in portion of their ballots rather than Democratic President Joe Biden. Because of a battle between the Democratic National Committee and New Hampshire leaders, Biden opted to keep his name off the ballot, which will include longshot challengers U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and Marianne Williamson. However, some of the president's supporters have been encouraging voters to write in his name next Tuesday.

Pro-Palestine Dartmouth Students Want A ‘New Deal’ For Their School

November 7, 2023 Mel Buer, The Real News Network. Resist! Dartmouth, Divestment, Higher Education, Israel, New Hampshire, Palestine, Student Activism

Since October 7th, student activists on campuses across the country have been organizing rallies against Israeli apartheid and vigils for the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. Activists at Dartmouth College are among those groups, organizing a sustained vigil outside Dartmouth’s administration building, Parkhurst Hall. Days into the continuous vigil, student organizers released The Dartmouth New Deal, a document that outlined a progressive vision for the college and included explicit demands that Dartmouth divest itself from the military-industrial complex that enables Israeli Apartheid.

Activists Camp At City Hall To Protest Homeless Encampment Evictions

May 27, 2022 Joy D.M.R., Liberation News. Resist! Evictions, Homeless encampment, Housing, New Hampshire

Keene, New Hampshire - Community organizers in Keene, New Hampshire, pitched tents in Central Square Park outside of Keene City Hall for an overnight protest on the evening of May 21 to draw attention to an impending eviction of a homeless encampment behind the local Aldi and Kohls. Earlier in May the encampment was served an eviction for May 23. The eviction notice was delivered by city police, accompanied by new “no trespassing” signs tacked to trees in the camps. The residents are being evicted by property owner Wilder Co. only two months after an eviction behind the local Hannaford supermarket forced many to relocate to the woods behind Aldi and Kohls. Campers described eviction after eviction to outreach volunteers from Keene Mutual Aid, one saying “We have nowhere else to go.”

Campaign To Shut Down New England’s Last Coal Plant Is Doing ‘What Must Be Done’ For The Planet

November 11, 2021 Arnie Alpert , Waging Nonviolence. Resist! climate crisis, Coal, Fossil Fuels, New Hampshire

There’s one form of power that’s generated when hot water turns turbines to create electricity. There are other forms of power held by investors, property owners and regulatory agencies. And then there’s people power, which can be harnessed to affect decisions of investors, property owners and regulatory agencies — such that fossil fuel-burning operations cease running. That’s what the No Coal No Gas campaign seeks to do with its focus on shutting down New England’s last coal-burning power plant, Merrimack Station in Bow, New Hampshire. No Coal No Gas, which launched its first protest against the power plant in 2019, returned to Bow on Oct. 3 for a day of mass action. In addition to a rally on an adjacent ballfield and a flotilla of “kayaktivists” in the Merrimack River, campaign members planted gardens on company property, including a bed hacked out with pickaxes in the middle of an access road.

Kayaktivists Are Working To Permanently Close Coal Power Plant

July 25, 2021 Michael Towfighi, Concord Monitor. Resist! climate crisis, Coal, Energy, New Hampshire

Julie Macuga paints two scenes when describing the Merrimack River – the first as a scenic site, where kayakers and canoers alike can float in nature. The second image is an ugly industrial site crowding the waterway with tall, brown smokestacks spewing clouds of carbon, polluting the water and air. “It’s this beautiful place and it’s juxtaposed with this horrible coal plant,” she said. Macuga was one of a group of protesters who paddled up and down the river on Wednesday in protest of the Merrimack Station power plant in Bow. Just after the sun came up, she and eleven other “kayakativists” from the campaign No Coal No Gas took to the river at 6 a.m. in their latest demonstration in hopes of shutting down the plant. The coal stack burned as the group sang and chanted, paddling up and floating back down in front of the plant.

A Pipeline Defeated: How A Small Town Saved Itself

April 25, 2016 William Rivers Pitt, www.truth-out.org Resist! New Hampshire, Pipelines, Protests

By William Rivers Pitt for Truthout - In the dungeon that was the winter of 2014 here in my New Hampshire home, a pair of representatives from the natural gas pipeline company Kinder Morgan/Tennessee Gas arrived in the town of Rindge, just down the road. They were there to meet with the town administrator about a proposed natural gas pipeline route that would cut the town in half, along with several other towns, as it made its way to the sea.

143 Mile Hike Protests Kinder Morgan NE Energy Direct Pipeline

April 10, 2015 Kelsey Erickson, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Climate Change, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pipelines

The Pipeline Pilgrimage is a Quaker-led trek along the proposed route of Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It began in Pittsfield, MA on April 1st and will end in Dracut, MA on April 12th, a total of 143 miles. The purpose of the pilgrimage is to foster spiritual growth in a community to catalyze a force for change. As the pilgrims travel, they are meeting local people who will be directly impacted by the pipeline, many of whom are farmers and many of whom have young children. The health and safety hazards of the Kinder Morgan pipeline would threaten their livelihoods and increase fracking operations in communities residing over the Marcellus Shale. The implications of an increase in fracking go far beyond the desecration of people's drinking water. A surge in methane emissions will seal a future of climate chaos at which point we will be powerless to remedy the wreckage we've inflicted on our planet.

Hundreds March Against Corruption In NH

July 9, 2014 Suzanne Laurent, www.seacoastonline.com Resist! Corruption, March, Money As Speech, New Hampshire, Politics, Protest

A wind-weary, but determined crowd, arrived at Fort Constitution Saturday afternoon after a 16-mile walk along the New Hampshire coast in support of New Hampshire Rebellion's nonpartisan movement against monetary corruption in the nation's capital. The N.H. Rebellion, founded by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor, is a movement that considers unrestrained money and the influence it buys in Washington, D.C., to be the root of the nation's current political and governmental dysfunction. The goal of the walk was to bring hope for change, said N.H. Rebellion Executive Director Jeff McLean. Many walkers met at the ending point at Fort Constitution to be bused to the start of the walk at Hampton Beach. A busload of 20 walkers also arrived from the Boston area. Decked out in red, white and blue stars and stripes, Debbie and Garritt Toohey of Rye were among the walkers gathered at Hampton Beach. “We need to bring awareness about what the federal government is and isn't doing,” Debbie Toohey said. “People need to pay attention and listen.”

Daily movement news and resources