Porcupine Freedom Festival
Logo of the Free State Project
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| Motto | "Liberty in Our Lifetime" |
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| Formation | September 1, 2001 |
| Headquarters | 373 South Willow St #161, Manchester, New Hampshire, United States |
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President
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Matt Philips |
| Website | freestateproject |
| Remarks | 20,000 people have pledged (February 3, 2016) |
The Free State Project (FSP) is a proposed political migration, founded in 2001, to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire, selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas. The project seeks to overcome the historical ineffectiveness of limited government activism which they believe was caused by the small number and diffuse population of libertarian activists across the 50 United States and around the world.
Participants sign a statement of intent declaring that they intend to move to New Hampshire within five years of the drive reaching 20,000 participants. This statement of intent is intended to function as a form of assurance contract. As of February 3, 2016[update], 20,000 people have signed this statement of intent—completing the original goal—and 1,909 people are listed as "early movers" to New Hampshire on the FSP website, saying they had made their move prior to the 20,000-participant trigger.
Approximately a dozen Free Staters were elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives in the 2012 election, and about 18 in the 2014 election.
The Free State Project is a social movement generally based upon decentralized decision making. The group hosts various events, but most of FSP's activities depend upon volunteers, and no formal plan dictates to participants or movers what their actions should be in New Hampshire.
The FSP mission statement, adopted in 2005, states:
"Life, liberty, and property" are rights that were enumerated in the October 1774 Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress and in Article 12 of the New Hampshire state constitution.
To become a participant of the Free State Project, a person is asked to agree to the Statement of Intent (SOI):
The FSP is open to people with a minimum age of 18. U.S. citizenship is not required. People who promote violence, racial hatred, or bigotry are not welcome in the FSP.
The Free State Project was founded in 2001 by Jason Sorens, then a Ph.D. student at Yale University. Sorens published an article in The Libertarian Enterprise highlighting the failure of libertarians to elect any candidate to federal office and outlining his ideas for a secessionist movement, calling people to respond to him with interest. Sorens has stated that the movement continues an American tradition of political migration, which includes groups such as Mormon settlers in Utah, Amish religious communities, and the "Jamestown Seventy", an earlier effort to influence the politics of a particular state through deliberate migration.
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