Recently, in the supposed live free or die state, Portsmouth basically outlawed ride-sharing service, UBER. Constantly embattled by city governments in nearly every city they expand to, UBER has heroically fought for its drivers, even to the point of covering legal costs for arrests, vehicle impounds, and other legal targeting of their contractors by the government gangs. See, the taxi companies, who are mostly obedient to their state masters, tend to go running to their regulators crying about UBER, whose business model is not the same as a cab company. UBER merely connects drivers to passengers and takes a small cut for making the connections. They aren’t a cab company as traditionally defined. Cab companies generally own and maintain a fleet – UBER has no cars. Its contractor-drivers provide their own vehicle and are responsible for maintaining them.

Despite having proved to the Porstmouth city gang that their cars are insured, UBER has objected to the “draconian” background check requirement and placard requirement in order to legally do business in Portsmouth.

Christopher David is an early mover for the Free State Project living in Dover. He’s been driving for UBER for a few months in Portsmouth and Boston. Today he publicly announced his intention to commit ongoing civil disobedience and continue illegally providing transportation to willing passengers in Portsmouth. He says UBER driving isn’t his primary occupation and until recently he hasn’t been doing it much at all, but that the, “ordinance crap has gotten me pissed off enough to do it anyway”.

UBER’s app continues to work in Portsmouth and Christopher reports that his first illegal customer was an older gentleman who was elated to be participating in civil disobedience and had several not-so-nice things to say about Portsmouth city council. In an interview exclusive to Free Keene , Christopher said his user rating is 4.85, which puts him in the top 10% of drivers in the region. He says that because of his excellent rating, “the idea of Portsmouth police chasing me down because the city council thinks they need to protect residents from me is insane”.

Of course, the government does insane, stupid, counterproductive things all the time. This wouldn’t be the first. In fact, the city gang has its sycophants at the taxi companies assisting them as a snitch squad. The cabbies, in an act of slave-on-slave violence, will be monitoring the streets of Portsmouth and ratting out any of the fifty known UBER cars in town. In the Seacoast Online article announcing the snitch squad, Great Bay Taxi owner John Palreiro told the city gang, “All the taxi companies will be writing down license plates and we expect the Police Department to enforce”. Merle White, owner of Anchor Taxi, said in true criminal cartel fashion, “It’s time Uber does it our way, or they get out of the city.” Palreiro told Seacoast Online that all his drivers have the Uber app, so they can see where Uber drivers are located in real time. He said they’ll be taking pictures and calling the police. “We know who they are,” he said. “If the Police Department doesn’t enforce this, I’ll go ballistic.”

If targeted by police, Christopher says he won’t be pleaing out and will go to trial, “I’ll draw it out as long as I can…I don’t see myself admitting guilt to anything.”

It’s great to see civil disobedience spread to the Seacoast! Christopher is currently speaking this weekend at the 2nd annual Freecoast Festival.

Your first UBER ride is free (up to $20) if you click here and sign up.