In 2016 at the Free State Project ‘s yearly “ Liberty Forum ” convention, there was an excellent awards ceremony called the “Liberty in Action Awards” put on by Andre Rosa and a large cast of volunteer performers. Lots of production value and practice was required to make the entertaining and very funny stage presentation. The awards were given out in several categories where the nominees and winners were selected by popular vote of FSP participants. It was a fantastic show and really well done.

The performers put a lot of work into this, so why did it take until now (over two years since it happened) for video of the awards to be released?

Despite paying a professional videographer to record the whole ceremony with multiple cameras, the official video was never released by the Free State Project. The official videographer, Free Keene blogger JJ Schlessinger, reported he completed the video shortly after the event and delivered it to the FSP per their contract with him. No one outside JJ and the FSP board of directors has ever seen it. Thankfully, there was an independent videographer present who was not hired to be there by the FSP! Paul Gibbons of Red Pill Recording has now released his video of the event from start-to-finish:

One could speculate that part of the reason they chose to shove the video down the “memory hole” was because the FSP board, just a few weeks after the ceremony decided to ban me and my show from future Liberty Forum and Porcfest events. You see, I was one of the winners of the awards (click here to see that part).

Perhaps they felt it would be difficult to explain why they were kicking to the curb the very individual who moments before had been voted by their participants as one of their most valued communicators of the idea of the FSP.

Mark Edge, my fellow award winner, had this to say regarding the craven decision by the FSP board, “If this was a planned erasing of history, then it is the very sort of behavior that we all moved here to eliminate… The FSP Board is an unaccountable, unelected entity… As a government sanctioned bureaucracy, [501c3] they have now become nearly eternal. Best to just ignore them.”

So, thanks to Red Pill Recording, Free Keene is pulling this great event out of the memory hole where the FSP board of 2016 hoped to keep it.

Here is the full list of award-winners from the first and only Free State Project “Liberty in Action Awards”. Congratulations to them all:

Community Building Award: Amanda Bouldin

Significant Contributions: Chris Lopez

Out of the System Activism: Christopher David

In System Activism: Amanda Bouldin

Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Kevin Bloom and Kirk McNeil

Spreading the Message: Ian Freeman and Mark Edge

Lifetime Achievement: Mark Warden