00:25
Caterina Bonandin
All right, welcome, everybody. This is a panel called how to walk the walk, and we have some Porcfest and Anarchapulco OGs in the house. These are some of the coolest people that I have ever met in my life. I’m really excited to be a part of this panel, and I’m really grateful that you guys agreed to come on. So I’ll briefly introduce myself, and then I’m going to ask that the other three of you introduce yourselves. And we are going to be the A team, and we’re going to get the calendar back on schedule, so we’re going to keep it to 45 minutes because they were running 15 minutes behind. We are all very accessible and willing to talk to you guys outside of this room. So, I’m Catherine Bleish Bonandin.
I came to my first porcupine freedom festival in 2009. That’s where I met the queen quill.
I was part of brave new books in Austin, Texas, which is where I met Danny. I don’t know if we knew each other before then. Did we?
01:27
Danny Sessoms
No, that was it.
01:28
Caterina Bonandin
And then Jay, I met at the Arizona Jackalope Freedom Festival. Yeah. And helped us fix the brake system on our converted school bus, which was formerly the unschool bus that hailed from New Hampshire, and it’s now called the bitcoin bus that my family lived in for seven and a half years. I have signed up as a free stater. I have not made the move yet. I don’t know when I’ll make the move. I’ve got children geographically restricted to the state of Texas, so they’re going to have to be adults before I can make that move. So, with that being said, it is an honor to be here. I live in an intentional community in Texas called Greenbrier and raise chickens, raise goats, love the homeschool lifestyle, love the homesteading lifestyle, and love these people here. So maybe we could start with Danny and come down this way with introductions.
02:21
Danny Sessoms
All right. Yeah. I’m Danny sessions. I did the crypto show, which actually started out of brave meat books back in 2013 as part of the first Texas bitcoin conference. And I worked with that for about seven years, I think, and ended up broadcasting on Bloomberg, and it was all over the place. Through doing that, I started doing activism because, of course, Ron Paul was my lead into that. So I went to all the rallies. What was I really doing with the political system? Not really much. So when I started being sponsored by crypto, with Dash especially, I was able to start doing all types of things. Building houses, responding to hurricanes, just doing all this different activism that was sponsored by Dash, I really liked it. And so that just became the thing that I did. And I’m no longer sponsored by Dash, but that doesn’t stop me from doing that. I find other ways of doing that, and I just keep doing it. That’s what makes me happy. I’m not really trying to buy a mansion or anything. We live on the road or nomads, and I just do what I want and try to stay live on the cheapest possible. I have no bills, so that’s the first thing I’d advise for anyone to do, is get out of debt and don’t get back in.
03:51
Jay Noone
I’m Jay Noone. I’ve actually was born into the libertarian movement. My dad was a hardcore libertarian anarchist back in the seventies and eighties. One of his first acts of anarchy was not signing up for selective service. He always bragged about that. You don’t have to. There’s no obligation for you to put your signature in that document. Please don’t do it. And I grew up going to John Burr society meetings. I’ve been coming to Porcfest since 2007, and I met my wife here, Shannon, in 2012 and 14. We got married here in 2018, and we got two kids. Now we live in Henniker, the only Henniker on earth. And it’s this every day. Best day ever in New Hampshire.
04:43
Carla Gericke
That’s quite an endorsement, and I agree, actually. Hi, I’m Carla Gericke, and I came to my first Porcfest in 2005. It was huge. It was the second or third one, I believe it was the third one. And there were about 100 of us. There were three women. I was one of three. The other 97 men were mostly older with big beards and guns. And I came from New York City, and I was like, what is happening? But I stuck it out because my middle name is perseverance. It is not, but it should be. I don’t have a middle name. And so I am here with thousands and thousands of liberty lovers, Ron Paul supporters, Ancaps, crypto people, whatever label you need to hear to feel comfortable, just know there is a community here for you. We’re building it. We have had we’ve proven it works. And so we are just really excited and we want as many of you as possible to come pull New Hampshire home.
05:57
Caterina Bonandin
Awesome. Thank you, guys. All right, so I know these folks pretty well, and I’m going to ask you each a question targeted at each of you about how you walk the walk. And there may be ways that you walk the walk that I don’t even know about, but sticking to the same order. One of the things I really respect and admire about Danny is that his activism comes in the form very often, of hands in the dirt, boots on the ground, actually building physical infrastructure for people in need. So I was hoping, Danny, that you could tell us a little bit about some of that type of service and activism that you have done. I think it is walking the walk when we’re talking about how to build a community, how to build a society without a centralized institution. And so Danny has actually shown up to disaster zones and volunteered, rose money and done a lot to take care of people in need. Do you mind telling us some about that, Danny?
06:59
Danny Sessoms
Sure. But first, this is hoodie, everybody. (Talking about a dog) If you don’t know him, he is really cool. Yeah. So like I said, it started with being sponsored by Dash. Hurricane Harvey was actually the first one that I had responded to and was able to do something about. We started off, were just feeding homeless people in Austin, and I had a few bucks left over to go down and help out for the hurricane. And so went on air and said, hey, I’m going to go down there and I’ve got a few hundred bucks. I’m going to go get some meals to people. And by the end of the night, we had raised $43,000.
07:42
Carla Gericke
Wow.
07:44
Danny Sessoms
I left directly from the studio to Corpus Christi from Austin. I stopped at the Walmart in San Antonio and started buying stuff with my shift card from Coinbase, from the money that we had just received right then. And by the end of the three weeks that I was down there, we raised $60,000, helped over 3000 people, and we bought a boat. We pulled 30 people out of the water from their homes. Everybody seen what were doing and they just started donating. One guy, he did a ten bitcoin donation, it was 4300 at the time. And people were just driving from all over the state, coming to help us prepare food, deliver the food, operate the boats. They were the defense distributed guys. I mean, you know, Cody Wilson is his crew came out and manned the boats. It was amazing.
And, you know, the dash community loved what happened, so they kept supporting us, and we stayed on air from. After the. Shortly after that, there was an earthquake in Mexico City, and so we ended up getting sponsored again, went there, built six houses and one community, which was funded by Roger Ver for the community center. And it just kept going.
I’ve been in Hurricane Ida. I’ve been to four different hurricanes, and the most recent one was Hurricane Otis, which happened very quickly. I had no funding for that. I just did it because I knew people that were in Acapulco. I had friends there. So I seen it happening, and I just, like, got on the chat and told the guys in the chat, I said, I think I’m gonna go. So the hurricane hadn’t even happened yet, and I was already loading. Loading my stuff up. And then as I seen it happening, I was on the road. Next day, I was in Acapulco on my motorcycle and brought Jason Henza, who also comes down there. We loaded our motorcycles halfway from Morelia and made the back way into Acapulco, and the roads were all blocked.
We had to abandon his van and make the rest of our way into Acapulco motorcycles, because all the roads were really shut down. So were able to start organizing. We were there before Red Cross, before everybody else, but by the time we got our shit together and actually were handing out stuff, we we’re with stuff in hand around the same time of Red Cross, so we didn’t really get in front of Red Cross. That’s a misconception that’s been told. But, no, were there and helping as much as possible, and we focus on the areas where Anarchapulco was based so that we could try to make an impact on that town there so we can show appreciation for the hospitality that they show us every year. And, like, one in particular, our driver, who has been with Anarchapulco for, I believe, five years now.
He organizes all the taxi rides. His house was blown down. It was made out of coconut wood. You know, there’s, like, just coconut boards kind of stapled together, and you could see through his walls. And, you know, the hurricane is flattened his house. So myself and Rebecca, who is also one of the Anarchapulco team, we pitched in money. Part of the money was they were getting stipends for gas and all this. So I just donated all the money that they were paying me to that. So then Anarchapulco matched the funds that Rebecca and I had donated, and then we raised more money. We ended up building this guy a concrete house. He had a slab to work with, so now he has a home from being up to me and Jay. Jay and Colin Gibson.
Yeah. They came out and helped us stucco. So after the walls were up, we came out there, you know, grandos and helping mixings. And were doing our stuff over. We were doing it backwards, but we learned a lot about. We learned a lot about cement work. Yeah, there were people. There was a young kid there. I think he was Gustav, nine.
Gustav, nine years old from the Netherlands. He was helping us do this. So, you know, that was one really happy family that they now have a concrete house. And the thing with Mexico is they do have aid in these situations, but it only applies to a house that’s actually considered a house. And this was the reason why I wanted to help him build this house even before the hurricane was because if the house isn’t mortar together, isn’t cement or framed, and just considered a whole house, there’s no aid for him. And I had learned that before in working with stuff in Puebla that they don’t give any. So those were the people that I always spoke. So now he’s got, you know, he’s got some backup. He’ll get taken care of.
13:11
Caterina Bonandin
So here’s one man making a huge difference. And I know we don’t have a big room, but can we please just give him a round of applause? Because if this is like walking the walk, I don’t know what is. In fact, our driver Macario, his family spent the night in the car during the hurricane, and his eight year old daughter still is afraid every time they hear a metal roof rattle because it was such a terrifying experience for them. So thank you, Danny, for that. Now, Jay, you are walking the walk in a similar but different way. You’re in a different time of life. You’ve got young children, you’ve got livestock, you’ve got a family, and you are helping other families learn how to live off the land.
13:53
Caterina Bonandin
So would you please talk to our audience about the ways in which you are walking the walk with family and leading by example.
14:02
Jay Noone
So it’s not so much about teaching the kids how to live off the land. It’s more of incentivizing that this brain develop, that this brain that is in hardcore development stage before you’re six years old, is earning dopamine hits. Because the bottom line is, whatever kids earn for a dopamine hit before they’re six years old, they’re going to chase that for the rest of their life. So if they’re getting their dopamine hit playing, you know, super Mario Brothers on a Nintendo or just, you know, watching YouTube videos all day long. And according to the National Institute of Health, the average in 2021, the average three to nine year old is consuming 9 hours of basically Internet content a day, according to the metadata from these apps that are like, you know, for, like, kids type, you know, babysitter, pacifier, amusement, tablet stuff.
Anyways, so the idea is I happen to be someone who has never, ever had to look for work. I have constantly, my entire life, ever since I was a teenager, have said, no, I’m too busy. I can’t do that. In fact, I haven’t said that enough most of my life, except for the past couple years. Now I have kids because I was absolutely forced to. So I’ve kind of been a career workaholic. I grew up. I basically earning dopamine hits with my dad. I was very proud when I was a little kid to clean a stall all by myself. When I was five years old, I taught a 15 year old how to do his first job, and I was cleaning stalls.
So I was kind of forced into this situation because my father’s or my mom run off with my dad’s farmhand when I was, like, two and a half years old. And at two and a half years old, I was too much for my grandmother to handle. She was kind of crippled up. So my younger brother, who was a year old at that time, is that right? Yeah. Something about a year old got to hang out with my grandmother, and I was on the road horse trading and working with my dad. So I just love doing that kind of stuff. I’ve always wanted to be useful, always wanted to be an ad. So the idea is we need to program that into our kids. So I got back into farming.
I didn’t want to be a farmer until Cyprus was born, because the only way you make farming, I make any money farming, is to be government subsidized. All these farmers that aren’t government subsidized, it’s a hobby farm. Some retired wealthy guys got, or they’re just broke, and it’s the bottom line. So I do have equipment repair for a living. I bill $125 an hour. I pretty much have all the work I want to do, and I subsidize my farm set essentially with that. And my biggest concern wasn’t so much that my kids, you know, I’m not worried about them being useful because my kids are going to be useful. I’m going to keep them just the way I operate. But I was really concerned about, is there going to be a man in 20 years is good enough for my daughter to marry?
So I started my home school co op, and to where we got, for example, Jeremy and Rachel’s kids come to it. Sarah Brown, Tyler and Sarah Brown’s kids come to it, where we’re just doing simple farm chores that toddlers can do. And I want these kids to earn a dopamine hit from doing work. So it’s collecting the chicken eggs, it’s cleaning the chicken coop out, it’s feeding the meat birds, moving them around, picking weeds all around the garden, around the house, putting them in a wagon, hauling them out to the cows, feeding the cows. And we butchered chickens a couple weeks ago. So, you know, two year old and four year old sitting over there were pulling guts out of a chicken. Two weeks ago, some other four year olds and five year olds were pulling guts out of chickens.
And last fall we did it. We butchered a bunch of chickens also. And there was a little bigger crowd then, like, so, you know, the Kaufman boys all participated. And so the kids are just really learning about what’s reality. And I just couldn’t think of anything better to do with my kids and my friends kids, except for farm. So it’s just. It’s natural, it’s normal. We’ve been doing it ever since we’ve existed. And so the goal is our kids have to be useful and competent and polite and, you know, valuable to the community around them, because whether they’re. We’re living in, you know, abundance, which we have been seeing our entire lives, everyone here been living in abundance. And, you know, these things ebb and flow.
So, you know, 20 years from now, there’s a really good chance we’re not living in abundance based on, you know, world history and what’s been going on. So whether you’re living in abundance or you’re living in Mad Max, if you’re more valuable to everyone around you alive than dead, you’re gonna thrive. It’s really, bottom line, awesome.
18:58
Caterina Bonandin
Once again, can you get a round of applause? This is amazing work taking place right here. This is changing the future. So we’re gonna come back to me. I’m gonna skip over me and go to Carla next. Now, Carla, there’s two things I’d like you touch on, and maybe you can add something else in. But one of the ways that I admire about you walking the walk is how you jumped in to the free state project and you have just run with it. And you have been so instrumental in triggering the move, getting people here, inspiring people to participate. And I feel like that is one way of walking the walk. That is a very public, outfacing way. And then you’ve also gone on this personal health journey. And this is something I really, really admire.
I’ve watched you transform your physical self, your spiritual self, your emotional self, and I feel like that is some of the hardest work that there is to do on this planet. So if you don’t mind talking about those two specific things, and then, of course, if there’s other ways you’re walking the walk.
20:02
Carla Gericke
Sure. And thank you. You know, if something you say reminded me my husband, who’s sitting right there, Louie, who’s finally remembered to take a photo, it’s taken 30 years. Well done, reward systems. We were just chatting the other day in the house, and he kind of looked over at me and he said, you know what I think the motto should be? It should be ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen. And I thought, isn’t that like a beautiful way to describe in a voluntarist way, kind of what we’re trying to do? So I guess what I’m trying to do is to evolve from a neanderthal barbarian into a lady. So the first part of the question was about my role in the free State project. So I moved out here from New York City in 2008, briefly.
Born and raised in South Africa, won a green card in the lottery, decided Louie and I were living together at the time. I was still in law school in South Africa, and I was like, hey, I’m going to go to America because, yo, the american dream. Do you want to come? And were like, let’s go on this adventure together. We’re going to get married. We’re going to get green cards. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Let’s try this. We immigrated to Silicon Valley. We got there at the start of the .com boom. We took a wild ride through Silicon Valley. I worked at science and Logitech. Had I stayed at Logitech, I probably would have been a very comfortable in house counsel working with IP. But instead, I jumped to a startup.
So I know everything about boom and bust cycles. In that bust, we learned about the free state project. So we spent about three years backpacking across the world, mostly southeast Asia, India, got stuck in Goa for longer than we needed to, but also learned a lot and then learned about the free state project. So started coming up here, started coming to our events, pork Fest and Liberty Forum, and I organized pork Fest in 2009, and in 2010, they had moved it to another venue that was actually a controlled ski resort gun stop for anyone who’s actually following the dramas here in the state. So New Hampshire, which is very hands off, of course, from a state perspective, it’s also the only state that actually has a state owned ski resort. So that’s a little weird.
So some of us were working to try and figure out if we could privatize that. Got into a bit of a skirmish with the governor, so we’re in trouble anyway, so we moved it back here. I got involved, and we basically, from the time I got involved, I doubled the size of Porcfest in 2009. We then grew again. Then we really started to feel like we had this momentum and were going to grow. So really, my role, I think, has been to put a positive, friendly face on the free state project. I actually think that’s my best value. People like to call me the cheerleader, and I used to sort of bristle at that.
But I’m learning as I’m getting older and evolving to sort of maybe listen to people and, you know, embrace the things that I’m actually strong at instead of fighting at all. So I’ve been on the board of the Free State project, triggered the move, got Edward Snowden, did a lot of stuff that now just seems like history, but has put us in the position we are now, which is thriving and growing and again seeking those people who really want to come help build what could possibly be a new country one day, you know, at the farthest end of the work I do independence work, and it’s marginally a joke, but I also believe, aspirationally, we go where we set our minds.
So I have stopped resisting the idea of, oh, wait, I think I’m trying to build a new country and start to figure out what happens if we actually do that. Like, we can take all this tech, all the blockchain stuff, all the things we can privatize charity, we can do, everything we dream of here if we get all these minds together to do it. So, on my personal evolution, I think maybe the biggest thing I changed in my life, which is very similar to our friend Jeff with Anarchapulco is I quit drinking alcohol in 2017. And for people who knew Carla, old Carla, I think the new version is better. Oh, congratulations. I think quitting alcohol is the trend. Here’s the news, folks. I mean, I know I sound like an abolitionist. But alcohol is a neurotoxin that rocks your brain. So why? Why?
We’ve got better things to enjoy in life. So I’m gonna leave it there, because I know we’re pressed for time, but we’re here to talk and answer questions later. Sorry.
25:37
Caterina Bonandin
No, that was great, Carla. Could we get a round of applause for Carla? She’s amazing. Now I feel like I walk the walk as well. And for me, that has changed over time. There’s the pre-children Cat, and there’s the post-children Cat. The pre-children Cat was a wild, radical activist. Some of you who were hanging out with me back in the day, remember? Yeah, it was wild. Yeah. I got arrested here in New Hampshire in 2010. I got arrested in Missouri in 2009, both times picking up for other people and cops that were being big thug bullies. I was a political activist. Ron Paul delegate, 2008. Yep. That’s how a lot of us got involved. So I feel like I really did follow my passion and follow my heart, and I walked in alignment with my philosophy and my principles, and then I had children.
And that was when I realized, okay, my ex husband got arrested when my first child was three months old. And I was like, dude, no, this is over. We are done with this. Like, there will not be any more of this radical crazy, because we have this precious life that we have to take care of. And we got into farming, and we got into homesteading and chickens and all of these types of things. And when that relationship devolved, I ended up in a converted school bus because I couldn’t do the homesteading thing by myself. And I was a stay at home mom. I had to rebuild from nothing. And I was in a converted school bus for seven and a half years. We traveled. We went to Jackalope Freedom festival.
I don’t think we ever brought the bus to Porcfest.
I don’t think.
So we picked it up here in New Hampshire, and we drove it south, and then we always either flew or drove back up here, because it’s like an ordeal to get the bus around everywhere. And I started slow traveling after an initial, like, lots of fast travels, and we started slow traveling, meaning we would stay at one place for three months and then six months and then nine months and then two years, you know? And it was like I started to really miss that homesteading life. And I was actually court ordered to return to a specific county in Texas when my status ex took me to family court. And I posted on Facebook, I’m looking for a place where I can park my converted school bus.
I need a bathroom and a shower in a kitchen that’s outside, and I want to bring my chickens, and I want my children to be around other homeschoolers. I want to be able to walk on a dirt path, and it has to be in this county. And I have four people recommend Greenbriar intentional community. So during this time period, I got a job with Anarchapulco. I always thought one day I would run Porcfest. It was like something I really wanted to do.
28:33
Carla Gericke
I’m sure we could do a trade.
28:35
Caterina Bonandin
Yeah. So I ended up running a conference down in Mexico called Anarchapulco. Has anyone ever been there? I know some people. If you haven’t been, come grab a flyer from me, and I’ve got an opening night free party coupon code with your GA ticket for 2025. Awesome event. Very similar to PorcFest, and yet very different that we’re not camping your standard beach houses or hotels. It’s very small beach town, and I started to make a living lifting up the voices of other people. I was in a spot where I felt like I can’t be on the front lines anymore. I don’t want to be on national news anymore. Like, I’m tired of being a radical activist. And I started lifting people up from behind the scenes as a producer at Anarchapulco.
And I moved the Greenbrier intentional community, where I’ve been for four years, and there we run a homeschool enrichment program. It’s a school that runs four days a week, and kids attend from one to four days. We’ve got chickens, we’ve got goats. We’re on 173 acres. It was formed 55 years ago, and it’s a really interesting model, which we could get more into another time. Similar to the free state project. It’s a nonprofit, it’s a 501. I’m the treasurer of the board of directors, and I love it. I absolutely love being there, and I’m proud of what we’re doing. I feel like we are really living in alignment with our values because we are raising our children as a community. There are 19 adults and about 15 children, and we’ve got cabins on site that we don’t own that the nonprofit owns.
It’s a very non ancappy type model. It’s very different from anything I ever thought I would end up involved with after being, you know, so porcfesty and so Anarchapulco-ey. But it works. It really works. And it may not be where I retire. It may not be where I live forever. But for right now, raising my children, it’s a really good model. And I personally believe in a decentralized geography in case something happens. You’ve got choices, you’ve got places to go. So I’ve got Mexican residency, and we are working toward our passports there. My husband is Italian. I have to learn Italian to get my passport. So I have to do that before my kids turn 18 so I can get them their passports without them having to take italian test.
And so that’s one of the ways I’m trying to walk the walk and live in alignment with my principles is I went from undocumented human. I’ve got, you know, children who were born at home with a midwife, and we did not fill out birth certificates, the midwife did. So they were filed at the status. Baby girl, baby boy. And Luis Fernando Mises, I don’t know how many people here know him, but he’s a speaker at Anarchapulco. I was debating whether or not to go to an Acapulco, but my kids didn’t have passports. And I like, well, what am I going to do? You know, they don’t have Social Security numbers. What are we going to do? And he said, I think your principles are getting in the way of your freedom.
And then I realized there’s other ways to get around the world and feel more free. And so now I’m going for lots of documentation and lots of access to lots of places. So my children got passports that said baby girl and baby boy on them. They are now older, and they wanted their names legally changed. So we got their names changed. Passports have not been updated, but we let that be their choice. Right? So they could have maintained the status of international men and women of mystery with baby girl and baby boy. But that was really embarrassing for them. Their dad enrolled them in public school this past year. Their teachers were calling them baby in front of the whole school. So their names have been legally changed, but it is possible to do.
You can have this very undocumented life, and you can also, we’ve taken another route now, which is lots and lots of documentation. So we’ve got ten minutes. And so I’m going to do my quick fourth question and see I, or my third question. And I kept it short on purpose because I knew we’re all long winded people. I did not know we would be 15 minutes short on time. So my question here is, and this is a universal question for everybody, what advice do you have for people who want to live more in alignment with their values. And we’ll start with Danny and move down in the same way.
33:01
Danny Sessoms
This is just a short question. Just do it. That’s what I do. I really don’t think about the consequences.
I just do things.
And I end up in some very interesting situations. Very interesting. But I’m not gonna die regretting that I didn’t do something, for sure, because I’ve done quite a bit and have a lot of fun doing it.
33:33
Jay Noone
I pretty much just do it also. But my advice, let’s say you got kids, is be the example you want your kids to be, which means you might have to change your lifestyle a little bit. Program your kids to be, you know, to have these values and morals that you want them to have. And the only way you can really program them to do that is not by telling them to do this, not by saying, this is the rules, but just by showing the example. The thing is, you know, a little chicken learns from big chicken. And these developing brains, especially for six years old, they are going to mimic everything you do. So if you’re mean to your wife, they’re gonna be mean to mom, or vice versa. If you’re not polite to people, they’re not gonna be polite to people.
So if you just make it a point, because you’re gonna be the image they’re mimicking. And that way you’re sort of not only programming them, you’re also programming yourself to better. So, like, one thing I say to people, every time I go to some store and somebody’s working, I say, thank you for coming to work today. And when I got my kids with me, they’re usually saying it before I could say, for example, which is pretty awesome. And people love it when you thank them for coming to work. It stops them. They smile. They get a good response. And so, yeah, you just gotta be the examples and the example for the other kids too. And I’ll do a quick example. I have an uncle, he passed away. He spent eight years or five years in the federal penitentiary.
He was kind of always in trouble. And he used to brag about when he was a kid, he’d go to New York City for the summer because he was a troublemaker. So my grandmother would send him away, would trade with her brother, and he would go jack cars with people in New York City. And his son, my cousin, is now in a mental institution, has been for his entire adult life.
He really thought that’s like, what he did, because my uncle would brag about this dumb stuff he would do as a kid because he, like, thought that was a thing. And at 15-16 years old, my cousin’s trying to convince me to help him break into cars, and he’s out breaking into cars, and I’m like, I ain’t helping you do that. I mean, I knew how to get into the cars is doing stupid stuff, and, well, they kind of let them down very long, you know, bad road. So don’t talk about stupid things. Don’t hang out with people who are doing stupid stuff. You know, it’s just a horrible influence. In your case.
36:14
Carla Gericke
That is very good advice. I agree with both of you. Obviously, you have to be it. You have to embody it. But based on Cat’s question, it actually said that it lies with your values. And so I think there’s also an important question here, is sort of figuring out who you want to be so that you can go be it. So for someone like me, I’ve actually spent. I’m 52 years old, and I’m now only deprogramming myself from being a people pleaser. I was a very successful lawyer on two continents. Did Carla ever want to be a lawyer? No. No, she did not. Turns out, now my dad will say, because I had this fight with him two weeks ago. He was like, yes, but you want to be a writer. You are a writer. My books are for sale at the back.
That is very good. What I just did there. I didn’t forget, but he said, you know what? Being a lawyer has made you the excellent communicator you are now. So sometimes you got to take the gifts right as they come. But also, I am running for office. I have now run for office. This will be the fifth time I’m running. Running in New Hampshire. I ran three times per senate and now twice for the House. Do I really want to be a senator? No. No, I do not. Do I want to be president of New Hampshire? Yes. Yes, I do. So know what you want to be, and then go be it.
37:39
Caterina Bonandin
Okay, awesome. So I feel like these were very masculine responses. I agree. Just do it. And I also agree. Figure out what you want to do first. And that is sometimes the hard part. And there was one piece of advice. I can’t remember his last name. Michael. Michael something. And he was a Ron Paul 2008 delegate. And after the 2008 campaign, I was feeling really disillusioned, like, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? I think this is before I even heard of the free state project, and he said, write down ten things you love to do and then write down ten ways to make money doing it. And I was like, wow, that’s really interesting. Then you have a hundred ways to make money doing what you love and you can start trying them out.
And so just do it and understand that it may not work out the first time you try. And if you do have a family, you’ve got to do it incrementally, I think because you want to keep stability for your family. When I was younger, I could just dive right in and just do it and try it and screw up and fail and be in poverty and then bounce out and then screw up again and be in poverty and bounce out and screw up again, you know? And now I do things much more incrementally and much more slowly. But in the end, get clear about what your values are and start taking those baby steps. And that might mean moving to a place like New Hampshire so you can do it in community with people you love.
I’m going to go buy a lot of Carla’s books because I haven’t yet. I was trying to write a book at the same time she was and I didn’t finish mine, but I am 150 pages in, to Memiors of a radical and I’m really proud of that. Thank you. We are also, we have essential oils these days for sale if you want any of those. And the answer would love to invite you to Anarchapulco 2025. We’ve got early bird tickets on sale and flyers right here if you want a free opening night party ticket with your GA ticket. So with that being said, thank you for our short, very fast how to walk the walk panel. We have three minutes. If anybody has any questions.
39:48
Audience Member:
This question is for Carla. Once you become president of New Hampshire, how do people from other countries, I’m Canadian, how do we immigrate here?
39:57
Carla Gericke
That is a great question. How are we going to deal with citizenship in my monarchy? I actually, I really do like the models of digital citizenship. I think we could probably figure out competing DAO organizations, so digital autonomous organizations that run different kinds of citizenship, and maybe you would have competing kinds. A lot of what we are trying to do in New Hampshire is generally who’s got great ideas and who’s willing to do the work, right? So some of this is still pie in the sky, but the more we start to think about those structures, the better for folks who are interested in things like the DAO at 04:00 at the Porcupine real estate tent site. I sell houses in my free time. Come over there and come chat to us.
This is RB 74, and we can talk about, you know, we’re looking at as sort of like a first thing is that can we tokenize real estate? Like, if you don’t live here yet, can you own a piece in New Hampshire? Can we all start to build the wealth we know? I mean, for me, and I know I’m running over time, but for me, the way I look at what we’re doing here in New Hampshire is kind of like, hey, what if you could get in on Switzerland really early? Like, this is like 1600 Switzerland for the plans we have, right? Like, we’re talking small scale nuclear, so we can live anywhere. We’re talking about deliveries with drones, so.
You can live everywhere. We have starlinks now, so you can live anywhere. This is a beautiful state. Everyone’s looking out the window. It’s green, green. There’s water, and I think the sky’s the limit. So if you’re a person who’s a builder, a visionary, someone who’s willing to do the work and who wants to work with smart other people, this is the best place in the world to come do that. And then in February, we all get to go to Mexico for a boot holiday.
