Sovereign Curtis was arrested at the Nashua 420 rally on 2010-03-23 by three undercover officers and charged with “dispensing marijuana,” a class B felony. He was held overnight at Hillsborough County Jail in Manchester awaiting arraignment. A video arraignment was held on Wednesday, 2010-03-24, in Nashua District Court between 08:30 and 12:00, and around 16:30 a Porc411 call came in announcing that Curtis had been bailed out.

The charge being a felony, the trial, if and when it takes place, will be in Hillsborough County Superior Court, most likely at the courthouse in Nashua.

The 420s were planned to be weekly events in Nashua, taking place each Tuesday, but with today’s arrests, there is talk of another rally taking place tomorrow in response. Check the Free Keene and other activists forums for updates.

The 420 rally that was held today in Nashua at Library Hill—held directly in response to the police overreaction to yesterdays’s rally—took place without incident. Multiple police vehicles drove by during the rally, including several marked cruisers, and one unmarked blue Chevy Impala (the driver of which amusingly used his PA system to tell us “say no to drugs”), but none stopped and bothered us. Several of the cops waved as they passed.

In response to yesterday’s police overreaction and three arrests, another 420 rally is planned to take place today in Nashua at the same location, at the intersection of Main Street and Amherst Street.

At the Nashua 420 at 4:20 rally on Saturday, three people were arrested: Catherine Bleish, an activist who was in New Hampshire to attend the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum conference, David K. of Keene, and Lewis L., a local teenager from Nashua who had attended the rally and just happened to be the guy who the police decided to grab for smoking. David and Catherine were arrested for “disorderly” conduct: David for refusing to move out of the way of the police car taking Louis away, and Catherine for trying to video the arrest.

More than a dozen police cars had shown up on the scene—most likely a significant chunk of Nashua’s on-duty police force. At the height of the police reaction, there were about a dozen marked Ford Crown Victorias, two SUVs including one K-9 unit, and five or six unmarked blue Chevy Impalas.

Over 100 people attended the rally, and after the arrests about half of us went to the police station to both protest and continue the rally. After the usual bureaucratic delays and similar nonsense, everyone was released within a few hours.

On Saturday, 2010-03-20, a 420 rally will be taking place at 4:20 in the center of Nashua, to coincide with the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum event going on this weekend. The exact location will probably be announced via Porc411 shortly before it’s taking place.

Facebook event here.

According to a Porc411 call on Saturday, 2010-03-06, the 420 at 4:20 rallies in Keene are happening daily again. We’ve had an unusually mild winter this year, and they’ve already been happening sporadically in Keene and Manchester since as far back as January; now that it’s been steadily warm for a while and looks like it will keep being so, the daily rallies are back in action.

“We smoke these in remembrance of lost liberties—and in a hope for a day when the people don’t fear the government, because the government fears the people.”

I’m posting this for the Nashua High South chapter of Young Americans for Liberty and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. This upcoming Wednesday we are holding a candlelight vigil at City Hall in Nashua. It’s right across the street from where the Nashua Weekly Liberty Discourse meets and where the Liberty Forum 420 celebration is going to be held. It would be nice to get as many libertarians there as possible to attend.

April 20, 2010: Dan Gervais will start a long walk, from Boston to Los Angeles. He calls it the War on Lies Walk.

The clothes and food he will be using will all be made out of hemp. This walk is to keep the prohibition issue at the forefront for the coming 2010 elections, and to inspire more people to take an active roll opposing the War on Drugs.

Good luck, Dan! The New Hampshire 420 rallies are on your side.

The Cannabis Reform Coalition is the oldest student-run anti-prohibition group in New England. They will be holding the nineteenth Extravaganja event on Saturday, 2010-04-17, at the Amherst Common in Amherst, Mass., all day. Supporters of the 420 rallies in New Hampshire have been welcomed. From what I have been told, the number of people that show up are usually between one and two thousand. Rich Paul and I will be speaking at the event.

The judge finally acted on the bail motions, and Big Mike was released from jail around 18:00 on Wednesday, 2010-02-03. More coverage at NH-CLOG.