MANCHESTER, NH –The Occupy movement is alive and well in New Hampshire, where activists have become a constant and grating presence for the Republican candidates.
As part of an “Occupy The Primary” campaign, protestors have turned out at least a few people for virtually every candidate event in the last week. Outside, they wave signs, shout slogans, and beat drums. Inside, they interrupt rallies with chants and ask the candidates questions about corporate influence. At one Rick Santorum event in Keene, protestors demanding marijuana legalization sang pot-themed Christmas Carols before being escorted out by police.
“Democracy is basically a sham when a corporate dollar counts more than my vote as a citizen,” University of New Hampshire junior Alex Freid told TPM outside a Mitt Romney rally in Exeter on Sunday.
Activists crashed the big event, which featured Romney backer Chris Christie, to shout “Mitt kills jobs!” from the audience right as Romney began complaining that the left was “replac[ing] ambition with envy.” Romney, as he has throughout the week, handled them politely, saying “we’re happy to have you express your own views.” Christie handled them less politely.
“You know, something may go down tonight,” he said to a protestor, “but it ain’t going to be jobs, sweetheart.”
What did it mean exactly? Who knows. But it drew a solid round of news coverage for the ragtag band of activists.
Sometimes their various strategies work against each other. Protestors beat drums and jeered outside a Mexican restaurant in Manchester where Newt Gingrich was holding a town hall on Latino issues earlier this week — only to drown out a question from an Occupy protestor about how to keep corporate money out of politics.
They did get under one bullying Newt volunteer’s skin inside the restaurant, however, who tried to swipe at a protestor through the window during Gingrich’s speech, prompting screams of “they’re punching me, they’re punching me, heeeelp!” followed by an extra vigorous round of drum beats in protest. The seething volunteer declined to talk to TPM.
Like its counterparts around the country, the Occupy New Hampshire movement has an outdoors encampment where they base their operations. At Veterans’ Park in Manchester, a small group maintains a temporary tent community, which authorities have allowed them to keep up so long as they don’t sleep in them at night.
As part of a deal with local authorities, the protestors do not sleep in their tents — probably for the best given the freezing temperatures — but are allowed to leave them up at night. Protestors say they frequently maintain a presence from 6 AM to midnight.
“Have some ginger tea, it helps warm from the inside,” Tim, 23, a volunteer medic for the Occupy camp who hails from Concord, says to one of the activists as he motions him towards his (surprisingly warm) makeshift recovery tent.
“Our biggest issue is the cold,” he tells me. “We try to prevent hypothermia so we don’t have to treat it. Occasionally there are hand warmer burns.”
Tim is joined by volunteers from Occupy Wall Street in New York, who have come up to help out during the primary. The group are also providing services to the local homeless, some of whom have been hanging around the camp.
“Me and my girlfriend woke up under a bridge one day, came here, saw this,” Matt Baker, a 19-year old homeless Manchester resident told TPM while he worked on some spray painted artwork he’s been selling to locals. “I don’t know much about politics, but I support a lot of what they believe in.”
The ubiquity of Occupy protestors at events is rivaled only by Ron Paul activists, both of whom often draw from a similarly youthful pool. At other Occupy events, the two groups sometimes join each other, but in New Hampshire there are few signs of cooperation even as their signs condemning America’s finance system often overlap. Ron Paul supporters outside of Romney’s Exeter rally went out of their way to distance themselves from the adjacent Occupiers in selling themselves to voters.
“They have some good thoughts,” one man holding a Paul sign said. “But if they were smart they’d join up with Ron Paul.”
Similarly Jeff Allen, 47, a Dennis Kucinich volunteer in 2007 turned Occupier, said that the political process made it difficult for the non-partisan activists — who often brandish signs with a combined donkey and elephant — to get along.
“We’re not about candidates,” he said. “God himself could come down, but we couldn’t support him if he was a candidate.”
