Since last year’s Freedom Fest photos took a year to get out, I figured I’d turn this set around in a month!
I had the pleasure of attending both Freedom Fest and AnarchoVegas in July. Unfortunately, I started getting sick at the beginning of the week – Freedom Fest started on Wednesday and I had panels on Friday and Saturday, but I spend a lot of time in my hotel room trying to medicate and rest and take care of myself, so I didn’t get as many pictures as I wanted to.
I had the pleasure of speaking on several panels at Freedom Fest, and attending several others, including a great main stage speech and interview featuring Penn Jillette and Glenn Beck.
I’ve been attending Freedom Fest since 2012, and it’s one of my favorite liberty events of the year mostly because it feels like going home. Vegas is a really fun environment for a conference, and there are a lot of people I only get to see at that particular conference.
Freedom Fest has an interesting political bent, because though it’s a liberty-oriented conference, it can be a little cozy with Republicans, which is its own personality quirk. There’s a lot of panels that discuss both political issues and cultural issues, still with an implicit “what should gov’t do?” question over it, which I feel like a libertarian answer is simply “gov’t shouldn’t do anything”. But I like Freedom Fest for trying to bring state-minded people towards liberty – I think it’s a necessary venue for such a thing, and I’m glad to go and participate every year. I even hosted Karaoke on Friday night though my voice was completely shot myself.
On the Saturday night of Freedom Fest there’s a large banquet. I took a few photos at the cocktail reception ahead of that and at the banquet itself, but then after that began the Free Ross party! This was a Prohibition/Gatsby themed party at a large private residence in Vegas, and they did an auction and more all to support Ross Ulbricht. His mother Lyn was there, met activists, and it was lovely.
The Free Ross party was part of AnarchoVegas. AnarchoVegas is an off-shoot of Anarchapulco, which I attend in February every year. This was the very first AnarchoVegas.
AnarchoVegas was done at conference venue in Las Vegas all day Sunday. It began with a brunch and then speeches starting at 1:30pm on only one stage. I was the very first speech, and felt very grateful for the attention that speaking slot gave to the subject matter I was discussing.
I loved that AnarchoVegas was very on theme. This was not about Republicans vs Democrats or who could be better political allies or political movements at all: this was about imaging a world without the state, and how we would live and do and be.
Due to it being one track: one stage, there was focus on the speakers, and they were all excellent. I really appreciated the nature of the talks – not just this imagining the world without the state, but for the most part the speeches veered away from esoteric or abstract conspiratorial philosophy and theory: this was about solutions and choices and options and life.
It was an excellent conference, and it was a perfect complement to an event like Freedom Fest. It was affordable, intimate and laser beam focused. I know it shared a number of attendees and speakers with Freedom Fest, which was wonderful because the proximity of the dates gave people an opportunity to attend both events, and experience a large spectrum of liberty activism. I think both conferences were very much themselves, and that they were very much in (unintentional) collaboration at bringing people into liberty ideas by meeting them where they are and bringing them somewhere new. The two events didn’t feel competitive at all – they felt perfectly their own and perfectly coexisting.
At the end of AnarchoVegas, that Sunday night, there was a dinner and pool party gathering for some of the attendees and speakers. I took some pictures there as well.
I did not take a lot of photos at either event this year. Partially due to being sick, and then just purely being busy.
But I love the portraits I do capture, and I love trying to show people the beauty within the liberty movement.
Please take a look at the album, which as always is hosted on Facebook, tag your friends, and enjoy the pictures.
FREEDOM & ANARCHY & LOVE IN LAS VEGAS
I didn’t charge either event for my photography or speaking this year, so if you’d like to contribute a tip for your headshot I’m totally grateful for it. If not, your good will is always appreciated, and feel free to use these shots for your profiles, or in any other context you wish.
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AVENS OBRIEN 