Carla Gericke: Author, Activist, Attorney
After winning the Green Card lottery, Carla Gericke left the plains of Africa for a better life in America. Before then, she finished boarding school when she was sixteen years old, and law school when she was 21, working as an attorney in South Africa and California. Watch this talk for a crash course on who she is…
Carla has appeared on WMUR, CNN, and Fox News, been featured in GQ, Playboy, The New Yorker, been quoted in The Economist, and has discussed libertarianism on the BBC more than once. She is featured in LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, an in-depth NBC Boston docuseries about the Free State Project, the most audacious and successful liberty movement in the world.
Carla is author of The Ecstatic Pessimist: Stories of Hope (Mostly). Says Nick Gillespie, Editor-at-Large of Reason Magazine: “It’s a fantastic package of writings that veer from fiction to autobiography and memoir to political polemics…. I highly recommend The Ecstatic Pessimist: Stories of Hope (Mostly)”. In 2023, Carla’s personal essay Live Free and Thrive! was featured in LIBERTARIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: Moving Towards Freedom in Today’s World, a collection of autobiographies of prominent libertarians from around the world.
Carla has visited more than 40 countries, hiked to the base camp of the 10th highest mountain in the world, lost a shoe in a taxi more than once, had her passport stolen in Goa, got kidnapped in Vietnam, and has noshed on more “mystery meat” street food than she cares to admit. Carla once spent an entire summer while working as in-house counsel at Logitech eating tuna fish sandwiches with Doug Engelbart (the Mother Of All Demos dude), she worked on Apple’s acquisition of Steve Job’s NeXT, and bought her first Bitcoin for $6.
In 2010, Carla was arrested and charged with felony wiretapping for filming police officers during a late night traffic stop. She fought back, and four years later, Carla won a landmark First Circuit case affirming the First Amendment right to do so. Afterwards, NH Magazine named her one of 2014’s “Game Changing Remarkable Women.”
During her time in the Free State, Carla has worked on many different types of activism, including partnering with the ACLU-NH on surveillance issues and First Amendment activists on releasing the “Laurie’s List” of bad cops. She has worked on pro-independence bills and lead countless protests, rallies, and celebrations in support of liberty and individual rights.
Carla was an outspoken critic of Covidmania, the government’s hysterical response to a virus. As early as April 2020, she pointed out the government was wrong and that we are all “essential.” She spoke at several ReOpen NH rallies, criticizing un-Constitutional emergency orders, mask “mandates,” and the shutting down of private enterprise by decree. In June 2020, despite “orders” to the contrary, Carla successfully hosted the 17th Annual Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, NH. This PorcFest, which Carla described as a “First and Second Amendment protected assembly,” was one of the only events worldwide to take place as scheduled. More than a thousand individuals gathered for a week-long celebration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with no negative health outcomes.
Carla has been the Republican candidate for New Hampshire Senate three times, steadfastly improving her vote count, garnering 45.8% in 2020 (read about her 2018 race here). In 2022, due to the gerrymandering of her Senate district, Carla ran for House of Representatives in Ward 11 in Manchester instead, and lost by about 200 votes. Boo!
Carla has been a hair model, waitress, fiberglass chair maker, playwright, college lecturer, magazine editor, nonprofit director, and high-tech lawyer. In addition to her law degree, Carla holds a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from CCNY, and has won awards for her short stories and essays. She once attended a writing retreat in Texas hosted by Lonesome Dove author, Larry McMurtry, where she received the nicknames “Galactica” and “Galileo,” because no one could agree which moniker best captured her intrepid spirit.
In 2023, Carla became a Realtor and works with Porcupine Real Estate. She believes every libertarian in the world should own a piece of New Hampshire! She is excited to help clients find their forever homes in the Free State, and she hosts a weekly show about “Investing in NH,” which includes information about investment properties and “imagination picks”.
On her YouTube channel, CarlaGerickeTV, Carla creates content from a liberty perspective. She co-chairs Manch Talk, produces a weekly cable access show, The Carla Gericke Show, and occasionally does a casual cooking show, Freedomnomnom! where she showcases basic cooking skills and makes dishes for beginners who want to learn how to make delicious, low-carb, whole foods at home.
Carla serves on several non-profit boards, follows an ancestral lifestyle (read about her transformation, including losing 50 lbs and quitting alcohol), practices yoga and shooting, and plays a mean game of Scrabble.
Carla enjoys cooking, gardening, painting, reading, and watching documentary films. She is pursuing “the good life” with the love of her life, Louis Calitz, her husband since 1994 (yikes! :-)) and their dog, Obi (as in Wan Kenobi). They live in a 1950s atomic-ranch home they are slowly renovating in West Manchester.
Carla Gericke of the House of Wisdom is known as Queen Quill, First of Her Name, Demander and Defender of Truth, Giver of Confidence, Liberator of Arcadia, Queen of the Free Staters, and Mother of Porcupines. She promises to not burn down your village because she, first and foremost, supports peaceful, voluntary human interactions. Carla is pro-markets and anti-state, knowing government is force, funded by theft, and she knows we can do better.
Since 2008, Carla Gericke has been building a consent-based, voluntary society in the Free State of New Hampshire. Her life motto is: Live free and thrive!