Join libertarians from Massachusetts and beyond for the annual convention of the Libertarian Association of Massachusetts. This year we are poised to outshine recent conventions with a fantastic venue, the new MGM Springfield hotel and casino. We have a stellar lineup of speakers and are continuing to add as many as we are able to pack into a full day of speakers, workshops, and fine catering. After opening the convention with a keynote speaker, official convention business will be completed by lunch, at which time an impressive array of speakers and workshops will be available for members and non-members both.

Please consider becoming a sponsor. Bronze ($250), Silver ($500), Gold ($1250) and Vibranium ($2500) sponsors help us compensate our great speakers, and they come with benefits. All sponsorships include the price of a full convention package. All sponsors have reserved seating at the banquet, and Silver, Gold and Vibranium sponsors are invited to a VIP cocktail reception. Gold sponsors can bring two guests, and Vibranium sponsors can fill an entire table for eight - a great way to sponsor students and activists! Sponsorships are available for purchase on the Eventbrite ticketing site.

BUY TICKETS HERE

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Radley Balko is an award winning writer for the Washington Post, where he blogs and reports on criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties. He was previously a senior writer and investigative reporter at the Huffington Post, and a reporter and senior editor for Reason magazine. He is author of the books "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" and "The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South" (co-authored with Tucker Carrington). His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Mississippi Supreme Court and two federal appeals courts. He also occasionally writes about the music and culture of Nashville, where he lives. In 2017 he was given the Bastiat award for journalism by the Reason Foundation.

Internationally known historian and actor Christopher Lowell will present Ben Franklin Live. The most fascinatingly versatile of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin lived a rags-to-riches life marked by scientific achievement, useful inventions, a wide range of social service, and vitally important leadership in the establishment of our Republic. At heart an innovator and entrepreneur, the number, variety, and practicality of his contributions make him unique in American history. Franklin, more than any other, epitomized the emerging, American identity. Rejecting the old values of class and birth as determiners of one’s future, Franklin championed instead hard work, virtue and thrift.

Matt Welch is editor at large of Reason, the libertarian magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets." He served as Reason's editor in chief from 2008-2016. He is co-author, along with Nick Gillespie, of the 2011 book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America.

Reason has been a Western Publications Association magazine of the year finalist every year under Welch's leadership, winning five total first-place Maggie awards, as well as another 18 first-place notices from the Greater Los Angeles Press Club. Welch himself has won eight first-place L.A. Press Club awards over the years, for work on subjects ranging from Jackie Robinson to Cuba to the "banal authoritarianism" of Thomas L. Friedman and David Brooks. From December 2013 to January 2015 he was co-host of the nightly Fox Business Network program The Independents.

Before assuming editorship of Reason in 2008, Welch worked as an assistant editorial pages editor for the Los Angeles Times, as a media columnist for Reason, California correspondent for The National Post, political columnist for WorkingForChange.com, and regular contributor to the Online Journalism Review. Before 1998, he lived for eight years in Central Europe, where he co-founded the region's first post-communist English-language newspaper, Prognosis, worked as UPI's Slovakia correspondent and managed the Budapest Business Journal.

Caryn Ann Harlos is the current Libertarian Party National Secretary and former Region 1 Representative on the Libertarian National Committee. She is also the Chair of the Libertarian Party Preservation Committee, former Communications Director for the Libertarian Party of Colorado, and former Colorado State Coordinator with the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus. She is also a Life Member of the Libertarian Party. She is married to Wayne Harlos who is the current chair of the Libertarian Party of Colorado.

Brandon Phinney is a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, representing Strafford County's 24th district. In 2016, he was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives as a Republican. There, he became notable in atheist circles as the only openly atheist Republican legislator in the United States. On June 27, 2017 he announced in a press conference that he had changed his party affiliation to Libertarian.