Stop oppressive gardening!

Garden gnomes, according to folklore, help tend gardens at night, when they awaken from their ceramic state and touch the gardens with their magic, causing flowers to grow. Gnome Liberationists are people who advocate the "freedom" of garden gnomes, often by stealing them and moving them to new locations. They've been featured in movies, tv, and local news stories. The garden gnome prank is known as gnoming or gnome hunting. One variation is the travelling gnome prank where kidnapped gnomes are sent on trips around the world. The travelling gnome became the basis for Travelocity's advertising. The first Garden Gnome Liberation Front began in France in 1997 during which over the course of the year, stole over 150 gnomes. Organizations formed for the stated purpose of "freeing the ceramic creatures from forced labor in gardens." They argue that gnomes are captured, sold, and kept as slaves, ripped from their Northern Woodland homes, stripped of their freedoms, and forced to tend to the gardens where they are set. A couple of demonstrations performed by the front include repainting "freed" gnomes to make them unrecognizable, and a "mass suicide" in 1998 where 11 gnomes were hung from a bridge with nooses around their necks and a note reading "when you read these few words we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decorations." It's unknown where and when the prank first started but now it's a worldwide phenomenon.