Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 02 2003 @ 10:23 AM CDT

Just a suggestion...

Doesn\'t it make sense to go south in the winter, and north in the summer?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 02 2003 @ 10:52 AM CDT

Unless most of these travellers are from Minnesota and love cold weather.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 02 2003 @ 08:58 PM CDT

There\'s no room at the inn in Baltimore. We have enough dirt and grime without importing it.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 09:03 AM CDT

most of the organizers are from new england, we felt that the first leg of the trip should be on \"our turf\" and other supportes and helpers are funny enough from cold climate places.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 09:04 AM CDT

maryland was never on the list

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 09:45 AM CDT

Then Baltimore folks, travellers or not, are not welcome at my place. So you\'d turn a wandering Wobbly out of Baltimore too?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 12:02 PM CDT

We\'re kinda full-up with travel punx here in Boston too. Probably best to skip our city on your travel itinery. Unless you are serious about building longterm anarchist projects... than by all means move here.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 12:18 PM CDT

if y\'all do come to boston. may i suggest that you stop by and say hello to the lenore and skip schloming (president & v.p. of the small property owners of america)?

102 inman st. cambridge.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 12:50 PM CDT

Whatever. Some of us try to build links and relationships in our communities and thats difficult enough with the media images of what anarchism is. We really don\'t need a bunch of living stereotypes to muck around and then leave. Besides, plenty of traveler kids have crashed with me over the years, but they are required to bathe. Tough.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 12:59 PM CDT

fuck you all. I don\'t understand why people are trashing this idea so much. isn\'t the idea of anarchism that we organize our own fucking communities rather than attack one anther? free association. if kids are into travelling, then it\'s fucking AWESOME that they\'re getting organized, and if we want to be a movement instead of a bunch of armchair critics and ideologues we should fucking support them.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 01:54 PM CDT

I think that it\'s an awesome idea. There\'s just a few people out there who think that the image of anarchism is hurt by the spectre of smelly traveler kids. There is no evidence that this hurts the image of anarchism and I think the above comments reflect an intolerant attitude.

It\'s not like I haven\'t made similar comments before, until some anarchist comrades got on my case.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 01:56 PM CDT

Listen up ya fucking crybaby, just because someone claims to be \"organizing\" doesn\'t make it so. If some flakey travel kids think they can change the world by dropping into communities where they have no established ties, instigate a few temporary activities, and then take off, well that\'s their delusion. That\'s not real organizing, it\'s activism as a hobby. You\'ll have to excuse me if I have better things to support (btw, I do organize in my own community, thanks for asking).

If you can\'t deal with people challeging your fluffy conception of activism, well then you shouldn\'t have posted it on a public forum in the first place.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 05:10 PM CDT

Are you calling traveler kids a community? Please. There\'s nothing wrong with the traveler life if thats what you want to do. I did it for years. Big woop. But it ain\'t political. And if you think dropping into a town, putting up some flyers and leaving is helpful to communities trying to organize then you\'re fucking nuts.

Do what you want but don\'t get pissy just cause some people don\'t really want 50 kids crashing on our sofas, eating our food, and \"helping\" us organize the communities we live in by doing nothing and leaving. Its easy to support a small group of travelers from time to time. It would be a burden to do it on a large scale.

The last traveler kid I ran into in Baltimore walked into the wrong neighborhood and nearly got killed. How you gonna help us organize in neighborhoods that require long term relationships just to walk into and not get shot?

Shit, a long time Mobtown anarchist got stabbed seven times outside of a liquor store last year. Black Planet\'s been robbed at gunpoint four times this year. Go live in the real world sometime. Or go hang flyers at some mall in the suburbs and shut up.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 05:48 PM CDT

damn you guys are so tough!
Keep taking your anger out on other anarchists I bet that will really help whatever \"long term\" projects you guys are working on.

I\'m so sick of this holier than thou macho bullshit.
Maybe part of the reason y\'all are getting stabbed and held up at gunpoint is because the people in the communities you are trying to organize don\'t respect you or your attempts at outreach.
If you treat other anarchists with such little respect I wouldn\'t expect that you treat anyone else any better. Why would a non anarchist want to get involved in the nasty games you play. It makes me glad I\'m not on the East Coast anymore. This nasty attitude is part of why the Boston anarcho scene is so dull and lacking in diversity.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 05:53 PM CDT

word up.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 05:57 PM CDT

okay first of all I just wanna say that I didnt post this article, I\'m just speaking out in defense of the people who did. and Im not a traveller kid. But... I thought that anarchism was about people being free to choose their own lifestyles and associate with whom they desire and how they desire. nobody has claimed that this hit and run thing is going to change the world. it\'s just an idea some kids came up with that will allow their community of other traveller kids to become more organized and more expressly political. and nobody demanded that you support them. if you don\'t want to do so then for gods sake don\'t support them. but don\'t fucking put them down either. that\'s so unbelievably juvenile. the post below about this \"holer-than-thou\" shit is right on. it\'s so, incredibly ridiculous to get pissed off about this. there are so many other much more important things in the world to get pissed off over. fuckin a, if I don\'t want someone crashing on my couch I wont let them crash on my couch but that doesn\'t mean they\'re not my comrade.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 06:53 PM CDT

Hi I\'m Fluffy Gutter. I just think that everyone should think about the diversity of the anarchist movement and feed me when I come to your sofa. I\'m just sayin. Word.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 03 2003 @ 07:41 PM CDT

Not sure when you were last in Boston. Last I checked there was alot of diversity in terms of age, gender and ethnicty among active anarchists here. The big difference is that, unlike alot of cities, the anarchist scene here is not dominated by punk kids who uproot themselves and move everytime things get boring. Despite any problems we have, people are actually are dedicated to seeing through projects and engaging in longterm organizing. If flakey travel-kids find that dull, fine by me. Hopefully they stay out of the way.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 02:12 AM CDT

did you \"long-term organizers\" ever think that you might have a lot to show to traveller kids in the way of all the long-term projects and goals and ways of organizing you do? and did you ever consider maybe i could be a traveller kid one week, and the rest of the year be a hard-core full time community based anarchist organizer, who does understand the complexities involved in coming into a new community and would realize that i should take direction from the \"long-term anarchists\" in the city that i am in in order to best contribute something positive(ideas, energy, resources, etc..) into \"your\" city and anarchist community? and if you all had read networks and netwars like Chuck0 told everyone to, you\'d have realized that great ideas and projects and better cohesion, vision, and focus are all spread at least partialy by folks travelling to different cities, see how and why things run the way they run there, and take the good ideas and even the bad ones back with them to their homes to make their local anarchist community more effective and run better. traveling sort of helps us to not have to re-invent the wheel in everyone\'s individual cities.
good luck with this idea, the weather might be a consideration for planning a schedule of when to go where. maybe trying to focus on going to smaller towns where no-one has such big heads as some of the \"long-term organizers\" on here do but where there is a few anarchists willing to orientate people to the specific situation the town is in when folks show up. good luck.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 09:43 AM CDT

Right, you mean like the people who wear organizing on their sleeves, but whose practice involves cutting down other anarchists instead of doing organizing? Nut hey, if you want to have a reactionary, right wing attitude towards travellers, that\'s your choice.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 09:47 AM CDT

In my experience as an activist, the traveller kids do more work around collective projects than the \"anarchists rooted in their communities,\" which is often just a code word for \"young anarchists who have lived in one location for two years.\" And I don\'t of many anarchists scenes that are still dominated by punk. Perhaps in some smaller towns, but that situation seems to be a thing of the past.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 09:54 AM CDT

What really annoys me about the anti-traveller, anti punk attitude--other than the unanarchistic lack of tolerance that it shows--is the inability to understand that people go through phases in their lives. What if Mr. Beantown Anarchist had decided in the mid 90s that he wasn\'t going to provide a couch for the skinny, anarcho-punk girl who later went on to become the General Secretary of the IWW? Or how about if some smug older anarchist in Chicago had alienated the young anarcho-punk with tattoos and piercings who went on to become a full time community organizer? Having an allegiance to stereotypes about travellers and anarcho-punks can blind you to the possibility of making a connection with somebody and making a difference in their lives. Or vice versa.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 02:41 PM CDT

Think of it as a form of tough love. I figure a decent percentage of travel kids are smart, articulate, creative and have skills which could be of great benefit to communities in struggle (although I have certainly met my fair share of scum fuck assholes too). Problem is many of them carry over the worst trappings of middle class privilege they were socially conditioned with from birth. Without trying to generalize too much, I would say many travel kids lack focus and direction, discipline, and a broader sense of community. The very lifestyle they lead is one of individualism and personalized rebellion, and very much disconnected from larger social struggle. For anyone who is serious about revolution, why shouldn\'t this criticized?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 02:46 PM CDT

Should probably point out that nobody on this thread was criticizing travellers as such, only the false radical pretentions held by some who think they can lead a transient lifestyle and somehow play a serious role in the radicalization of communities in which they are completely disconnected from. Big difference.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 03:04 PM CDT

Well as a slightly elderly punk and former traveler kid (before there was a cool term for it) you\'re missing the point. Nobody is talking about turning travelers out to the street and refusing mutual aid. Nobody is saying travelers shouldn\'t travel around and do whatever it is they wish to do.

What my personal criticism of this idea is the shallow activism element of it which is bad for local organizing in that it can\'t possibly be involved with long term projects and most communities that have a long time rooted anarchist community don\'t really need to expend the resources to put up with it.

Its not a good idea. Thats it. If people want to be pissy because others don\'t agree with them then whatever. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 03:16 PM CDT

What you all should realize is that there is a long, long travelling tradition both in American culture and in our radical histories. Alot of the original IWW organizers were migrant laborers moving from one town to another. If you want to hear stories about the radical dimension of America\'s travelling culture listen to Utah Phillips. This is a part of who we are and goddamn it it ain\'t so bad. There\'s room for diversity of tactics in any situation. We\'re not fighting for a world in which everyone lives / struggles the same. Chuck0 is right. Some of the most eye-opening, enlightening and radicalizing years of my life were the years I spent as a \"travelling kid\", coming out of my \"middle-class\" experience and for the first time discovering radical ideas and becoming involved in anarchist communities and projects. I now live in one place and organize in my community, and I\'m still learning as I think we all should be. It\'s so arrogant to act on the pretense that our experience and our ideas are more valid than someone else\'s to the point of putting them down. That\'s not what this struggle is about. We need to encourage everyone who is a member of our community and movement, and hopefully we will learn from one another and if your tactics or lifestyle are more mature others will learn from you. We are not a huge movement, and it does no good to alienate people who might just be in the process of figuring out who they are, what they believe, and joining the struggle.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 05 2003 @ 02:42 AM CDT

I also have to say, this sounds like an EXPERIMENT. I don\'t see what the fuss is about \"community\". This isn\'t a 40 year thing, they can build community in their city AND STILL travel and have this EXPERIMENT. The point is to perhaps promote anarchism WHERE THERE ISN\'T an anarchist presence. How do you build anarchist community in a right wing town? or liberal town? where there is no presence?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 05 2003 @ 02:50 AM CDT

also, activism as a \"career\" stinks of leftism

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 05 2003 @ 01:56 PM CDT

Examples?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 07 2003 @ 06:21 PM CDT

Traveller kids have helped out at many of the anarchist gatherings and conferences I\'ve been too. They helped out at the convergence center during the A16 protests in Washington in 2000. They helped out with several ACC convergences and protests. I once questioned somebody about why all these young people were sitting on the sidewalk goofing around and somebody told me that they were resting and hanging out after having cooked for several hundred people.

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