Hobo guerilla faction

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Hey comrade
Since this is something I've actually had interest in, how viable would it be to start up light industrial efforts to start manufacture of goods outside of capitalism? It's surprisingly easy to get resources for production in urban environments and the productive capital is deceptively cheap.

Productive capital is free if you rob loading docks, which are generally extremely low security.
I have engaged in some of this light industrial work. The basic model is to sell garbage to rich people at exorbitant rates. It is luxury capitalism, yes, but it does afford us lots of quick cash that carries very little risk compared to expropriation. Take for example old shed rooves: Cut the "weathered" tin up into small sheets, and with a metal-cutting band saw, cut shapes into them. Coat them, add hangers, and sell each one for $25. You can make 15-20 an hour and yuppies love that "rustic" shit. I have a friend who does a similar thing with old wood from barns, as well as driftwood and pallet wood. I know others who sew hammocks and shopping bags out of scrapyard seatbelts. Others still moonshine or grow weed (a bit more risk but it does pay well).

This sort of thing, done as a short-term sole proprietorship sort of endeavor, could provide hearty "seed money" for communal self-sufficiency ventures. I actually think the way to go would be to enroll in community college as a homeless person with no income, get full federal loans and grants, cash them out, and use the cash to start a business like this. Then, build business credit during your four years in college. Once you have a fair bit of business credit, buy up liquifiable assets as well as material goods necessary for survival, and fall "off the grid", whether to Mexico for 7 year statute of limitations, or just lay low a while in the woods or the desert. Use the cash to buy land outright through a friend's name, repeat.

castro?

wow. My grandma would tell me stories about family who were hobos. They go from town to town on trains with their dog. when they came home for reunions and shit everyone would shout "Hey! It's the tramps!" Didn't realize people still lived that life.

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I've been thinking about doing a lot like that. A lot of garbage thrown out by the majority of the residents of urban areas is actually very easily recyclable.

It just seems to me that the waste of capital is excessive because of the need for constant consumption, which means that there's more than enough to work with. There's even opportunities for things like making your own fuel out of used vegetable oils from restaurants.

so OP, why hasn't any revolutionary hobo gone up to Flint Michigan to dole out some revolutionary justice yet?

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go to it man, it's all out there.

I haven't gone up because I signed onto a job this month to save up to go to Greece. I know some heads who were riding freight up that way and have been doing eviction blockade work. For a while during the "battle of Seattle" days we were the shock troops of radical left shit in the US. Then Afghanistan happened and communities got flooded with heroin, and we got hit pretty hard with that shit, and desperation ensued. I think we may be back on the comeup, I am seeing a lot of new kids riding, and many are radical.

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Thats tough tovarish

-written from my pc in european suburbia

HOLY SHIT

Hillbilly Castro has arrived

holy shit.. and I prefer pre-1994 Ford Rangers and think that capitalism has caused country music to degenerate completely. Maybe there is something to this.

But hobos still work, right?

This is the breakdown:
bums do not travel and do not work
vagabonds travel and do not work
tramps travel and work only when they must
hobos travel in order to find good work

Damn english got some killer definitions for homeless people. Maybe that says something about the english.

In dutch we have 3 i know of:

Landloper (litterally: land-walker, trespasser, archaic), refers to nomadic people with little money in general and no transportation means
Zwerver (litterally: roamer) which is used for bums who are perpetually homeless and live on the streets
Darkloze (litterally: roofless) which is a catch all term for people without a home and thus live on the street. also includes people living in cars or in shelters/not chronically homeless.

I live in a town/city in NC that has a LARGE crusty/homebum/homeless population.

All of them have always come across as pretentious, or unstable people. Being in the punk scene I see this a lot. It's like a bullshit sid vicious attitude… and it really turns me off.

Are a lot like this? Or would you say that's mostly just crusties?

I want to travel the world with out paper and working temporary jobs just to get enough to move to the next place and being almost homeless.

Man your life style must be rough, but but I'm glad to be able to read you, as you say you aren't bitching on the internet, as
most of us do, Spread the radical trough the world.

Jolly luck on ye jorney scurvy dog!

Idk what it is about American punks generally but most of them are fucking pretentious. Your read is correct in my experience. Exception is Salt Lake City for some reason. But Mexican punks are way different, way nicer and usually career revolutionaries from what I have seen. Greeks too.

People think it is rough but it really isn't. For all you lose in warm showers and dry safe spaces to sleep, you gain tenfold in the fact that it is impossible to control you by any means but force. If a boss says he'll fire me I don't care because I don't need the work - I'll go to the next town. If the pigs harass me in one town, I leave. If winter comes in, I go to Mexico. My flexibility allows me to move with the challenges as they come - which is what Mao taught on the scale of armies. Works for individuals too.

I find your situation incredibly fascinating. It's so far removed from my background. My grandparents are conservative, former hill-billies from West Virginia who got jobs in the Social Security administration and basically became Washington bureaucrats. My mom is at best a champaign socialist but all her friends are either wealthy conservatives or neolibs. She worked in business for a long time in several management positions while raising of my younger sister and me. I went to an elite private school in a major metropolitan area but hated the vast majority of my classmates for their elitism and materialism. Now, after graduating from a liberal arts college, I'm on the cusp of becoming an academic but recently came to the realization that academia in the humanities is so far removed from true living that I know if I end up getting my PhD and trying to become a professor I will have wasted a majority of my youth pursuing something the will not fill the hole in me.

So I ask, have you found your life meaningful? I would like someone to talk to who lives the life that I dream of: giving up all my material wealth and dropping off the grid. Or staying on the grid enough to talk to my family, who I still love and cherish. I'm on the path to showing my little sister the light of socialism/communism/anarchism.

God, I can only imagine the kind of people you've met and the experiences you've had. I go minimalist camping fairly frequently and every time I'm /out/ I think: this is where I was meant to be.

Yeah, I have. I think life in the decadent capitalist empire makes people existentially weak in a way that only risk can adequately address. In this regard my life has been rich and I have a lot of ground to stand on in discussions about anarchism / communism, because I have been to fifty states and have hitchhiked 250,000 miles with America's people. Every day there are new projects and new people who are disillusioned and want to make an exit, and I help them do it, which feels like the right move. If late capitalism is a corpse, I feel like I am reasonably successful in being the bacteria that speeds up its rotting, and that feels good.

I understand also your issues with academia. I squatted in the heart of the liberal arts world for a while at Hampshire college, sneaking into classes and sleeping in the dorms, and I found it to be disgusting. Politics there was a fashion show that exploited a series of lived realities they knew nothing about. It bred the decadence that causes peoples intellects to rot. When I did find radical sentiment that was not compromised with liberalism, the culture was so security-oriented that nearly everyone from that scene I knew sold out. To stay in that world would have been a death sentence for me.

So sorry to hear that your family gave up the life of the hills. If you ever decide to leave your post in the institution, I've got a Mosin here and an old Honda touring motorcycle you can have. Such a leap would be hard initially but like anything you learn and it gets easier.

why make it harder than it has to be though?

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You really are a free man.

I'm going to have to investigate about it.

Have you read Henry David Thoreau?
If yeah.
What's your opinion about him?

where I'm planing to go I don't need papers.

How did you start? Where do I learn? These are some of the biggest things stopping me from saying: "fuck it". I need to get out and hearing you talk about that life only makes me feel like I'm squandering my own even more.

I thought I wanted to be a teacher for a long time but after teaching high school Latin at a Catholic school for a year, I'm not so sure any more. I was good at it and my students loved my tangents on Marxism but I couldn't help but feel out of place in an overly rationalized and technologized society. What you say about social hygiene is completely correct though. Nazis do not have a monopoly on that word. Capitalism makes us sick.

Where are you based out of now? Do you have any possessions? Sorry if I'm being ignorant or prying too much.

Thoreau is cool, I actually read him again this month. Certainly interesting for his time. I enjoy the tradition of backwoods scholar rabble-rousers. But to be a Thoreauvian and little else today is not enough. If he had lived through the early 20th century he would have been an anarchist, I wager.

Sling and the Stone by colonel Thomas X Hammes is good for it. Great read all around, but talks a fair bit about maoist strategy and such - from the position of Empire.

Learn either by meeting one of us IRL or by hitting up Squattheplanet.com. Our jamboree is in Slab City CA Oct 21st, y'all should go if you wanna meet dropout radicals.

I'm in upstate NY in the fuckin boonies de la boonies. True backcountry for the non-Maine east coast. As far as possessions, pic related. I actually got rid of the backpack in exchange for two quite small Polish military surplus shoulder bags that become panniers. Folding bike is masterrace travel style. Most flexible. if you do the bike life ever go super lightweight. all my stuff weighs less than 15 pounds total, which is a challenge and expensive but worth it (because I can run from the pigs and ride longer when I'm touring)

nah it's cool, didn't mean for this to be a thread just about me, but I guess that's where it went.

God I've always wanted to live like this. I have cash set aside to buy the shit I'd need but my family situation wasn't great and two of my sisters are still living at home so I try to stay close by just in case. I'll probably leave as soon as my sisters are old enough to take care of themselves becuase I can't live like this.

I imagine you guys are pretty hard to get ahold of though. I'm checking out squattheplanet.com. Lots of informative posts. I'm really bummed I can't make it to Slab City on the 21st- I'm running a race that weekend (competitive long distance running is probably all that keeps me sane at this point. shooting for a sub 2:30 marathon). Upstate NY is beautiful. I'm sure you're enjoying it up there.

My biggest reservation is upsetting my mother. I would do this in a heartbeat if I knew she wouldn't be disappointed in me. Maybe I should talk with her about it a little more.

This how I've seen this go pretty consistently unless mom is a fundamentalist something: She is horrified initially, but as the road awakens the ubermensch within, and our new traveler returns with wide eyes, more confident, smarter, stronger, mom is impressed and chills out. Give her a few books to chill out with.

No mom's not a fundie. She's got high hopes for me, though. She wants me to be a politician or a professor or some other bourg job. Any talk we have about this turns into something like, "well, son, there are roles for everyone in the revolution. You happen to be good at explaining things and telling stories. You can make a change in society by talking to people about your ideas. There's no need to give it all up". She has a point but I don't find this fulfilling. Est non vita, servitus.

Will you periodically return here, user? I'd really enjoy hearing more about your travels and like the opportunity to keep learning from you. Hopefully I'll have more knowledge about this life the next time we talk.

Yeah man, I probably will. I've modded /r/anarchism for several years and stumbled across this place yesterday and this looks like my new online home (even though I'm an egoist). But I won't exactly try and post a bunch of shit about my own life. I do hang on halfchan's /trv/ too. And am Buffalo on stp.

I'm glad things have more or less worked out for you. I'm discontent with life in civil society, but I just can't make the jump. I'm scared and life in polite, middle-class society is all I've ever known. For two years I've been fascinated with traveling and it's evolved into fascination for hobo life insofar as it is pro-revolutionary. Squattheplanet looks like it has some really good resources, but can you maybe give us petty-bourgeois tenderfoots your primer on how to live your way? Also, since you mentioned Olympia, I happen to be there now. Could I make any headway towards this lifestyle by just talking with the transients and hobos who are around?

Noted. Looking forward to hearing more from you, pilgrim.

Also here is one of my favorite quotes by the man N. himself on history. The critique can be leveled at academia in general though. I feel like you might appreciate it. It's from Untimely Meditations.

"To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the loafer in the garden of knowledge uses it, no matter how elegantly he may look down on our coarse and graceless needs and distresses. That is, we need it for life and action, not for a comfortable turning away from life and action or merely for glossing over the egotistical life and the cowardly bad act. We wish to use history only insofar as it serves living.”

Literally comissar Cleetus

what shoes do you wear OP?

i will never understand/leftypol/ but the next time you fellas complain about capitalism forcing Bengali schoolchildren into sweatshops making $3 a day while living in slums as bad I'll remember this thread :^)

I will never understand Holla Forums, but the next time you fellas complain about how globalism is making white chicks suck black dicks I'm going to remember the hypocrisy of this post. :^)

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fixed that for you

revolution can only win when the core is in open revolt, backcountry innawoods will be more useless than the Black Army

Unless you organize them towards political ends then it is lifestylism, and ultimately impotent at actually creating change for the vast majority of people.

You know alot of buskers? Its better work then general labor and great for wandering workers if you got a skill.

yeah bc the tankie army in the US is fackin huge

do you even ubermensch?

but muh pol greentexts
Should I post more?

dats racist

plebs gon pleb

Based crustpunk castro.

pls post more
for research

You should thank capitalism because without it you would have been put in communist/nazi concentration camps. I know you do no harm and just want to live minimalistic but thank god for capitalism, right.
Yeah I would fucking kill you for that pipe mate.
And someone would kill me for the pipe and shoes.

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This is important to know, please tell. I am thinking military surplus steel toed boots for hiking, flip-flops for free time would be the best. What do you say?

If some of you guys find this lifestyle intriguing, dont assume that you have to do it full time. Ypu can do this for a few months or a year and return home when you feel like it. Also try hitchhiking alone first, before jumping into anything.

Also OP have you ever met radical Rainbow Family? Whats your experience with them?

How would you pay rent on your home whilst you were away? Who would you fug?

Then ultimately you're still at the mercy of a system which you have no power to influence or change. Congrats.

NO. Go to a good hiking store and test stuff out. Everyones feet are different, military boots can be way to heavy, some preffer low shooes other preffer high ones that cover the ankle. Its really a thing of prefference and more exspensive does not mean better, what do the most durable shooes help when they are uncomfortable?

Not OP btw but I have hiking experience.

I dont know if I'd make for a good crusty. My derealization has gotten so bad that someone could probably rob me of my entire backpack contents before I snap out of confusion.

I have redwings, 1970's era, made in USA which are great boots, great for the rails. I pony up the cash to take them to a cobbler once in a while because you don't fuck around with shitty boots.
That said, now that I am a full-time folding bike traveler I don't walk hardly ever so I wanted ultralight shoes. I just bought some crocs (the black, non-open-toed types) which I've heard are great for cycling if you are trying to go ultralight. Bad fashion choice but that's all capitalist spooks and smart bitches know it.

gr8 b8 m8 seeing as you definitely are at the mercy of the same system as the rest of us. that said, there are temporal and geographic breakdowns in the state's capacity to inflict its will on us. If we learn to deftly move between those breakdowns, the potential exists for a level of freedom that is not comparable to what most experience under capitalism. Read "Life in the Cracks" on the anarchist library. I wrote it.

I am not impressed with rainbow family. Subculture is as cancerous as ideology and after a while one regresses into a bastardized form of the other, and rainbows epitomize it. None are radical that I have ever encountered. Most are edgey liberals at best. Maybe there is something I'm not seeing.

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I have the same impression with the Rainbow Family, although they are nice people and have a pretty anarchist organisation method I never saw any radicalism or coherent ideology from them. I just thought that you may have had different experiences

I never denied I was at the mercy of the system, but you seem to want to pretend that you aren't. For anyone to be truly free demands the abolishment of the current system

Sounds essentially Christian to me. Heaven ain't just around the corner. I say we take what we can get. Ratchet up that will to power individually until a collectivity forms.

Won't work, because dropping out and living in the cracks isn't an option for most people. You're obviously single and fine with moving whenever you find resistance. Most can't do that. It takes extreme force to uproot large numbers of people, like in Syria. Even if your collective reaches several hundred thousand around the country, it's a drop in the bucket. But hey, a networked egoist hobo vanguard sounds interesting.

Bump because gorilla warfare

You sound like an awesome guy to talk to tbh

I befriended an ex-con who is now a jehova witness and goes to the gatherings and sells street paper. That is how I met him.

Today I met with jehova witnesses and the conversation went fine. I agreed with their points, they somehow agreed with mine.

And when I explicitly asked them about their point of view on society, economy, government and other man made structures, they guided me to a certain chapter in bible, which was about christians keeping low so they are not dispersed.

But when I exactly asked them about undoing the injustices that are going on right now, they agreed, that immediate action is also good. I might visit them more. After all the bible study is a part of being an educated person, and knowing what is in bible is crucial to it.

Also their propaganda videos looked more on the opium of the people side. But when prompted, when they were faced with poverty, they are taking some measures. They help how they can. They strive for happiness, but a happy and balanced revolutionary can achieve more in this adverse capitalist society than the one bogged down by depression.

But then again, I had an adventurous day with the lumpen. A valuable lesson to see that some lumpen are truly about scamming and begging. And some lumpen show an initiative to rehabilitate themselves and become productive members of society. Even a 40 years old ex-con can find purpose in life and strive for a better life. But he has to actually want to in the first place, no one else is going to do that step.

But you can differentiate those salvageable types from the general lumpenproletariat who are content with their pointless ways. The salvageable ones are really rare. I am glad I found one. I might use him to get me new contacts, new friends, because the sad sacks are the ones who buy the street papers.