How does one make an anarchist/socialist group known in a medium to small town?

[BurnedFlagz]

Title says it all. I want people to recognize the name of our group and know it carries anarchist meaning behind it... How do we do this?

[ellipsis]

Hold a public event, with free food. Flier. Hold regular public meetings and advertise them.

[Tim Cornelis]

A solidarity network is an efficient means to bring politics close to home and radicale people through direct action. Check out this text about Seattle Solidarity Network: http://libcom.org/library/you-say-you-want-build-solidarity-network (pdf linked to below).

Though solidarity networks tend not to be explicitly anticapitalist. I would opt for a dual organisational structure: solidarity network on the one hand, anarchist/socialist collective on the other. You do need to have some manpower though, two stable organisers and a handful of others that assist campaigns.

[ellipsis]

Also most people don't know what anarchism or socialism is, so that's an obstacle to consider.

[homegrown terror]

post up fliers all over town reading 'FREE TACOS AND REVOLUTIONARY DISCUSSION' with a date and time listed, as well as an address. procure 10 pounds of ground beef and bulk quantities of tortillas and other taco components, and set up at a different address than the one you gave. send someone you trust explicitly to the address on the flier, and have him/her assess anyone who arrives for the event. (s)he will then give the real address to anyone (s)he feels confident is legit, and send anyone who's possibly a pig to the address of a local taco bell, where they will sit around bemused at the lack of radicals, wait a fair amount of time to see if anyone shows, then go back to the original address and conduct a more thorough search, at which point your friend will have gathered as many people as (s)he thinks will come, and have hightailed it to the meeting before the sour cream is all used up.

[ellipsis]

This is a serious forum. Please don't spam it with non-serious posts.

[homegrown terror]

This is a serious forum. Please don't spam it with non-serious posts.

that was a serious post. i've seen and participated in several such events, and i can personally attest that they're great ways of getting like-minded people under one roof. the free tacos aren't a bribe to get someone thinking like you, they're a bribe to get someone who has similar ideas out the door and into a social environment, which let's not forget, is where many revolutions (both successful and unsuccessful) started off, a bunch of malcontents sitting around a pub or lodge or coffee house realising as one that the world won't change on its own.

[ellipsis]

yes, free food helps puts butts in seats. but sending cops to Taco Bell? sounds way more complicated than makes sense. The revolution isn't a conspiracy.

[homegrown terror]

yes, free food helps puts butts in seats. but sending cops to Taco Bell? sounds way more complicated than makes sense. The revolution isn't a conspiracy.

that part can be omitted in small towns and cities where cops are either too few, or too busy with other matters. when i learned this method, however, i was living in washington dc and such measures weren't so much paranoid as sensible. there are so many different law enforcement groups operating in the area (metro PD, fbi, cia, arlington pd, alexandria pd, rockville pd, bethesda pd, wmata pd, not to mention va and md state police), that if you flier a large enough area, one force will pick up on it and alert the next, even if they're in a totally different jurisdiction. it's always good to have a backup plan, since even though meetings like this hardly ever delve into incriminating chatter right away, they give informers an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the group and, later on, could use that acceptance to hamper the greater goals of the group as a whole.

[ellipsis]

lol, thats what bugged me out about visting DC, dudes in black suits everywhere, motorcades etc.

[The-Anarcho-Syndicalist]

If the coopers want to know what your doing theyll probably get the information one way or another. To make an open meeting not 100% open is a bad idea imo. Everyone should be able to come to open meetings.

You could:
Block the local pornshop
Give people flyers at at cafes (people at cafes often think that they are very smart)
Produce alot of stickers and bomb certain areas
Same as above but with posters

[bricolage]

if you are having the first public meeting of a group that noone knows about and you spend half the time re-directing people from one place to another I can bet that when you get around to the second meeting noone will turn up.

[Pawn Power]

Why?

[Ele'ill]

pretend nobody cares and reevaluate

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I hope this doesn't sound like too much of a canned answer, since it's more or less what I say in all of these threads. Anyway:

Starting a group just to have a group will attract people who want to listen to their own voices, and is generally a wildly ineffective basis for organizing. Rather, start from the basis of something concrete you'd like to see done. Does your town have a decent, local, anticapitalist newspaper? Does your town have empty lots that could be gardens? Empty buildings that could be housing? A shitty employer who's fucking with lots of people? Would a community kitchen or lefty bookstore go over well?

Start with a common project, and build from there - you're more likely to find solid comrades than ideologues that way.

[Brutus]

Build a movement around a key issue, (increasing hours but stagnant wages, for example) and continue from there.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Oh, yeah, I guess you already have a group. Disregard my last post. Spraypaint your logo everywhere, throw your enemies' sneakers over top of powerlines, and issue communiques to the local paper for weird, but perfectly legal, shit ("Yesterday, we heckled the Mayor while he was eating at a restaurant downtown. WE ARE GETTING CLOSER.").

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lCZ4ArOWZqk/TEHw3_IplzI/AAAAAAAABH4/Vkz1pgwC3w4/s1600/002.JPG