RAAN Events Sep 7-10th

[Nachie]

At least 4-7 participants in various Red & Anarchist Action Network crews will be coming together for these events if anybody in the SF Bay Area (USA) is interested:

Thursday, Sept. 7th—Defining the Red & Anarchist Action Network
7:00pm at the AK Press Warehouse in Oakland
FREE

Since late 2002, the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) has been constructing an alternative model of revolutionary (dis)organization that has united anti-authoritarians from deep ecologists to anti-state Marxists in a horizontal network consisting entirely of autonomous affiliated action. In recent months RAAN has begun paying more attention to the need to perpetually rearticulate and discuss the organizational hypotheses being proposed, as we strongly feel them to be unique in our movement. We believe that the conditions we find ourselves in are more than ripe for the emergence of a completely grassroots revolutionary union based solely on mutual aid, respect, diversity of tactics, and a no-bullshit culture that prides praxis over ideology. There is the potential of a RAAN-affiliated presence organizing itself in the Bay Area, and this is our chance to make this process as transparent, autonomous, and locally-relevant as possible. This workshop will be arranged as an informal discussion covering a series of interpretations of the network's experience, but also geared towards addressing people's individual concerns and interests, and proposing RAAN as a context for that discussion. It is recommended, but of course not required, that those interested familiarize themselves with the general concept of RAAN by exploring the raan.fightcapitalism.net/www.redanarchist.org/ website. Such familiarity would allow the workshop to focus more exclusively on the immediate potential for the RAANista model in this city.

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Friday, Sept. 8th—Venezuelan Report
7PM at the AK Press Warehouse
FREE

RAAN organizer Nachie, author of author of The Civil War in Venezuela: Socialism to the Highest Bidder, who has just returned from a two month stay in Venezuela, will be discussing the implications of Hugo Chavez' "Bolivarian Revolution" on the developing revolutionary potential both within and outside of the country. This discussion will focus on areas of contradiction within the revolutionary process and the ecological, indigenous, social, ideological, and international issues that they reflect. Special attention will be paid to the current state of the international Venezuela "solidarity" movement and how/why anarchists and communists should be prepared to intervene in it. In addition we will be relating issues in Venezuela directly to struggles against mountaintop removal coal mining in the United States, and using this as a platform to discuss wider issues of capitalist infrastructure consolidation.

For more info check out http://www.akpress.org

These same events will be repeated on Sep. 9th and 10th at the Free Mind Media Infoshop in Santa Rosa.

For more information check out http://www.freemindmedia.org

There will also be a private Parkour training held for members of the FMM collective.

[ahab]

AHH I HAVE TO GO!!!

[FinnMacCool]

Nachie you must come to New York one day.

What happened to the website?

[ahab]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 01:39 AM
Nachie you must come to New York one day.

What happened to the website?
i kno that shits been down FOREVER! but at least you gave me the backup link nachie cuz i can still read shit.... I want to go to new york, is there a good RAAN presence there?

[chimx]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 01:39 AM
What happened to the website?
the admins are poor, and now that we have the money the registrar company is fucking us around... we're working on it.

[FinnMacCool]

Originally posted by ahab+Sep 5 2006, 09:24 PM--> (ahab @ Sep 5 2006, 09:24 PM)
[email protected] 6 2006, 01:39 AM
Nachie you must come to New York one day.

What happened to the website?
i kno that shits been down FOREVER! but at least you gave me the backup link nachie cuz i can still read shit.... I want to go to new york, is there a good RAAN presence there? [/b]
I wish I knew. Quite honestly I have no idea because I have very little contact with activist communities in New York. I usually take a train to the city though whenever I want to help out.

[FinnMacCool]

Originally posted by chimx+Sep 5 2006, 11:50 PM--> (chimx @ Sep 5 2006, 11:50 PM)
[email protected] 6 2006, 01:39 AM
What happened to the website?
the admins are poor, and now that we have the money the registrar company is fucking us around... we're working on it. [/b]
Maybe I'll help you out. I just got a new job so I could contribute a little if you need anything.

[Nachie]

About NYC: Within the past month we've been invited by the New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists to come speak at their next general assembly meeting, which would be totally awesome and a pretty huge event for us, but at the moment I don't know if that is going to pan out or if we'll even have anyone in the area willing to do that.

The history of RAAN in NYC is pretty rocky, actually all it is is that every month or so we'll get a message from somebody somewhere in the city saying they want to "join", but they just don't know anybody else. Over time, we have consistently been unable to get these individuals talking to each other, or we would have had a huge collective or other type of presence there by now! So it's always just a problem of one or two people being interested at a time and not finding ways to keep the communication open so that the network can take root there.

There are a number of ways to maybe fix this, but I don't live in NYC so what do I know? Still, I think all we would need is 2-3 or maybe even just one person in the city to start doing actions/events or even just showing up with a RAAN banner at demos and the shit would pop off pretty quickly. The main thing really is having some way for RAAN people in NYC to talk to each other and for new folks to get plugged in, so maybe if someone could work on that it would help a lot I think. The interest is definitely there but just like every other city, people are waiting for somebody "from" RAAN to show up and "organize" them (incidentally this lack of individual initiative is the biggest flaw in our autonomist organizational method).

Also, the guy who goes by GoaRedStar on these forums lives in NYC I think and is totally down for RAAN but, like I said above, needs other people to work with. Finn you and he should hook up and do some crazy stuff, maybe even in your hometown as opposed to the city.

As far as the Bay Area events, ahab I hope you can make it out and please be sure to introduce yourself and maybe before or after we can do some scheming...

[FinnMacCool]

Nachie, if your gonna be at the general assembly with the NYMAA thats great. I've actually been looking to go to one of those its just I've been busy.

Your description of NYC activism sounds like the story of my life. I have tons of enthusiasm but just nowhere to get started. I'm from Long Island, which is about 30 min outside of the city.

I remember GoaRedStar actually and if I can possibly get in touch, we can perhaps start organizing things.

[Nachie]

if you can, try to get in touch with the person from this thread: http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=55046

[chimx]

Originally posted by FinnMacCool+Sep 6 2006, 04:55 AM--> (FinnMacCool @ Sep 6 2006, 04:55 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 11:50 PM

[email protected] 6 2006, 01:39 AM
What happened to the website?
the admins are poor, and now that we have the money the registrar company is fucking us around... we're working on it.
Maybe I'll help you out. I just got a new job so I could contribute a little if you need anything. [/b]
thanks for the offer, but it may be kind of a hefty bill..

The re-registration for the domain came up. the admin that runs the network raan is hosted on pays to have a "lock-out" period that gives us a 2 month grace period to reregister the domain if we accidentaly let it expire. We did that, gave them the registration money, and thought everything was good. The next day they denied receiving our payment, and put it in "lock down" where we have to pay another $160 bucks to get the domain out of "lock down". I already paid $100 bucks to the admin for some domain crap listed above (and other stuff that is even more complicated), and don't have the $160 to buy the redanarchist.org out of lockdown. As it is now, we are basically stuck waiting for the lock down to end so we can buy the domain back ourselves. Unfortunately we have to cross our fingers very tightly to make sure that some registrar bot doesn't eat it up when it sees that it is available, which is a very real possibility. I guess we will see what happens.

As a point, RAAN is not the website, nor is the website RAAN. It is just one of potentially many websites that are affiliated with RAAN. Its a site that Nachie and I admin, but we would love it if others created their own RAAN presense on the net, as we never intended to really centralize things so heavily--as it leads to the very problems we are seeing now.

[MolotovLuv]

I'm way down for the RAAN discussion tomorrow!! I went to the last discussion at Longhaul and i'm really excited about getting together with some B.A. folks, which is why I was disappointed that some people had to focus on the term communism and aspects of communism in RAAN so much instead of having a more indepth talk on what RAAN is doing now and what us Bay Area folks should start doing.


I also realize walking around waving signs doesn't do any good and I've never understood why the Bay Area, of all places doesn't get more action so i'm definatly in for some scheming :D

[FinnMacCool]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 07:12 PM
if you can, try to get in touch with the person from this thread: http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=55046
I sent him a pm. Hopefully he'll respond and then we can get things moving.

[FinnMacCool]

Originally posted by chimx+Sep 6 2006, 07:49 PM--> (chimx @ Sep 6 2006, 07:49 PM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 04:55 AM

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 11:50 PM

[email protected] 6 2006, 01:39 AM
What happened to the website?
the admins are poor, and now that we have the money the registrar company is fucking us around... we're working on it.
Maybe I'll help you out. I just got a new job so I could contribute a little if you need anything.
thanks for the offer, but it may be kind of a hefty bill..

The re-registration for the domain came up. the admin that runs the network raan is hosted on pays to have a "lock-out" period that gives us a 2 month grace period to reregister the domain if we accidentaly let it expire. We did that, gave them the registration money, and thought everything was good. The next day they denied receiving our payment, and put it in "lock down" where we have to pay another $160 bucks to get the domain out of "lock down". I already paid $100 bucks to the admin for some domain crap listed above (and other stuff that is even more complicated), and don't have the $160 to buy the redanarchist.org out of lockdown. As it is now, we are basically stuck waiting for the lock down to end so we can buy the domain back ourselves. Unfortunately we have to cross our fingers very tightly to make sure that some registrar bot doesn't eat it up when it sees that it is available, which is a very real possibility. I guess we will see what happens.

As a point, RAAN is not the website, nor is the website RAAN. It is just one of potentially many websites that are affiliated with RAAN. Its a site that Nachie and I admin, but we would love it if others created their own RAAN presense on the net, as we never intended to really centralize things so heavily--as it leads to the very problems we are seeing now. [/b]
I used to have some skill in webdesign but alas years of disuse have made me forget it all. Sorry I cannot be of help in that area.

[ahab]

RAAN should open up some leadership camps for people who are down to relocate and are heavily dedicated to the cause. They could be trained and then sent to areas like new york that have people interested but no organization. You could send them there to start a chapter or something like that, i dunno im kinda just rambling but if the camps were made i'd go to them, im good with organizing shit and whenever I talk to people I can usually get them pumped up to do shit. anyway just a thought