RAAN attacks Air Force recruiterers

[chimx]

Originally posted by RAAN Cell
WE CAN'T AFFORD TO BE INNOCENT: STAND UP AND FACE THE ENEMY!

July 10th, 2007 - In an attempt to discover how a bunch of murdering cowards like the US Air Force enjoy finding themselves on the other end of some flying projectiles for a change, at around 3:00 AM this morning an autonomous cell of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) used bricks and other common household items to smash the shit out of the Air Force recruiting center in Rockville, Maryland.

Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions?

A shout out to our comrades from the Borf: Revolution or Bust Faction (BORFROBF), who late last year gave a similar treatment to the military recruitment center in Silver Spring. Consider this a modest response to your "dare to those here in the heart of the imperial beast to step it up". In suburbs so hollow, may the echo of our actions be long and loud!

Big ups to all those out there who claim RAAN. Fuck them haters who don't realize we are but a few of the millions of ant's bites which can topple this elephant once and for all.

No war but class war, communism or bust!


IT'S A DO OR DIE SITUATION - WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE!

[A-S M.]

yea, and in about a week no one will remember or care, as usual they fight the wrong people, don't get me wrong, I like the army as much as a pile of shit next to me when i wake up but the real enemy is way higher up the ranks, the army is just a system to defend them, but there are many ways to attack the ones who are really responsible without having to fight the stupid ignorant people who try to defend them, why can't people see that stuff like this doesn't do anyhing except pissing off normal civilians because you're tearing something down that's been build with their tax money, not to mention you keep feeding all the prejudice about leftists

[chimx]

:blink: :wacko:

[Nachie]

Originally posted by A-S [email protected] 10, 2007 10:30 pm
pissing off normal civilians because you're tearing something down that's been build with their tax money
yeah, nothing pisses me off more! :rolleyes:

[A-S M.]

Originally posted by Nachie+July 10, 2007 11:47 pm--> (Nachie @ July 10, 2007 11:47 pm)
A-S [email protected] 10, 2007 10:30 pm
pissing off normal civilians because you're tearing something down that's been build with their tax money
yeah, nothing pisses me off more! :rolleyes: [/b]
you're not a normal civilian, you're a terrorist... :P

I'm talking about the everyday people who have never even thought about revolution, the majority I guess

[welshred]

Well this was better than destroying parking meters.

[midnight marauder]

More bricks, less recruiters. Props to the MD raanistas.

I have a couple of questions though:

For the members of RAAN, do you all tend to notice a trend in the public responses for these types of actions? Do they alienate the pulbic, do they spark the wrong ideas about anarchism and communism, or do they trigger public backlash or support, or do they go generally unnoticed?

[chimx]

Do they alienate the pulbic, do they spark the wrong ideas about anarchism and communism, or do they trigger public backlash or support, or do they go generally unnoticed?

I think you have to bare in mind that public approval of the Iraq war is similar to that of Vietnam, with the majority clearly in opposition to how it was handled and its legitimacy. It is the job of communists and anarchists to identify problems and contradictions that capitalism makes and exploit it for our working class ends. If people act with this in mind, public alienation would ideally be minimized.

[Nachie]

I definitely do notice trends in responses.

Unfortunately the situation we find ourselves in is one in which it is usually only radicals who are finding out about most of these actions through their specific channels of communication. While there are important trends to notice in this, I guess the question was more about "civilian" responses.

I will say that everyone I talk to face to face expresses a sort of excited support for these actions (over the anonymity of the internet, it's different). It's not so much a question of whether or not they're supporting the actions, but that they happened at all in the first place, in the process forcibly creating a situation in which these kinds of things would be discussed. As far as the action with the parking meters, that made the front page of the newspaper in the city where it happened, and so it is reasonable to assume that it generated thousands of conversations on the topics of communism, direct action, and RAAN between families, friends, and coworkers. We had someone from Kentucky who we had never heard of before get on our forums just to say "I don't know what this is all about, but thanks for the free parking!" and that was not only awesome, but a hell of a lot more important than a bunch of self-righteous Internet activists telling us whether or not the actions were "revolutionary".

And what about those Internet activists? RAAN gets grief almost everywhere it goes. The Leninists on revleft hate us and call us anarchists. The "guardians" of big-tent anarchism on Infoshop.org have disavowed us as immature authoritarians, and even gone so far as to say they will deny legal support should any of us ever be arrested. The post-lefts and insurrectionists on anti-politics.net might hate us even more for being communists, and the communists and platformists at libcom.org hate us because they think we're lifestylists. None of this has stopped us from practically building a culture of resistance unlike any other group in the US. The voices on these websites represent an Internet echelon out of touch with the real-world sentiments of alienated, radical youth (especially those outside of classically anarchist ideological influence).

There was a time when the popular misconception was that "all RAAN did" was attack Maoist bookstores. Then, we were called "puritan fundamentalists" for attacking a shop which sold women's bodies. Of course all these slanders go out of their way to not mention any number of other actions we've been involved in, but what's funny is that they're running out of room to manouver. After the parking meters, one reaction I heard more than others was "what the fuck kind of target is a parking meter? next time at least go after some recruiters or something". Well, now that has happened! And you can begin to see the results via responses like welshred's above. Many times, the most telling reactions to these events is the creeping silence among those who not too long before wouldn't have shut up about how useless we are.

RAAN has been specifically designed so as to absorb the credibility of each new action into the accumulation of those which preceeded it, making it more and more difficult for such narrow accusations to be levelled at us as time goes on.

To spin off into a weird ideological realm, one could say that almost anything that shakes up the status quo has a positive effect. So for example if a "civilian" were to walk by the USAF recruiters and notice that it was smashed, their individual reaction to it (pro or con) would be less important than the fact that ordinarily, they would not have been forced into the position of even contemplating a smashed recruitment station, and so the action was successful on the level of distrupting the ordinary flow of daily apathy and inaction. For someone who is bored, seeing those broken windows could be a big deal and/or the only point of interest in their daily grind.

Oh, and here's a bonus: most of the communique was read out over WSQT Guerrilla Radio 87.9 FM and you can download the dramatic MP3 here: http://dc.indymedia.org/usermedia/audio/4/...d_rockville.mp3 (http://dc.indymedia.org/usermedia/audio/4/recruiter_smashed_rockville.mp3)

(the story also is on the frontpage of DC Indymedia, http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/139812/index.php)

(and Infoshop, http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?...00707101257248) (http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=200707101257248))

[Nachie]

chimx did you purposefully edit the Par Benatar lyrics out of the communique? That was my favorite part!

[chimx]

edited.

[PRC-UTE]

good work.

[The Advent of Anarchy]

Yay. =) Go RAAN! This is alot better than parking meter sabotage.

[Keyser]

As an anarchist-communist myself, I have at times disagreed with RAAN's action, the RAAN attack on a strip clib springs to mind here.

But in this case, good work to those RAAN members in Maryland, may similar actions be done in the near future.


yea, and in about a week no one will remember or care, as usual they fight the wrong people, don't get me wrong, I like the army as much as a pile of shit next to me when i wake up but the real enemy is way higher up the ranks, the army is just a system to defend them,

Whatever the debates about the stance the revolutionary left should take with regards to soldiers and the working class who fill the mass of troop ranks in the US military, the military recruitment centres are a very different story.

Ordinary soldiers do not staff or run US military recruitment centres, they are run by certain military officials who have been trained in human resource management and recruitment/sales techniques which are designed to dupe people into the military.

There was once a TV expose on this, the US army recruitment officer openly stated on camera that he goes to poor and working class suburbs or inner-city districts to recruit people and avoids more well off areas. The reason he gave was that not only will poorer people and youth be more tempted by the US military as a way to pay college, but also that more well off youth had a more better understanding of world affairs and thus less likely to join the military.

In other words this officer said that he uses people ignorance to his own advantage.

So no, no one at a recruiting office is innocent, but a clear class enemy that need to be made a target.

Like I said, may all recruitment offices burn in a sea of flames.

[rouchambeau]

Awesome! The Pat Benatar lyrics really top it off.

[midnight marauder]

Thank you, that was exactly the response I was hoping for. I look forward to supporting more RAAN actions in the future.

[A-S M.]

Originally posted by Anarchism [email protected] 12, 2007 01:13 am

yea, and in about a week no one will remember or care, as usual they fight the wrong people, don't get me wrong, I like the army as much as a pile of shit next to me when i wake up but the real enemy is way higher up the ranks, the army is just a system to defend them,

Whatever the debates about the stance the revolutionary left should take with regards to soldiers and the working class who fill the mass of troop ranks in the US military, the military recruitment centres are a very different story.

Ordinary soldiers do not staff or run US military recruitment centres, they are run by certain military officials who have been trained in human resource management and recruitment/sales techniques which are designed to dupe people into the military.

There was once a TV expose on this, the US army recruitment officer openly stated on camera that he goes to poor and working class suburbs or inner-city districts to recruit people and avoids more well off areas. The reason he gave was that not only will poorer people and youth be more tempted by the US military as a way to pay college, but also that more well off youth had a more better understanding of world affairs and thus less likely to join the military.

In other words this officer said that he uses people ignorance to his own advantage.

So no, no one at a recruiting office is innocent, but a clear class enemy that need to be made a target.

Like I said, may all recruitment offices burn in a sea of flames.
When you look at it that way, you're right, I have to say I agree with you

[bolshevik butcher]

Beats parking meaters.

Perhaps not the most productive of things but not bad. I'd also ask if you want a serious campaign against military recruiters to try and organise in the working class communities and schools that are targetted by them....

[Bilan]

Nice! I dig it!
Possibly not the most affective action, but good none the less.

Solidarity!

[TC]

Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions?

They were selling pornography or communist literature or something?


In all seriousness, any evidence that this actually happened? Photos? Theres no mention of it in the news from that area (i checked).

Obviously though i support the action, its better to see rightwing extremists like the taliRAAN attack imperialists rather than trying to socially repress people (you know, same with Hamas et al).

[apathy maybe]

Tragic darlin', while I understand you don't like RAAN, and while you did have something to contribute (namely the lack of evidence), the insults are unnecessary and slanderous.

Talking about evidence, do you have any that RAAN is right-wing?

[arielle]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 12:48 pm


Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions?

They were selling pornography or communist literature or something?


In all seriousness, any evidence that this actually happened? Photos? Theres no mention of it in the news from that area (i checked).

Obviously though i support the action, its better to see rightwing extremists like the taliRAAN attack imperialists rather than trying to socially repress people (you know, same with Hamas et al).
That was a little uncalled for. Instead of throwing names around you could have been a little more mature about it.

[ComradeRed]

What did they do exactly? Pour super glue in between the cracks of the doors?

[Red October]

This is much better than the parking meters, but there needs to be more done. Along with direct action against the recruiters, there needs to be education within the community about why the recruiters are bad and how we can resist them effectively. I searched around on the internet and found a few things about this, but no pictures. The Rockville police department has a weekly report on crime, so maybe this will be in there in a few days.

[Axel1917]

It probably won't prove effective. The dust will clear and they will just fix stuff up. I agree with Bolshevik Butcher in regard to what should be done instead.

I admit that I find the RAAN action funny, and it was probably fun, but to look at things seriously, it probably wasn't too effective.

[The Advent of Anarchy]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 08:04 pm
What did they do exactly? Pour super glue in between the cracks of the doors?
Nah. They ran out of super glue after the Night of the 150 Vandalized Parking Meters. They decided to throw bricks and stuff at recruiters and their building. I say this is intermediate, so I say "Go RAAN", but I still have half of me that says that this is just a yawn.