We attacked 2 ATMs in Oakland

"Solidarity means attack!"

Why does this feel like provocateur stuff? It just seems sort of ridiculous to cite every smidgen of vandalism and then claim "solidarity" as it's purpose.

If you really want to sock it to a corporation, develop a nonprofit that gives their crap away for free.

When you trash their means to extract cash from the masses they just pass the costs onto the customers and wash their hands of it, hire more security, etc,. Pretty soon we have walls and cameras and lots of police state crap to protect them.

It feels good, I'm sure, but look at the larger picture. The real threats to corporations are non-profits and competitors, i.e., ways to lose their customers. A far better tactic would be to hand out flyers exposing them to customers as the approach the door.

And give options -- i.e., "Here's the nearest nonprofit credit union and here's how low their fees are compared to what you're being bilked for to fund the big banks that just robbed us all blind -- support the community", etc.

why does the above comment sound like a cop trying to discredit anything that is not non-profit, pacifist crap?

Take care for the security cameras too.
To clarify, Indybay doesn't log IP addresses. Do police ever request or subpoena the database server in response to vandalism or threat postings, in order to somehow extract information from them? Is there any information they could hope to get from the computer? Let's say the owner of a certain bank or fast food outlet was politically connected and very very angry. Another factor I wonder about are all the NSA programs we read about which supposedly tap internet traffic- whether that be in the special room of the AT&T building south of Market street, or Echelon, or via fiber optics cables running underneath the Atlantic. Are they extracting information from that?

there's more to be traced than ip addresses. writing style and catch-phrases can give them clues. act boldly, let others do the talking. be careful out there.

>we highly recommend these based on the relatively high monetary damage it causes to financial institutions for how incredibly easy they are to carry out.

The monetary damage it causes to the bank is trivial. At most, it costs a couple thousand bucks to fix. To institutions that routinely deal in multiple billions, that's chump change, far too small to matter, except as an extremely minor and insignificant tax write off, an "expense of doing business."

Smashing ATMs accomplishes nothing constructive whatsoever, let alone further the cause of progress. It doesn't inconvenience the bank, let alone the bankers one iota. Not only are the banks not harmed, they actually benefit from the sympathy it earns them.

The only people that are hurt when you smash an ATM, are those ordinary, working class folks who had been counting on being able to make use of those ATMs to withdraw cash to spend that day, or worse, to deposit money to cover checks they had already written. But they couldn't, so they had to go hunting for another ATM, wasting fuel and time in the process.

If I found myself late for work because I had to run around Oakland, trying to find an ATM, because you'd trashed mine, I'd be really, really pissed off, and not at the bank, either. I'd be pissed off at you. It's not the bank's fault. It's yours.

I wouldn't be the only one, who felt that way, either. Most working folks feel this way. Most of us working folks have an irate sense of fairness, that does NOT include punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.

To inconvenience a fellow worker, and make his or her everyday life even more onerous and alienating is not an act of solidarity.

>Solidarity means attack!

Wrong, wrong wrong. Solidarity does NOT mean "attack."

Solidarity means choosing to attack, and defend, ONLY when it is done in support of fellow workers, as part of our common class struggle.

Smashing ATMs is pretty much the exact opposite.

Even worse, was when those fools (or were they provocateurs?) trashed and burned the cars and shops of ordinary, working class Oaklanders. These were acts of extremely bad politics. They helped promote social justice not one bit. Instead, they hurt fellow workers, almost none of whom are dumb enough to blame anyone but the people directly responsible.

So ask yourself this:

What kind of person would try to encourage you to commit acts of very bad politics, acts that did nothing to damage the capitalist system, but instead worked against revolution by alienating the very people we need most not to to alienate?

What kind of person would try to convince you that the very meaning of "solidarity" is pretty much the exact opposite to what it really is in real life?

And most important, what kind of person would try to convince you to commit a crime in the exact, precise location where you would be the most likely to be photographed in the act, and thereby be successfully prosecuted, and thus imprisoned?

Not only would film of you being caught in the act would be entered into the massive database of potential troublemakers that the powers that be keep track of, just in case they ever feel the need to round them up and herd them off to camp when the clampdown comes, but also your face, fingerprints, and whatever other biometric data that the powers that be, happen to collect in the process of your arrest and prosecution.

What kind of person would try to convince you to do something like that?

What kind of person, indeed?


>with love in our hearts and fire in our eyes,
>anarchists

Wrong again. The heart, soul and essence of what it means to be an anarchist, is to have class struggle foremost in one's consciousness. To fight in the class war on the side of our fellow workers is what anarchism is all about.

The precise opposite of what it means to be an anarchist, is to alienate the working class while simultaneously committing a stupid, useless crime in the time and place where it is most likely to lead to arrest and imprisonment.

What kind of person, indeed?

get over your binary politics pleaaaaseee


smash atms


god people around here use the provocateur excuse so much

ATM smashers: You can argue all day about whether or not trashing ATMs is effective or not, but shouldn't you be asking yourselves if it's the MOST effective use of your time? If you really thought about it, there are probably about 50 things that you could be doing that would be more useful in advancing the anarchist cause than trashing ATMs. (Some of them might actually be helping other people, instead of trivially inconveniencing major financial institutions and pissing off 99% of the folks in your geographic community.)

Why don't you just admit to yourselves that you're smashing ATMs because you like destroying stuff?

ps- Enough with the overused catch-phrases! Talk about conformity!!!

and why have we not read any reasonable defense of smashing atms? because there isn't one. but if it makes you boys feel good, then cowabunga dudes!

p.s. I double dog dare y'all to actually rob one of those motherfucking banks and then throw the money from the top of a roof. that sounds like anarchist revolution to me.

It's one thing to critique someone's actions, quite another to go on with some sanctimonious neener neener stuff telling people how they should resist the system and berating them because they're making different choices than you are. How about providing some examples of what you are doing to make a better world instead?

don't be a twit, typically the reason people don't rob banks is because they don't want to get shot or thrown in jail for the better part of forever.

So don't use a gun, use a pen.

"So don't use a gun, use a pen."

There's plenty that can be done with the word, I suggest you get to it rather than wasting your and everybody else's time telling people how best to do things. Big planet, lots of options.

Hey there. It's not important to me if you smash objects, just organize. Organize. ORGANIZE.

Collectivize! Federate! Live free!