# Tourist Union #16



## Art101 (Jul 16, 2016)

So this is very much in the beginning stages of this journey.The idea came from the original formed in the 1800's as safety net so to speak.My idea is to bring it to this day and age.I envision it as a way to help members who have been stranded somewhere or lost their gear through getting kicked off a train,locked up or been jacked up to at least be able to be helped.Also to hold fast to the original code of the Hobo.I am very open to any ideas or thoughts anyone has.


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## Mankini (Jul 16, 2016)

iww is similar


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## Art101 (Jul 16, 2016)

I was looking at the IWW site and couldnt find anything modern.


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## Deleted member 20 (Jul 17, 2016)

http://hobo.com/whatisahobo/touristunion63.html

I dont know? I think this sounds like a nostalgic undertaking? We do not get arrested for vagrancy so there is no need to be in a trade union. Im all for the organized labor & very much so pro union & no plenty about the wobblies.

But today there is so much social welfare, nonprofit & support services for travelers, homeless & low income people. You must remember that soup lines were a reaction to people literally starving to death. Now in any city in America we can find many soup kitchens, mobile feeding trucks & food pantries for hungry people: during the great depression those things were just starting out. Many of the social services we have were created & expanded from that era.

The safety net most def already exists already. We have many thousands of travelers, homebums & or addicts/alcoholics who are out there spanging everywhere in the US. Our society lives in excess so it i not hard to spange up a few buck sfor some food, some gear, a bus ticket or something else. There are plenty of people who loose there gear , get arrested, beat up, robbed & or removed from trains. Keep in mind that the amount of hobos is significantly fewer in number & almost never kicked off moving trains. It is much more civilized where the bull catches you & normally takes down your info & tells you not to ride his section off RR any time soon. They give you a pas & some of hitch out to another yard or roll the dice & try to elude the same bulls again. You can find plenty of free clothing & boots at free Church/nonprofit thrift stores, some soup kitchens have rooms of stuff you can go thru too. I have had guys bring me coolers full of food, good Carhart bibs, socks & canned food while flying a sign in West Memphis. West Memphis isnt exactly a wealthy are yet someone was able to help me out. I had coveralls & ended up carrying the bibs & sweatshirts for a few hundred miles before I kicked them down to a tramp who was heading North that I met while hes was flying & I ws hitching. There are nonprofits like this one in NYC that supply gear to homeless types. They are decent & heavy duty/waterproof packs made to distribute to those living out of a pack. http://dontwalkby.org/about/ There i also Travelers aif a nonprofit that has been around for like 100 years that helps out with bus tickets etc. Then you have stuff like couchsurfing where travelers can crash & cleanup with regular honest working people.

Lastly we have STP. We kinda guide some people in the right direction & have a communal nature about us with the rideshares, crustsurfing & black market.

I wish there were people in better economic positions that could do more with setting up caches of gear for those who come through. I bet many who are housed & or parttime travellers or former travelers who are on STP are like me, I always have extra gear (sleeping bags, sometimes a pack, boots, clothes,gloves, etc). I dont have an endless supply but if I come across something free on craigslist or somewhere else I save it. I dont know how many good & quality gear items that I have put into use with fellow travelers. I think that this could be done more here on STP especially with those who host surfers. I myself only meet up with travelers once in awhile.

I know that a few of us travel to seek greener pastures for work once in awhile, some who travel to seasonal gigs but the majority who are in this culture for the freedom of it. The freedom of being a wage slave. Most can obtain some sort of shitty work where they are these days while not travling. Traveling i usually the result of people getting fed up of a shitty job. Back then even the shitty jobs were few & far between. 

A few years ago I came across a dude who honest to God was planning on traveling in a suit & leather shoes. This guy had some serious nostalgic nonsense going on in his thick head. He had watched too many depression era movies & read to many adventure books. He refused to spange for money & had like $750 that he would dip into for himself. He never really got the idea of living free, he was like a tourist slumming. He had bought into capitalism so much that he was gonna work on his vacation to be more like a "real hobo", lmfao. Instead of sharing anything of what he had with others who had nothing, he would bogart his money & bitch about not having enough & pissed that he could not find any work (keep in mind he was in the US on a tourist visa) So his 2 month holiday to the states he was using as a bucketlist experience to do stuff then return to his shitty life & job. I How fucking impractical is it to wear a suit & tie with shoes when riding trains? Id say that attire would last 15 minutes in a yard hopping knuckle of climbing on ladders. 

All though you seem genuine It sure sounds like some of the same nostalgic hobo stuff. The old timers still meet in Britt, Iowa every year but most havent road trains in 40+ years.

We are the natural evolution of this pasttime no less purist than the old boes or more fake than the last. There were others before us & will be others with different styles after us riding trains. Good luck with the project all though I cant directly grasp on its relevance today.


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## Mankini (Jul 17, 2016)

Art101 said:


> I was looking at the IWW site and couldnt find anything modern.




We're still around, Baby. Like the Jedi. The HQs in Chi.


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## warlo (Jul 17, 2016)

sounds like a great idea, but like highwayman put it out very clear, these are different times, specially for USA and EU, where people can very easily live off the excess of normal society and have safe passage while doing sketchy stuff (except some minorities and paperless)
In my first years living in excessland EU I always struggled to work my way into food storage, common kitchens and similar projects. Being such an easy task, I was always put off in the end since I end up feeling that I am making it even more easy for everybody else. I mean, cmon, just get your ass out every couple days, open the lid of that dumpster around the corner and eat for free until capitalism dies. same applies for almost everything else that could be arranged into some sort of non profit. 
What I do now is to spread the info, teach people how to fish. Im not wasting my time fixing people free stuff when they can do it themselves. Only do that to very special friends and people I consider to be ok to pamper like that for whatever reason comes to my mind at the time.

I guess caches of stuff are good ideas, squats usually function like messy caches of stuff, at least in EU.


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