It's a bird! No it's a plane! No, it's... it's some guy running around the streets of Seattle at night, wearing a fedora hat? Meet Phoenix Jones everybody; a regular civilian by day and a crime fighting vigilante during the night (although his most recent costume upgrade doesn't include the fedora) . He is a masked hero, who very recently arose to defend Seattle from any and all advocates/champions of lawbreaking - one of the many crime fighters who decided to take up the mantle in the nationwide superhero trend.
Rain City Superhero Movement
The RCSM (Rain City Superhero Movement) is a group of masked vigilantes established and led by Phoenix Jones. All members of the team have either a military or mixed martial arts background and everyone affiliated with the RCSM is equipped with non-lethal weapons; billy clubs, tasersr, and pepper spray. All of this being legal to carry around due to Washington being an "open-carry" state, essentially meaning you can carry around any weapon as long as it's not concealed.
Preaching his credo would be a little redundant, especially when I can't really do the entire message justice (irony). Fortunately a man by the name of Aaron Roden - affiliated with the podcast Air-Raid - was actually able to secure an interview with The Guardian of Seattle. The formation of the group and more detailed information on Phoenix Jones can be heard on air-raid.net on episode 25.
The Online Hero Presence
Turns out that the movement is actually trying to spread and convey the message. The superhero community is quickly developing, with a professional website hosting what is known as the Real Life Super Hero community.
Actually, they are referred to as just that, The Real Life Superheroes or RLSH for short. In a nutshell, the majority of the site seems to be a large web community of humanitarians in costumes - not necessarily the crime fighting vigilantes we've all come to know from pop culture and media.
In true Kick-Ass fashion, some of the more current vigilantes are even making use of social networking as a means of getting their image and presence out into the public. Phoenix Jones for example, has a Facebook page in order to make himself much more accessible to the public.
Doubtful Effectiveness of Heroes
After years of watching movies like Kick-Ass, I'm pretty sure we all knew something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Nothing is really set in stone as to what caused the recent wave of surfacing caped crusaders. Vigilantes have been around for years; just the concept of a masked hero has existed way before the prominence of Marvel and DC comic books.
However, whether or not these "heroes" are truly legit is certainly up for debate. As mentioned before, the majority of the RLSH seem to be more or less an organization of people who perform good deeds, such as help the needy via food drives.
Phoenix Jones and the RCSM are definitely out on patrol and in true crime fighting fashion; there's no denying their involvement and the work they do for the good people of Seattle. The Rain City Superhero Movement are probably one of the few masked vigilantes actually in the fray.
Other people involved in the fight against crime take much less "involved" means of doing the job, such as Milwaukee's own superhero The Watchman (not to be confused with the Zack Snyder film). Mainly a good and caring civilian, The Watchman patrols the streets of Riverwest looking for any crimes being committed. However, he isn't really directly or physically involved in the prevention of a law infraction; The Watchmen reports rule breakers to the police and then steps back to allow law enforcement to do their job.
Vigilantism- Future and Positive Effects
Whether or not this is going to span out into anything, If anything, the history of disguised crime fighting proves these current people certainly aren't the first, nor will they be the last. While many of them aren't literally "fighting crime," there's still that element of civilian justice taking hold.
Nowadays we live in such a cynical age; people just don't want to take matters into their own hands, especially when something is easily manageable and doesn't require police involvement.
Even the bystander effect /Genovese syndrome is definitely starting to hold less water, especially when people are actually jumping into the scene of a mugging - or some other kind of accident - in progress. Of course whenever a person "interjects," it's almost always with a camera phone ready in hand; it seems that everyone is more concerned with getting another viral video up on youtube rather than helping someone out.
One of his messages on the Air-Raid interview is pretty self explanatory: "The world does need [superheroes], not in the crime fighting sense, but in the symbol sense. I got a letter from someone the other day, it was a wife and her husband; they were down on Capital Hill and some guy tried to mug them with a knife. The husband just socked the dude in the face and he dropped it - one punch. He said 'I just thought about you when it was happening, you know a twenty year old kid in a suit can't be much stronger than a retired ex-marine and I just socked him in the face.' Too many people are ready to record and put this stuff on youtube. I'm telling you, put down the camera, jump in."
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