Ruckus Society
369 Fifteenth Street,
Oakland,
CA
94612
Phone 510-763-7078 |
Fax 510-763-7068 |
Email ruckus@ruckus.org
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Earth First!
Eco-zealot extraordinaire Mike Roselle was a co-founder of both Earth First! and the Ruckus Society. When the Fund for Wild Nature was called the Earth First! Foundation, it took the initiative in supporting the Ruckus Society, which the Fund says “succeeded far beyond any initial hopes.” Of the original three-member board of the Ruckus Society, two were Earth First! co-founders: Roselle and Howie Wolke. Both Ruckus and Earth First! organizations receive money from Roselle's Ecology Center. Among other Ruckus staff members, its “blockades trainer” identifies herself as an Earth First! activist.
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Environmental Working Group
The Environmental Working Group employs a special program director just to organize activists and coordinate their activities in the state of California. His name is Bill Walker. When Walker isn’t busy whipping the anti-pesticide troops into a frenzy, he teaches the Ruckus Society’s hard-core radicals the finer points of media spin. Walker has appeared as a “media trainer” during at least three past Ruckus Society “action camps.” Both Ruckus and EWG were also involved in a 2004 advertising campaign urging consumers not to buy Ford automobiles.
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Greenpeace
Rolling Stone magazine once called the Ruckus Society a “band of battle-hardened Greenpeace vets.” Indeed, Ruckus co-founder Howard “Twilly” Cannon spent over ten years piloting boats (including Greenpeace’s flagship “Rainbow Warrior”) as a full-time activist with the group’s French and Russian anti-nuclear campaigns. Mike Roselle, the brains behind Ruckus, also set up and led Greenpeace’s first “direct action team.” Ruckus director Sebia Hawkins currently sits on the boards of both Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Pacific. Sam Whiting, the “climbing instructor” at the very first Ruckus Society “action camp,” ran Greenpeace’s Washington, DC office at the time. Some news reports claim that as many as half of Ruckus’s camp staffers are present or former Greenpeace officers. Aside from this apparent personnel overlap, Greenpeace and Ruckus have organized protests together and co-signed numerous activist petitions.
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Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has received several thousand dollars from Patagonia Inc., which also funds the riot-inciting anarchists of the Ruckus Society.
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Natural Resources Defense Council
While the Ruckus Society’s Tzeporah Berman (who coordinates rainforest programs for ForestEthics in Vancouver) oversaw a Canadian anti-logging campaign on the ground, NRDC put economic pressure on companies like Home Depot, Lowe’s, Kinko’s, Nike, 3M, and Starbucks, each of which pledged to avoid buying products derived from British Columbia rainforest timber.
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Organic Consumers Association
In March of 2000, a group of environmental organizations sponsored a “People’s National Town Hall Meeting” in Sacramento, in order to attempt to inject the 1999 Seattle protest agenda into the upcoming presidential campaigns. Among the featured speakers were the Ruckus Society’s Han Shan and Simon Harris of the Organic Consumers Association.
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Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
An ad appearing the February 5, 2004 issue of the New York Times viciously attacked Ford Motor Company’s CEO over fuel efficiency issues. Ruckus and Sea Shepherd were among the radical green groups who co-signed the ad.
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Sierra Club
In 2001 the Sierra Club's national magazine, Sierra, promoted the Ruckus Society's "Global Justice Action Camps" encouraging activists to learn "skills ranging from scaling buildings to hanging from billboards." The plug encouraged readers to take "a look at the wilder side of anti-globalization, try www.ruckus.org." The Ruckus Society is generally credited with training violent protesters who vandalized and looted Seattle storefronts during the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings.
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Tides Foundation & Tides Center
The Ruckus Society has accepted over $23,000 in contributions from the Tides Foundation since 1999. These grants, of course, represent funds that Tides has obtained from other donors, all of whom have remained anonymous. While the current tax law permits such underhanded money-laundering, Tides has turned it into a high art form. Ruckus and Tides also co-signed an open letter in 2004, urging consumers not to buy Ford automobiles.
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