369 Fifteenth Street, Oakland, CA 94612
Phone 510-763-7078 | Fax 510-763-7068 | Email ruckus@ruckus.org
Motivation
Overall, the Ruckus Society is doing exactly what it set out to do. It used to be that activists became more outrageous in order to gain the attention of TV cameras. By breaking laws, escalating conflicts between police and protesters, and operating military-style training camps, Ruckus is upping the ante for other environmental activist groups who wish to be taken seriously within the movement. The effect is that of redefining the cutting edge of the anti-consumer movement, by sanctioning violence and engaging in organized conflict with law enforcement.The Ruckus Society seems to have no compunction about breaking laws when they become inconvenient to “the cause.” John Sellers himself has been arrested over 40 times, most notably outside the 2000 Republican National Convention, where he was held on a $1 million bond until the event had concluded. While radicals claim that Sellers was railroaded by law enforcement, it’s worth noting that police officers confiscated a variety of weapons from protesters at the scene of Sellers’s arrest, including piano wire and gasoline-soaked rags tied to chains.
Why do Mike Roselle, John Sellers, Han Shan, and others organize willing twenty-somethings and teach them how to raise hell in the streets of America? To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it’s the global economy, stupid! To hard-core environmentalists like those at the helm of Ruckus, the worldwide spread of free trade and the modernization of third-world economies must be bad things if they are the result of genetically improved foods, franchised restaurants, logging, mining, and drilling for oil. And the instrument of the world’s demise is the multinational corporation. The damage done to Starbucks and McDonald’s during the Seattle riots in 1999 is one good indicator of the level of visceral hatred and violence involved.
Never mind that biotech foods will save lives. Set aside the fact that one out of every 15 Americans has his or her first job at a McDonald’s. And forget that globalizing the food chain will do a lot more to narrow the gap between rich and poor than can be accomplished by parading protesters wearing monarch butterfly costumes, or by the violent trashing of American cities. They continue to grab headlines with outrageous behavior, gaining additional foolish and impressionable converts along the way. To date, Ruckus has held over two dozen “action camps” in the United States; as the group’s profile grows, so does the waiting list of young activists who will do just about anything to participate.
