As the year comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on our work in 2009.  While the story of economic recession has been told on the nightly news through dire images of home foreclosures and job loss, we’ve gotten to see a different side of the story.  We’ve seen that when times are tough and money is tight, communities know that the most effective way to bring about real change is by taking action!

We’ve had a busy year, pulling off some of the most work on some of the least resources in our history.  We’ve helped train, vision, and support actions for groups fighting police brutality, resisting foreclosure evictions, and ending Israel’s assault on the Palestinians in Gaza; groups fighting for clean air and water in their communities; resisting shale gas extraction in NY, and the Tar Sands oil extraction in Alberta; student groups fighting for just policies on their campuses; community groups from New Orleans to Milwaukee working to develop their folks’ skills to serve their communities’ needs; and of course, folks in our backyard here in the Bay Area who are taking Chevron to task and building up community solutions to the impending climate crisis (check out this growing list of eco-justice actions we’re developing!).

In addition to all the community-requested trainings and action support, some of the Ruckus Program highlights from 2009 were:

• The first annual Network RoundUp in January, where folks from our volunteer network of skilled NVDA coordinators and trainers gathered for 4 days in Oakland to share best practices across generations of Ruckus and develop methods to grow and deepen the skills within the Ruckus network.
  

• The Capitol Climate Action in March, where Ruckus helped train, prep and coordinate (with our allies at RAN, Greenpeace, and Energy Action) the first mass civil disobedience for climate justice.  3,000 folks risked arrest at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, DC, demanding that congress take real steps towards ending the climate crisis.

• Localize This! Action Camp on Vashon Island, WA, in July. Upon request for training by the local Vashon community who was gearing up to (successfully) fight off a multinational corporation from decimating a local island, we used the opportunity to hold one of our cornerstone Action Camps.  Dozens of folks from around the U.S. and Canada convened for a week of nonviolence theory, direct action planning and prep, and hands-on tactical skills such as climbing, blockades on land and sea, and creative visuals.  Several of the participants from the camp went on to take high-level actions against the Tar Sands!  Check out the action on Niagara Falls, and at RBC Headquarters!
  

• West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice & Action (WCCCJA) in September.  As a central planning partner of the Mobilization for Climate Justice-West coalition, we helped host this Bay Area training camp which provided participants with in-depth ecological justice analysis and community solutions tools in addition to direct action training.  MCJ-West has mobilized actions for climate justice each month since the kick-off action at the Richmond Chevron refinery in August, including this action from 9/21 shown here in the U.K. Guardian (that’s our intern, Lydia!), the 10/24 International Day of Action for Climate Justice with 350.org, N30 10th anniversary of the WTO shutdown actions, and December 7th when we blockaded all three gates at Chevron’s Headquarters in San Ramon, CA on the opening day of the COP15 Climate Talks.
  

• Indigenous Peoples’ Delegation action support in Copenhagen Dec 7-18.  Our Indigenous Peoples’ Power Project, under the leadership of Ruckus Program Director Sharon Lungo, helped pull off action after action with Indigenous activists from around the world who traveled to Copenhagen to demand strong and just climate policies at the U.N. COP15.  Check out this video of Sharon in Copenhagen explaining why IP3 was there.

What a year!  Thank you so much to all of you who have supported us financially and otherwise to make all of this important work possible!  We couldn’t have done it without you.

For a sneak preview of what we’ve got in store for 2010, check out our upcoming events page!

This November 30th marked the 10-year anniversary of the WTO shut-down in Seattle in 1999.  It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since the iconic Democracy –> / WTO <– banner drop that kicked off that amazing week of people coming together to take over the streets and show the bosses in suits that people come before profit.

Now, on the 10th anniversary, Ruckus is once again sending our folks to join thousands of others from around the world at another momentous convening of world governments:  the COP-15 climate talks in Copenhagen.

Throughout the past decade, much has changed and much remains the same – both movement-wide, and within our organization.  Since the WTO, Ruckus has grown and shifted in many ways.  Our work today may appear slightly different, but at the heart of it all we remain steadfast in our mission to provide activists with hands-on tools and skills to take strategic, effective, creative nonviolent direct action in order to improve their communities.

We know that our work isn’t finished – there are plenty more folks and communities who need these tools.  But in order for us to keep fulfilling all the requests we receive, we need YOUR support.

So check out this short video about our work and some of the amazing actions that have been made possible through Ruckus’s training program and action network over the years.

Then get out your wallet and take one of the quickest, simplest actions you can: donate today!

The Ruckus Society – Take Action: Donate Today!

Many thanks to Anita Sarkeesian for producing this video for us!!!

We’re back from the Localize This! Action Camp, and already seeing some of the fruits of our labor!

Responding to the call of Backbone Campaign and other local islanders, we brought the Ruckus crew out to Vashon Island in Washington’s Puget Sound July 13-18, for a week of direct action trainings.  In addition to the standard action camp workshops Ruckus has used over the last 13 years, this camp included a track in kayak safety and water blockades, and Backbone held down the creative visuals track.

While folks came from all over the U.S. and Canada – including many from indigenous communities through our IP3 project – there was a strong showing of local Vashon folks, and with good reason:  local islanders are gearing up to fend off a Japanese multinational corporation named Glacier Northwest, who is trying to turn neighboring Maury Island into a gravel mine.  (Check out this great video about the training that aired on Seattle’s King 5 News on July 15!)

Over the course of the week, in between direct action theory and prep workshops, media and messaging, campaign action strategy, and tactical trainings in climbing, blockades on land and water, and visuals, discussions ensued about strategy for both the local Vashon campaign, as well as campaigns from participants’ local campaigns that they’re working on back home.

Local struggles varied across issue-focus, but also intertwined in their overarching theme of environmental justice for the sustainability of land and communities.  And it was clear that we were all there for one reason:  to learn how to take DIRECT ACTION to win our struggles.

Now, just ten days after the camp’s final action role-play day, two indigenous women from Canada who attended Localize This! climbed Royal Bank of Canada’s flagpoles outside their headquarters in Toronto this morning, and hung a banner appealing to the wife of RBC’s CEO to help stop the Tar Sands extraction project in Alberta.  (Click here to read more about the action, which was evidence of local indigenous participation in Rainforest Action Network’s tar sands divestment campaign against RBC).

This is just one example of how Ruckus trainings lead to action, and build the movement’s capacity to WIN.

Keep your eyes open for news about Vashon island’s “Mosquito Fleet” taking to the water to block the gravel mine!  The company could start construction as early as August 15th.

adrienne maree here just off of vashon island, where localize this action camp is in full effect.

10 years after organizers gathered for globalize this (and went on to be a part of the masses that rocked the battle in seattle), we found ourselves back up in the beautiful northwest with a new call. localize this is all about how we take our action skills and apply them to the communities where we and our families live.

the host community is up against multi-national Glacier, who want to destroy the area with a massive mine. participants and trainers came from all over the US and as far as the tar sands in canada. we started off the week with vashon folks sharing what they are up against, and then everyone else thinking about how they would localize the training they received this week when they got home.

then, we tried on a new approach for setting the camp culture. we wanted to address that there were folks there from a variety of experience levels in terms of work around anti-oppression and/or decolonization. the model we unveiled is based on our action framework (“a call to how to ACT”).

first we presented a 5-step perspective on moving towards equity.

1. OTHERING: many folks start with viewing folks who aren’t the same race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc as “other”. that “other”-ing can manifest in many ways – superiority, enslaving, hating, fearing, suspecting, inferiority.

2. EXOTIFICATION: when an appreciation of some aspect of a person or group of people you see as “other” develops, and becomes a desire. this can manifest as wanting to own it, have it, control it, bed it, eat it, visit it (within a safe bubble – think resorts in “exotic” locations).

3. TOKENIZATION: when logic, self-interest, good intentions or force makes an individual or organization realize that they want/need to have representation of the “other”.  this manifests in obvious and/or subtle ways, such as having one (insert black/female/gay/etc) friend, one (insert poor/impacted) board member, or one (differently-abled/trans/immigrant) staff member.

4. EMULATION: wanting to actually put on the behavior, dress, music, names, spiritual practices, political struggles or culture of the “other”. this is deeper than a visit – this is preferring the “other” above your own identity, and believing you have the privilege to just opt-in to the experiences of the “other”. this is most harmful when it manifests as an individual leaving behind their own communities and families and immersing themselves in the communities which their historic ancestors have negatively impacted, taking up space and resources and not respecting or understanding boundaries. what’s deep here is that individuals involved in emulation are often of the belief that they are showing love and respect for the “other”.

5. EQUITY/EQUALITY: when there is equal opportunity to resources, and fairness and justice in terms of decision making. this is a liberated state of mind that allows you and all the people you interact with to exist outside of constant reaction and struggle, and to evolve. this can manifest in respectful sharing of history and culture, deep appreciation of a whole individual (meaning their complex multiple-identities, not just the surface view).in the long-run, this could manifest a world in which sustainability and self-determination are possible for everyone.

i would go so far as to say active equity is the deepest form of love, and to approach the world from a space of equality and equity the most liberated state. i’m not there yet, but i am working on it.

the easiest way to explain the work that i’ve been able to come up with is the ACT model.

A = awareness. being aware of all of who you are in relation to any group you are in, who else is in the group, and the ways in which you can be part of the mainstream (feeling comfortable, normal, understood, powerful), and the ways in which you are part of the margins (uncomfortable, different, misunderstood, powerless). training for change has a great exercise for this which i encourage you to seek out. we asked folks to think this through for themselves with one other person. the first time folks think and speak through this is usually powerful. many people of color, for example, spend our lives being called “minorities” and fighting for resources – it’s powerful to think of all the ways our culture is shaping the mainstream, the spaces in which we are actually the most powerful people in the room. it’s deep to acknowledge we are the world majority, and have been divided and conquered so successfully. it also helps to hear another person share, and realize just how trained our minds are to put people into boxes based on our perceptions, rather than staying open to their actual experiences and history.

C = communication. learning to communicate clearly, powerfully, at the right time, and from your own experience is a lifelong process. but the better you get at being able to actually communicate from a place of awareness, and understand how you want to be communicated to, the more powerful you can be as a member of your community both within your community, and when representing outside of your community. we had the participants get into affinity groups and think about assumptions and offenses often communicated TO their groups, and how other groups in the room could really communicate well with them for the temporary community of the week.

T = truth-n-reconciliation, both as a formal and informal process. we are going to post more about this process in the near future, but the depth of relationship and equity possible when both parties can bring their truth into the room, reconcile differences and past wrongdoings, and pre-empt future offenses and oppression – that depth is astounding, and illuminates what sustainable and self-determined communities really look like.

this is all old knowledge, old growth knowledge, wisdom that already exists in communities and is just waiting to be remembered.

a new friend, logan, then offered a consent process that helps to create a safe space around sex and sexuality – really important when we have folks going through very physical and interactive trainings.

after that, we got in the introduction to nonviolent direct action, direct action planning, media and messaging, and the three tracks.

that’s when i had to take off, because ruckus is playing a major role in the allied media conference (july 16-19 – www.alliedmediaconference.org) and the u.s. social forum process (see post below for more on that!).

send love to the participants and trainers and kitchen and volunteers and visions working on vashon right now!