After months and months of planning, and weeks of the Ruckus team doing on-the-ground prep here in Detroit, the 2010 U.S. Social Forum is finally under way!

It all officially started off yesterday with the big Opening March down Woodward Ave, the main thoroughfare through Detroit, ending at Cobo Hall with the Opening Ceremony.

Ruckus’s team has been working hard to prep for the big actions this week, by building art, banners & props, preparing chants, street theatre and choreography, coordinating overall action plans, logistics, security, tactical comms & media, recruiting volunteers and participants, and making sure everyone in Detroit knows about the actions and comes out to support!

We’ve had art-building workshops every day for the last week in various churches and community centers throughout Detroit, where youth and adults from different neighborhoods have come through to build their own pieces for the Incinerator Action, as well as help build a mass of tall sunflowers, as well as one giant sunflower, and a giant mock-incinerator (come help us tear it down on Saturday!).

In addition to all the action prep, our folks are already running non-stop facilitating workshops, trainings, and Peoples’ Movement Assemblies, coordinating overall USSF security, and helping with the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus! It is an action-packed, fast-paced, high-energy week, to be sure.

This morning Democracy Now aired an interview with Ruckus Director Adrienne Maree Brown, the National USSF Coordinator, about the Forum, Detroit, and the Allied Media Conference.  Check it out!

Here’s what’s coming up:

TODAY, JUNE 23:
10-12 Creating a Tactical Spectacle, and Rehearsal for a Restaurant Workers Defense Flashmob (Cobo W1-51)

12-1 Incinerator Action Art Build- come join the “Sunflower Greenhouse” to build more giant sunflowers for Saturday’s big action! (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

1-3:30 Bannermaking for the Friday action against Chase Bank (anti-foreclosure, in solidarity with southern tobacco farmworkers) (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

1-5:30 Tar Sands Peoples Movement Assembly (Cobo W2-70)

1-5:30 Take Back The Land Workshop (incl NVDA trng) (Cobo D2-08)

6-9:00 Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) Training for Incinerator Action Volunteers (you don’t have to sign up ahead of time!) – Cobo W1-51

6:39-9:00 Opening Plenary, featuring Adrienne Maree Brown and Carla Perez (from Ruckus and Movement Generation) discussing Ecological Justice

6-10:00 Flashmob Rehearsal! If you want to join a fun, creative, participatory action to defend local restaurant workers (tomorrow night), come to this rehearsal and plug in! (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

THURSDAY, JUNE 24

10-12:00 Direct Action Strategies for Climate Justice and Community Resilience (Cobo DO-7A)

10-12:00 Boycott Divest Sanction Israel Workshop

12-1:00 Action Art Building (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

1-5:30 No More Marches, No More Rallies! Workshop (Cobo Do-03B)

1-5:30 Take Back the Land Peoples’ Movement Assembly (Cobo D3-19)

5:30pm Meet at Joe Louis Statue in Cobo Hall to head out for the Flashmob! (attend rehearsal Wednesday night at 6pm in Michigan Room!)

6-9:00 Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) Training for Incinerator Action Volunteers (you don’t have to sign up ahead of time!) – (Cobo W1-51)

6-10:00 Incinerator Action Art Build (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

6-8:00 SmartMeme Re:Imagining Change Book Launch Party (Majestic: 4201 Woodward)

8:30pm-2am Indigenous Environmental Network & EMEAC Fundraiser (Magic Stick: 4201 Woodward)

FRIDAY JUNE 25:

9:45am-12pm Action Against Chase Bank (anti-foreclosure, in solidarity with southern tobacco farmworkers) – meet at Grand Circus Park & Woodward, across from the Central United Methodist Church

12-1:00 Action Art Building (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

1-5:30 EcoJustice: Clean Air, Good Jobs & Justice Peoples’ Movement Assembly (Cobo D3-28)

3:30-5:30 Transforming Power Workshop (TWW-5)

5:30-10pm Final Incinerator Action Art Build! Come learn the chants, choreography, and put the final touches on props, action plans, and volunteer roles! (Cobo Basement: Michigan Room)

9pm-2am Leftist Lounge Party – Eastern District

SATURDAY, JUNE 26

7:30am Volunteers gather

9:00-12:00 Clean Air, Good Jobs & Justice! Action against the largest Waste Incinerator in the world! Meet at 5201 Woodward Ave by 9:00am to march and plant sunflowers in the community along the way to stop the incinerator!

12:00-5:00 Final National USSF Peoples’ Movement Assembly and USSF Closing Ceremony (Cobo Hall)

After months and months of work it is finally time. The 2nd US Social Forum is upon us and Ruckus has gone all in to make it an incredible action-packed week that exemplifies what we believe our movements are capable of at this time.

We wanted you to understand why we have given so much time and energy to the USSF process.

For us, the idea of being a part of a process that was born in the global south was very strategic, since it absolutely feels like the issues we are facing in the U.S., and in the west, are beyond our capacity to resolve in isolation. Ruckus commits completely to the global struggle against the mentality of “profits over people”.

In addition, the way the U.S. has embodied this process has been to have grassroots and indigenous groups centered in the planning, visioning and execution of the work, which aligns with the direction Ruckus has been growing in.

We see the forum as a way to bring the Ruckus toolbox of strategic action planning and training to a broad, intersectional, radical body of likeminded folks in Detroit and nationwide.

Here’s our entire schedule, and here’s a few highlights:

- We are supporting the largest action of the forum, an action to shut down the Detroit incinerator and demand “Clean Air, Good Jobs and Justice 4 All” led by Zero Waste Detroit. We have also found ways to support the other actions approved by the local community.

- We’re engaging in the movement building People’s Movement Assembly process, helping to advance the practice of justice as it relates to the environment and the economy. We expect the PMA process to be the major way we engage the declarations of the US Social Forum in the future.

- And we are offering two groundbreaking trainings: the first, with Training for Change, which demands us to push the boundaries of our creativity in actions; the second, with guest Imani Uzuri, to bring back our practice of freedom songs and sounds.

We are rising up to this movement moment, and we invite you to rise up with us.

Excerpt:

The first US Social Forum was in Atlanta, Ga, in the summer of 2007. This is where I and my organization entered the process – the Ruckus Society got involved late in the planning, mostly to support on the big opening march, and security. It wasn’t easy to get to the planning table – partially because the folks working on it were overwhelmed, and partially because there was an intentional effort to have grassroots, basebuilding organizations at the center of the process.

It would be impossible to over emphasize the importance of having grassroots organizers in the center of the process – as most national (and international) processes and organizations are still led by a privileged class – privileged through education, race, or resources. The attempt to invert the power structure, locally or globally, requires putting shared values for bottom-up, grassroots leadership as a top priority.

The first forum was declared an overwhelming success, with estimates that 15,000 people came together for workshops, panels, plenaries, marches, parties and relationship building. It was also a learning process in every possible way.

Now, as we build towards the second forum, there has been an effort to cull the lessons from the first go round.

Read more…