To his right, another group practiced chanting and locking their arms together so police could not pull them apart. A book about Che Guevara, a guerrilla warfare tactician, sits on the seat of a folding chair at the camp. A ruckus is what happened in Seattle last fall, when thousands of activists trained and coordinated by the Ruckus Society disrupted the World Trade Organization meeting. Now the Ruckus Society is training the next generation of protesters to take on everyone from the World Bank to General Motors to both political conventions. On a bluff overlooking the Peace River near Arcadia, the Ruckus Society this week is staging its first Alternative Spring Break.
Campers shield their eyes from the morning sun during introductions.
Other participants hailed from Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Canada. Most were, like her, young, painfully earnest and pale as a blank sheet of paper. Unions and environmental groups are discovering that, thanks to corporate mergers, they increasingly share a common enemy, he said. Steelworkers battling a company over labor issues have learned that it shares ownership with a company cutting down redwoods. Because Ruckus camps focus on tactics, not polemics, its sleeping bags are often occupied by strange bedfellows.