More about Lisa Fithian --the Direct Action Network (DAN) and the Ruckus Society....
organizersforum.org
III. John Sellers is the director of the Ruckus Society and Lisa Fithian is the Los Angeles spokesperson of the Direct Action Network (DAN).
John worked with Greenpeace from 1990 to 1996 and has worked with the Ruckus Society since that time. Additionally, John has coordinated actions for a number of social and economic justice organizations. Ruckus and John are based in the Bay Area of San Francisco.
Lisa Fithian is a community and labor organizer. She worked in the Justice for Janitors campaign in Washington, DC and was the mobilization coordinator for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Over the past year Lisa has worked extensively in the anti-globalization movement and helped found the Continental Direct Action Network. Lisa provided training and was actively involved in the N30 shutdown of the WTO in Seattle and the A16 IMF/World Bank protests in Washington, DC. She played a coordinating role between the R2K-D2K actions at the 2000 political conventions, focusing primarily on the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. Lisa provided direct action training and facilitated street actions at the S26 IMF/World Bank meetings in Prague and most recently Lisa offered training and organizing support in Quebec for the FTAA Summit of Americas. In between Lisa is still based in Los Angeles.
Both the Ruckus Society and DAN have been touchstones since the Battle of Seattle shutdown the World Trade Organizations meetings there. There has been much discussion and curiosity about the mechanics of these movements and whether or not they represent any advances in strategic or tactical organizing work. Both John and Lisa were very open to joining the dialogue to examine these very questions and to share their experiences with us.
Background information on the Ruckus Society came from an article in the April 30, 2001 number of In These Times, which is available at inthesetimes.com Background material on the structure and objectives of the Direct Action Network was available on their web site at www.cdan.org John and Lisa agreed to jointly present in a panel on Saturday afternoon.
John Sellers, Ruckus Society, and Lisa Fithian, Direct Action Network
Lisa began the conversation by noting that these phenomena were equivalent: empire, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and now corporate globalization.
She dated the history of the growth of the movement to a number of benchmarks:
1991 - Berlin Wall
Jan 1994 - Chiapas, Mexico: Zapatistas used internet to spread word of their struggle
1995 - Encuentro with 6000 people
Peoples' Global Action -- June 1999 - precursor to WTO
Derivations as well in England in "we claim the streets" campaign and the squatting of a road and mailboxes on trees in order to save trees.
Grupa de affinidad goes back to Spanish Civil War and was model for 11/30/99 Seattle WTO.
Earth First - David Solnick - Art & Revolution
4. visionary of blockades
Ruckus is a training and capacity organization. Runs advanced training action camps - which are strategy, tactics, and technique schools.
Layout in Seattle crated a pie of 13 slices emanating from the Convention Center.
Various slices of the pie - by street and zone - were assigned to various affinity groups. Most of the groups operated by consensus and operated autonomously. The size of the groups ranged from 5 to 25.
They operated on what Sellers referred to as a "transparent need to know" basis.
Most decisions were not made until there.
Convergence site is the central locus of planning, training, support, and coordination.
DAN and some of the actions work from a Spokes Council….like spokes in a wheel.
Different teams: communications, legal, medical, tactical. Flying squads.
Variety of high tech and low-tech operations.
Examples: women of steel that do "lockdowns," "human molecule" actions.
"Jewelry" means bracelets that lock people together and make it difficult for police to separate.
"Soft body" implements are another description of tactical selection compared to fabricated police restraints.
Lot of "gear:" For example: high tech scanners to monitor police actions, special uhf channels for communication, and so forth. Preference for Nextel cell phones partially because of the digital radio band allowing for use as a walkie-talkie in the range.
Discussion of the problem indicates that with experience comes some polarization. For example veterans now come equipped with goggles, bandanas, and gas masks because of the problems with pepper spray and gas, but clearly the media aspect of such preparation can be extremely alienating to creating a mass base for the movement and protest.
For these reasons it was unclear if Quebec was as successful as some of the earlier actions. To some degree the movement is becoming criminalized. Popular appeal is going down. Less solidarity action. More of a tactical movement. A current obsession is creating unity in movement.
Benchmarks in this new movement:
Seattle
LA
Philly
Quebec
Prominence of tactics / convention chasing
Ruckus Society - 6 years old, many from campaigns of old growth forests
Ethics of excitement
"Spank the Bank" - Citicorp
funding from the Body Shop, Patagonia, others from private individuals
work with IMC - Independent Media Center
hold weeklong training sessions & do strategic consulting w/other groups
4-6 staff with about 150 people self-identifying as part of the Ruckus Society
cost is about $150,000 per major mobilization action
Running collections: food, mobile kitchens, etc.
Attempting to create meta-campaigns…
model very much Affinity groups
(video, slides, drawings of demonstrations showing culture-food centers, daycare center, etc--of constituency, tactics, props, model w/pie slices, affinity group autonomy, communication strategies, etc.)
Discussion of Ybasta - which represents an innovation: "aggressive non-violence"
Discussion of relationship of groups-labor & this "movement", etc.
Upcoming events:
June-Barcelona
July-G8, Genoa, Italy
Sept 30 - IMF/Annual mtg.
World Economic Forum - Miami
WTO - Nov. 15 |
