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The ruckus that really wasn't

by Judi McLeod

September 8, 2004

although they threatened a ruckus disruptive enough to force the evacuation of the Big apple’s Madison Square Garden, protester activists left last week’s GOP convention with their proverbial tails tucked between their legs. For all of their big talk, tall tales, pink panties and traffic-stopping tactics, the Republican convention went off without a glitch.

activists on the march may have given New Yorkers a few headaches, but their Ruckus Society teachers gave patron Teresa Heinz-Kerry a tummy ache that took her to the hospital.

Heinz-Kerry was briefly hospitalized in Mason City Iowa, Saturday evening complaining of an upset stomach. Taken to Mercy Medical Centre-North Iowa by ambulance, she was released after a number of routine tests.

The Ruckus Society, financed to the tune of $150,000 over the last five years by Heinz-Kerry’s Tides Foundation, played a key role in GOP convention protests. Ruckus spent months training activists in the fine art of civil disobedience for the convention.

But in New York, scores of activists and their leaders were easily outmaneuvered by the New York Police Department and even outfoxed by Fox News.

The $3 million trail of destruction left by Ruckus and other anti-global groups in the wake of the 1999 World Trade Organization convention in Seattle gave Ruckus--branded as "anarchists"--a big black eye. Weeks before GOP, The Tides Foundation was trying to clean up the organization’s blackened name with a website whitewash. "The Ruckus Society–who have been wrongly characterized as "anarchists"--have in fact trained and assisted thousands of activists in the use of nonviolent direct action," said the Tides Foundation website. "Ruckus promotes and teaches strategic nonviolent direct actions against unjust institutions and policies; and respect for all living things and a commitment to the power of diversity."

after riots organized by the Ruckus Society shut down Seattle during a meeting of the WTO in 1999, Ruckus director John Sellers told Mother Jones magazine: "I make a distinction between violence and destruction of property. Violence to me is against living things. But inanimate objects? It may be violence under the law but I just don’t think it’s violence."

The law may not apply to the high-handed Sellers, but a police officer is hardly an inanimate object. Police dogs and horses are not SUVs.

Little wonder why Ruckus patron Teresa Heinz-Kerry gets stomachaches.

"Organizing Resources for Change" is the catchphrase used to describe the mission of the Tides Foundation. But in New York, change was not forthcoming at the end of the Republican convention, life went back to business as usual.

"The circus is back in town. We are being treated here to a spectacle of screaming clowns, of masked acrobats, of all kinds of propaganda dances and choir singings. Let’s just hope they don’t burn our town to the ground," is how one New Yorker put it.

In Seattle, the damage done to Starbucks and McDonalds during 1999 riots is proof positive of the destructiveness of Ruckus members. Interesting to note that the Tides Foundation continued to bankroll the protest group’s operation even after the Seattle riots.

Following the riots, Ruckus director Sellers told USa Today, "We kicked the WTO’s butt all over the Northwest."

Coddled by Tides and promoted by the mainline media, the organization was formed in 1995, sparked by a pro-logging bill that was signed by President Bill Clinton.

From the get go, radical environmental activists welcomed Ruckus onto the scene.

During the Clinton administration, the Ruckus Society was given tax-exempt status as a 50© (3) charitable organization, a status it maintains to the present day.

according to activistcash.com, "nearly half of the Ruckus roster of camp "trainees" proclaim membership in the (radical) Earth First."

In the space of three years, Ruckus moved from bipartisan to partisan protesting. In 2000, its members protested both the Republican and Democrat conventions, but focused exclusively on the GOP in 2003.

"Everybody is concerned first and foremost with getting the Bush administration out of office." Sellers told the Boston Globe last December.

But New York was a bust and like the husband of the Ruckus Society’s patron, even a flop.

The next time Teresa Heinz-Kerry wants to bring the circus to town, she should stick to the trapeze.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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