Bring the Ruckus (BTR) was an anarchist organization from the first
decade of the 21st century (2001-2012) located in the United States.They called themselves a cadre organization that participated in mass
struggles to build dual power. These ideas are similar to those we
propose from the platformist and especifist positions, but they arrived
at them independently, without situating themselves within this
tradition. They coexisted with the platformist Northeastern Federation
of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC) and participated in debates with this
movement.
Bring the Ruckus had a marked anti-racist focus, championing the
destruction of white supremacy in their nation as an organizational
priority. They participated in anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles
from what we would call social integration, seeking to develop global
strategies based on the militancy and context of each "cadre group" to
generate dual power. The proposal of this organizing practice from
outside the platformist/specificist tradition suggests that these types
of practical approaches do not arise from misinterpretations or the
voluntarism of a handful of militants, but rather from a global trend
within organized anarchism to abandon informal and ineffective
organizational methods.
We present the translation of two of his documents: Bring the Ruckus ,
the text of his organizational proposal, and What is a Cadre
Organization?, an internal document of his that defines, as its name
suggests, the concept of a cadre organization.
Bring the Ruckus
By the Ruckus Collective, Phoenix, 2001
In recent years, there has been a growing debate among revolutionaries
about the need for a national or continental anti-authoritarian
revolutionary organization. This discussion has arisen in several
contexts, including the demise of the Love and Rage Revolutionary
Anarchist Federation , the anti-globalization protests that began in
Seattle in 1999, and criticisms of the whiteness of the American left
made primarily by revolutionaries of color. World and national events
also seem to justify this debate: globalization, the persistence of the
American racial order, and the bankruptcy of reformist movements on the
left, right, and center. However, while there is much talk about the
need for a new organization, steps to build it have been clumsy. Much of
the talk merely recycles debates about violence and organizational
structure, while other debates, such as strategy, have been largely
overlooked.
This document was written with the intention of fostering discussion
about a new revolutionary organization. The Ruckus Collective (no
relation to the Ruckus Society) was formed in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997
to discuss revolutionary politics at the local and national levels and
develop revolutionary praxis. Our primary contribution at the local
level has been the creation of Phoenix Copwatch , which has patrolled
the streets since early 1999. Several months ago, we began discussing
the need for a national or continental revolutionary organization. This
led us to embark on a program of study with the goal of creating a
proposal for a membership-based national or continental revolutionary
federation. During this time, we have studied several past revolutionary
groups, focusing especially on their politics, programs, structures, and
strategies.
The principles outlined below express the conclusions we have reached so
far in our study. This is by no means a complete manifesto or political
declaration. It is simply an outline of the principles we believe a new
revolutionary organization should adopt. We hope that this document will
not only contribute to the debate on the structure and policy of a new
organization, but will help foster the development of such a group.
Neither the vanguard nor the network
A revolutionary organization for the 21st century needs to forge a path
between the Leninist vanguard party proposed by traditional Marxist
parties and the fluid "network" model of organization favored by many
anarchists and activists today. The purpose of a revolutionary
organization is to act as a cadre-based group that develops policies and
strategies that contribute to mass movements toward a free society.
It is not a vanguard group. It does not seek to control any organization
or movement, nor does it claim to be the most advanced sector of a
struggle and therefore entitled to act in the interests of the masses.
On the contrary, it assumes that the masses are typically the most
advanced section of a struggle and that the cadre continually strives to
learn from and identify with the masses. Simultaneously, a cadre
organization does not deny its leadership role in broader movements, nor
does it assume that such leadership is inherently authoritarian. A cadre
organization does not seek to control any organization or movement, but
rather to help direct it by providing a radical perspective and
committed members dedicated to developing its autonomous revolutionary
potential. A cadre group must debate those policies and strategies that
best envision and lead to a free society and then strive to enact them
in mass-oriented organizations and movements.
A cadre group is not an umbrella organization. It does not participate
in all types of progressive social activism. Instead, a cadre group
seeks out, helps develop, and supports those forms of agitation that
undermine the dominance of established society and in some way prefigure
the new society. In other words, the organization would not actively
support any type of activism, but only those struggles that hold the
potential to build dual power. We imagine that a revolutionary
organization of this kind would be for contemporary movements what the
FAI was for the CNT in Spain or the First International was for European
workers' movements: a membership organization of like-minded people
committed to developing and fostering the autonomous revolutionary
tendencies of our current society.
A democratic structure
In the proposed organization, all power and authority must be
transparent, accountable, democratically distributed, and effective. We
believe the structure of the new organization should be based on the
following principles:
1. Direct democracy . All members must have an equal voice in matters
affecting the organization. Unlike democratic centralism, this would
include the right to freely express disagreement with decisions made by
the majority. This type of democracy does not mean that a minority
faction can overturn the decisions of the majority, which often occurs
in loose network structures (i.e., consensus processes).
2. Membership . The organization must be a membership organization. Only
members should make decisions and act on behalf of the organization. The
organization should be controlled only by those who are committed to it.
Membership criteria should be clearly established, along with criteria
for suspending or expelling members who violate the organization's
principles. Membership criteria should include political and financial
commitments to the organization.
3. Local nuclei . The group must be organized into local nuclei. One
criterion for membership would be to join a local nucleus or form one if
one doesn't exist.
4. Effectiveness and Accountability . A democratic means of making and
implementing decisions must be established. Members who fail to fulfill
their responsibilities must be held accountable.
Against the white race
The priority of the proposed organization must be to destroy white
supremacy. White supremacy is a system that grants those who define
themselves as "white" special privileges in American society, such as
preferential access to the best schools, neighborhoods, jobs, and
healthcare; greater advantages in accumulating wealth; a lower
likelihood of being incarcerated; and better treatment by the police and
the judicial system. In exchange for these privileges, whites agree to
police the rest of the population through means such as slavery and
segregation in the past, and through formally "colorblind" policies and
practices today, which continue to maintain white advantage. Thus, white
supremacy unites a segment of the working class with the ruling class
against the rest of the working class. This class alliance is the main
obstacle to a revolution in the United States, strategically speaking.
And, given US imperial power, its consequences are global.
The central task of a new organization should be to break this unnatural
alliance between the ruling class and the white working class by
attacking the system of white privilege and the subordination of people
of color. This is not to say that white supremacy is the "worst" form of
oppression in this country, nor that if white supremacy disappears, all
other forms of oppression will magically disappear. Rather, it is a
strategic argument, based on an analysis of American history, designed
to attack the American Death Star at its weakest point. White supremacy
has been the cement that has held the American state together;
dissolving that cement opens up revolutionary possibilities.
Against the state
The proposed organization must be anti-statist. The function of the
state is 1) to perpetuate the rule of the oppressor class and 2) to
maintain its own power. Therefore, it has nothing to do with a free
society and must be abolished. A revolutionary strategy seeks to
undermine the state by developing a dual-power strategy. A dual-power
strategy is one that directly challenges the institutions of power and
at the same time, in some way, prefigures the new institutions we
envision. A dual-power strategy not only opposes the state but also
prepares us for the difficult issues that will arise in a revolutionary
situation.
The organization must also support the principle of self-determination,
or the right of people to control their own lives and destinies.
Self-determination movements have often embraced the politics of
nationalism. Anarchists have traditionally rejected nationalism as a
tool of oppression. We recognize that anti-statism and nationalism are
often contradictory tendencies, as nationalism typically supports the
creation of nation-states. However, nationalism has also been a
liberating force in world history, especially in the struggle against
colonialism. Thus, despite their contradictions, anti-authoritarian
revolutionaries cannot reject nationalist struggles outright. The task
is to develop anti-statist tendencies within nationalist movements, not
to denounce the struggles of oppressed peoples because they take a
nationalist form.
A feminist organization
Every new organization must be explicitly feminist, in several ways.
First, a revolutionary organization must have a radical feminist
analysis of our society that questions male domination, compulsory
heterosexuality, and the bipolar gender system that forces human beings
into the categories of "man" and "woman" and "masculine" and "feminine."
Second, its internal workings (organizational structure, allocation of
leadership positions, meeting procedures, debate habits, etc.) must
ensure the participation of women and be acutely aware of practices that
tend to favor men's voices over women's. Third, it must be committed to
feminist political work, particularly those kinds of agitation that
connect struggles against sexism with struggles against white supremacy.
Finally, a revolutionary organization needs a feminist vision. It must
imagine a world not only without sexism and homophobia, but in which
gender relations are completely transformed. To do this, it must foster
resistance to male/female gender boundaries and encourage people to
criticize and explore their desires rather than repress them.
Strategy
The proposed federation must recognize that political theory, however
strong, can achieve little if not combined with an effective strategy.
The actions undertaken by the organization, its participation in mass
movements, and its public statements must be determined on a strategic
basis. Our work should focus on engaging in movements and activism where
there is the possibility of working toward building dual power. The
social reforms achieved by progressive movements may be important, but
if they do not contribute to building dual power, they are not the
concern of a revolutionary organization. For example, animal liberation
is a worthy cause. However, it is difficult to imagine how a campaign
for animal liberation could threaten state power and prefigure a new
society. Therefore, while a revolutionary organization might applaud
animal liberation activities, it would not devote energy to animal
rights. On the other hand, a program to create local Copwatch groups
could be a double-edged sword: controlling the police weakens the power
of the state by making it harder for them to impose their class and
racial norms, while at the same time anticipating a society where
ordinary people take charge of the safety of their communities.
Therefore, campaigns developed by the organization that do not
contribute to building dual power must be abandoned. If a popular
protest movement has little chance of building dual power, it is not one
in which we should collectively engage. We may morally and politically
approve of such movements, but as a small group with limited resources,
we must reject the liberalism of reformist activism and focus on
revolutionary strategy.
Vision
One of the great failings of modern radical organizations has been the
inability to offer a solid vision of a new society. We are able to say
what we are against, but rarely what we are for. One of the goals of a
revolutionary organization is to offer people a vision of a world worth
fighting for. This lack of vision is one of the reasons why radicals
have historically failed to win the working class to their politics.
Unfortunately, the fascist right has not failed in this task; they offer
a clear vision of the world they want to create. If we continue to fail
to offer a vision of our own, we cannot hope to win people to
revolutionary politics.
Bring the Ruckus
This proposal is the product of our readings and discussions about
various radical organizations and movements over the past year, ranging
from works produced by Black liberation struggles, women's liberation,
abolitionists, and classical and contemporary revolutionary anarchism.
The praxis addressed also draws on our experience with grassroots
political work, particularly in Phoenix Copwatch .
What is a cadre organization?
By Joel Olson
The purpose of an organization like Bring the Ruckus may not be clear to
some observers or readers of our website. This article aims to explain
Ruckus's purpose and role in the struggle to build a free society. I
originally wrote it for the 2005 Ruckus national conference.
What is a group of paintings?
A cadre organization is a group of committed and active revolutionary
intellectuals who share a common policy and who come together to develop
revolutionary thought and practice and test it in struggle. By "active,"
I mean someone who participates in political struggle, not a mere book
reader. By "intellectual," I don't mean someone with a college degree,
but someone who is seriously and continuously committed to understanding
the world in order to act in it more effectively.
A cadre group is not a mass group like Janitors for Justice , Critical
Resistance , Copwatch , or Communities United , although its members
should actively participate in such groups. Nor does it claim to lead
these groups, although its members can assume leadership roles if
necessary. It does not seek to co-opt or use these groups for its own
ends (that would be a front group), although it certainly participates
democratically in the struggles to define their purpose and direction.
Rather, a cadre group seeks to participate in the mass struggles that
have the greatest potential to shatter this society, and it seeks to
make those struggles as radical and democratic as possible.
What is the purpose of a group of paintings?
The goal of a cadre group is to foster the development of a
revolutionary working class in the United States. A cadre group seeks to
understand the world in which it lives, identify the forces within it
that are radically struggling, and develop those forces in a manner
consistent with the cadre group's policy.
Marx argues in the Communist Manifesto that the purpose of a cadre group
is to radicalize and internationalize the struggles of the working
class. That is, a cadre group should help the working class of one
region connect its struggle with the struggles of other regions, as well
as overcome religious, ethnic, and other distinctions that prevent
working-class unity. A cadre group should also help demonstrate to the
working class the intrinsically radical nature of its actions, which
might otherwise appear reformist (such as the fight to reduce the
workday to ten hours).
For CLR James, the purpose of a cadre organization is to "observe and
record." That is, it must observe the struggles of the working class and
record them (through a newspaper) so that the working class can see for
itself what it is doing and the radical nature of its struggle.
I think Marx and James are essentially correct, except I would add that
a cadre group should also participate in those struggles we believe have
the greatest revolutionary potential. Thus, the function of a cadre
group like the BTR is to observe, record, and participate in
working-class struggles that have the potential to achieve a free world.
What is the role of political analysis in a cadre group?
A cadre group exists first and foremost for the benefit of
revolutionaries. Its purpose is to organize revolutionaries, not the
masses. (Organizing mass movements is the task of larger grassroots
organizations, in which members of the cadre organization must
participate.) Its benefit to ordinary people and non-revolutionary
activists is indirect at best, at least until the barricades are lifted
and people actively seek new ideas and ways of organizing the world.
Thus, a cadre group seeks to develop a political line and the politics
of its members in the service of the revolutionary struggle. The
politics of a cadre group today must involve the expansion of democracy
to every aspect of a person's life and a radical rejection of capitalism
and the state. The state is not a path to a classless society, but an
obstacle to be crushed. This politics is explained, more or less, in our
statement " Bring the Ruckus ."
What strategies does a group of cadres develop?
A friend of mine, when he gives talks, tells people to imagine that
capitalism is the Death Star and we are the rebels. We are outnumbered
and outgunned, so we can't confront the Death Star directly. Faced with
this situation, what do we do? We have to find the weakest point in the
system and concentrate our attack there, he argues. This is exactly what
a group of cadres must do. A group of cadres, then, seeks to develop a
strategy that can make the most of a crisis in capitalism.
The cadre group attempts to find and exploit cracks in the system and
fill them with the seeds of a new society. In other words, a cadre group
must try to devise and implement strategies that can build dual power.
As the " Bring the Ruckus " statement states , dual power strategies are
"those forms of agitation that undermine the dominance of official
society and in some way prefigure the new society." More simply put,
dual power is a situation in which two (or more) social forces assert
power over the same territory and are capable of fighting over it. Such
a situation is obviously unstable and quickly leads to conflict. When
this conflict becomes prolonged, it culminates in civil war-revolution.
The Six Ruckus Criteria guide our dual power strategies. We work to
build dual power by attacking white supremacy and thus disrupting the
cross-class alliance and its "wage of whiteness" that present the
central obstacle to working-class unity in the United States.
How does a painting relate to the grassroots movements?
A cadre organization seeks to participate in those grassroots (or
"mass") struggles it believes have the greatest revolutionary potential,
based on the cadre's political analysis. At the national level, a cadre
organization develops and implements dual-power strategies involving its
members across the country. At the local level, local cadres participate
in grassroots struggles that fit into the national strategy, debate
their effectiveness at local meetings, report back to the national
organization, and attempt to move the grassroots struggle in a radical
direction in accordance with these debates. Let me give two examples,
one at the national level and one at the local level.
The Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation , which existed from
1992 to 1998, defined three areas of work with revolutionary potential.
One of these was anti-fascist political work. L&R created a national
Anti-Fascist Working Group to engage in this struggle. This WG
determined that the best place to do anti-fascist work was within a
grassroots organization called Anti-Racist Action. Thus, the WG asked
Love and Rage members to join ARA and conduct anti-fascist work within
it. L&R's role was to participate in this work and attempt to steer it
in radical directions. L&R members did not assume leadership of ARA
unless they had earned it, and they did not seek to "control" ARA. A
commitment to grassroots organizing work and to participating
democratically distinguishes a cadre from a front group.
An example of how a local cadre works can be found in the relationship
between Phoenix Ruckus and Phoenix Copwatch . Phoenix BTR launched
Copwatch in 1998, but once Copwatch was up and running, BTR relinquished
control and Copwatch became an independent organization. BTR members now
participate in Copwatch as Copwatch members , and any leadership
positions come from that participation, not from being in Ruckus .
Phoenix Ruckus frequently discusses Copwatch at its meetings, trying to
come up with ways to improve Copwatch 's work and its revolutionary
potential. Phoenix Ruckus also reports back to the national
organization. Phoenix Ruckus should also be communicating regularly with
other Bring the Ruckus anti-police agitators nationally, brainstorming
tactics and strategy. Based on these discussions, if Phoenix BTR has an
idea about how to take Copwatch in a more effective and radical
direction, they bring it to a Copwatch meeting and put it up for
discussion and a vote.
Phoenix BTR participates in Copwatch rather than, say, Food Not Bombs ,
because it thinks Copwatch has more potential to lead to a situation of
dual power than any other form of political work in Phoenix . Copwatch
challenges the authority of the state, obstructs the function of the
police (preserving the dominance of color and class), and prefigures a
society in which ordinary people take responsibility for ensuring the
safety of their communities. Phoenix BTR (at least in its more hopeful
moments) believes that, given the right confluence of social forces (and
a good dash of luck), Copwatch has the potential to become the kind of
wedge that could create and generalize anti-police rebellions like LA '92.
Many Love and Rage members didn't have a clear understanding of the
purpose of a cadre organization and, therefore, of L&R's purpose. This
contributed to L&R's collapse, particularly in Minneapolis. Therefore,
it's essential that Ruckus members have a firm understanding of our
organization's purpose.
The paintings and the revolution
A cadre group should not attempt to "lead the revolution." Its task is
to bring to light the revolutionary tendencies that already exist in
society. A cadre group will not initiate a revolution. It will rarely
lead one. But even if its members never live to see revolutionary times
(e.g., Love and Rage ) and even if its members work in relative
obscurity (e.g., the Sojourner Truth Organization ), it can play an
indispensable role in preparing people for a protracted struggle against
the state.
To put it mildly, the role of a group like Ruckus in non-revolutionary
times (which I believe we live in today) is to be a crouching tiger,
waiting for a social crisis (such as a depression or a new civil rights
movement) to erupt and challenge the legitimacy and stability of the
state. When this happens, the group will exploit the instability for
revolutionary purposes.
As the Bring the Ruckus statement states , a revolutionary organization
"does not seek to control any organization or movement, nor does it
consider itself the vanguard of any struggle with the right to act on
behalf of the masses. On the contrary, it assumes that the masses are
often the vanguard and that cadres must learn from them and stand in
solidarity with them. At the same time, a cadre organization does not
deny its leadership role in larger movements, nor does it assume that
such leadership is inherently authoritarian. Its aim is not to control,
but to guide by providing a radical vision and members committed to
developing their autonomous revolutionary potential."
1. Copwatch is a network of local organizations in the United States.
Their work involves patrolling local communities to monitor and record
police interactions with the public, with the aim of preventing police
abuse. In Phoenix, they formed from an anti-racist perspective to
monitor racial profiling of police stops following the passage of
Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which allows police to question anyone they
identify as a suspected illegal immigrant .
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/07/14/que-fue-bring-the-ruckus/
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