| August
21 , 2006
Making a Ruckus in Paoli
Irony Runs Through
It
By MIKE
ROSELLE
Floyd
and his girlfriend Trixie were out in San Francisco to see the Gay
NASCAR Rally on July 4th. Before the festival began she dumped his
sorry ass and he showed up on my doorstep with a half gallon of
cheap vodka and some anti-depressants he had gotten up the Amazon
River a few weeks earlier. I hadn’t seen Floyd since Venezuela,
where we enjoyed the fruits of the Chavez revolution. I am talking
about the forty-cent beers. And, of course, it wasn’t my doorstep
that Floyd showed up on, but Andre’s. I had to think of something
fast. You should never lowbag a Lowbagger who is Lowbagging a high
roller.
Fortunately,
at that very moment Goat called from the Ruckus Society office and
needed someone to drive a rental van full of climbing gear, easels
and Sleeping Dragons to Indiana. I could drop Lloyd off at the Lazy
Black Bear with K-Baum and maybe he could drive him to Alabama.
Then he could have get back together with Charlie, his other girlfriend,
one of his ex wives, or a new woman who couldn’t possibly
know what she is getting herself into.
As
anyone who still drives across country knows, it’s four lanes
all the way from Berkeley to Bloomington, Indiana and every gas
stop looks pretty much the same as the last one. I drive and tune
in to the Outlaw Country station while Floyd conducts most of his
business by phone. His business seems to be dispensing advice to
the lovelorn women in his life. It’s like Dr. Phil on ecstasy,
except Floyd’s advice to every woman who had a problem with
the man in her life is always the same; dump your boyfriend and
move in with me. Never once has this happened, but that doesn’t
stop him from prescribing this peculiar treatment, as his vast amount
of repeat business will attest. Why any woman would pour out their
hearts to a bi-polar shaman who has three ex-wives is one of the
great mysteries of life.
The
drive was uneventful, except for a large thunderstorm in Denver,
and four days later we arrive at the Lazy Black Bear, in Paoli,
Indiana. “Welcome to Freedom From Oil Camp,” reads the
first sign. Then another one a little further on advises, “keep
driving.” Hard to miss the irony of driving 2,500 miles in
a Dodge van from Oakland to Indiana to fight oil addiction. There
are other ironies. This is my first Ruckus Camp since just before
the riots in WTO and I return not as a founder or staff member but
rather as a journalist. As a member of the press, I have a constitutional
right to freedom from work, so this time I will attempt to maintain
my objectivity by not imbedding myself in a work brigade, of which
there are many.
There
are too many ironies to mention, but perhaps the greatest irony
is that no one here called the media, so instead of crawling with
members of the press, I am now the only journalist here. The Greenpeace
solar truck, Stolen Thunder, used enough fuel to power a small village
for a year to get to the camp from D.C. to provide electricity to
a farm already on the grid.
The
menu is vegan but there are chickens everywhere that will be eaten
after we leave. Methane is a Greenhouse gas yet there is plenty
of TVP on the menu, which causes much flatulence. Everyone in the
kitchen is wearing black, rather than your traditional whites, and
the cooks have between them enough piercing to supply the metal
for a medium sized cooking pot.
The
purpose of the training was to bring people together to end oil
addiction but on the first day I got kicked out of the staff meeting,
the kitchen meeting, the climbing meeting and the only people who
would let me in on their meetings were the Canadians. I had met
some of them in Alberta and maybe they thought I was from Canada.
Since I was the only one from the media, I met with myself, but
showed early and the meeting started up late. The meeting was inconclusive
and it went overtime. I left early, and complained to John Sellers
about the facilitation. He said we weren’t even on the agenda.
Some
of the people from northern Alberta and northern Arizona had a difficult
time with the vegan menu and demanded red meat. I volunteered to
obtain it and cook it, but I would not volunteer to kill it. Danny
Dollinger came on with me on the hunt and we returned with much
meat, which we grilled to perfection. Before you write and complain
about this complicity in a slaughter we ourselves were unwilling
to partake in, these were local raised, grass fed, shade grown,
free trade, bird friendly cows that had volunteered to feed us.
Of
course their other choice was to be raised in a windowless concrete
building, given lots of drugs and unhealthy high-carbo foods, not
allowed to go out side and roam around in nature, and be in crammed
into a small pen with other such cows. Many of these other cows
chose this rather than be feed by hippies, and died no less happy.
Well
I wasn’t registered for the camp or on the staff. I didn’t
even have a press pass so I laid low and hung out in back of the
kitchen. The camp went well, and about fifty people received a first
rate week long training by some very experienced and talented trainers
as well as Steve Kretzman from Oil Chance, a co-sponsoring organization.
Afterwards, we celebrated the ten-year anniversary of Ruckus, although
the organization was started eleven years ago. It was a good party,
but should more accurately be called the six-year reunion, because
the attendance of the pre-2000 Ruckus staff was sparse.
The
new Ruckus director to replace John Sellers is Adrienne Maree Brown.
John has led the organization through six of the most politically
dynamic years this country has experienced in the last quarter century.
He has garnered almost as much media attention as me, although unlike
the coverage I am used to, his is mostly positive. In the last ten
years Ruckus changed the World and Ruckus changed with it. This
sucks of course, because the way in which the world has changed
generally sucks. But if we are to change the world for the better,
we will need to confront those now in powers. Ruckus is one of the
few organizations around these days that takes this mission seriously,
and understands the power of direct action and civil disobedience.
They are also serious about building a movement based on diversity
and tolerance, which is evident in the current staff and the group
of new recruits. I applaud this achievement, because I posses neither
diversity nor tolerance and have yet to find an ethnic group that
would claim me.
The
future is bright for Ruckus. It was the first action camp in three
years. The climbing scaffold is back. There is a real campaign underway
that requires direct action. The staff is clearly a little rusty,
but they more than compensated for that by hard perseverance, teamwork
and creativity. The recruiting was good. Security was excellent
until I showed up and got in, but otherwise they were pretty good
with dealing with the other obnoxious asshole that came from LA
(Lower Alabama).
Floyd
and I drove back to Birmingham. Trixie was in LA. She operates a
salvage business and drove in the demolition derby at the Dixie
Racetrack just north of Snake Navel. She lives in a spacious doublewide
school bus with a heady view of the junkyard. A large fierce dog
of questionable ancestry protects her place. It was staked to a
short heavy chain and was guarding what looked like a carcass. I
dropped Floyd off at the front gate and headed back to Nashville.
Mike
Roselle is getting ready for the river. His irregular musings
can be read at Lowbagger.
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