Several years ago, while researching interesting characters involved in the January 6th, 2021 riots at the Capitol Building, I stumbled across a network of like-minded, anti-establishment propaganda and direct-action organizations that seem to be, or at a minimum desire to be, at the center of recent, left-leaning movements and demonstrations over the last decade or more. Many of these organizations seem to have direct connections to the American Democratic Party through funding and other means. This will be a summary of each organization or group, with more specific information about each linked via their logo.
CrimeThinc (crimethinc.com) is a website dedicated to the proliferation of anti-establishment mindset and planting the seeds for violent, destructive opposition to what it deems the greatest threat to true human freedom: democracy. It claims to have provided such material for over 25 years in the form of books, posters, stickers and other media.
The Ruckus Society (ruckus.org) is an organization that “has trained and assisted thousands of activists in the use of nonviolent direct action. [They] either bring activists to [them] (at Training Camps or Skillshares) or [Ruckus] go[es] to them (community-requested tailored trainings). Through these trainings, [Ruckus] help people learn the skills they need to practice nonviolent direct action safely and effectively. These trainings contain cerebral elements as well as physical, classroom-style instruction for action planning, communicating with the media, building leadership and political analysis, and nonviolent philosophy and practice.“
Recently they have restructured and joined forces with BlackOUT, a movement borne from the Ferguson riots of 2014.
The donation page for Ruckus Society is run on the platform EveryAction, which was recently part of an acquisition by Apax Partners and rolled into a new entity with other similar platforms called Bonterra. The reason this is interesting is because it is all tied into an exclusively Democratic voter information and donor platform.
The BlackOUT coalition is a movement that essentially promotes self-segregation as a means of empowerment and to avoid “systemic discrimination” and “giving away money to non-black people”. I haven’t been able to get onto their mailing list, it seems like the website might be inactive.
Global Uprisings is a platform full of videos promoting and chronicling peaceful as well as violent direct action campaigns throughout the world. Their stated purpose from their website “an independent news site and video series dedicated to showing responses to the economic crisis and authoritarianism”. It was started and run by Brandon Jourdan and Marianne Maeckelbergh, who have traveled all over the world filming uprisings and helping to promote anti-fa material via their platform.