[citation needed] The name of the organization, explains Sellers, is not an acronym but refers to the term "ruckus", meaning "a loud, angry interruption, a hullabaloo, a disruption.

"[2] The Ruckus Society's mission is to provide training in classic nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience tactics in the context of community-driven campaigns, including creative resistance, urban rappelling, media & communications, and blockades with and without gear.

[3][4] Volunteers designs custom trainings and camps based on the specific needs and campaigns of the activists, and use popular education techniques to allow participants to discover the direct action knowledge they already possess.

The Ruckus Society helped bottomline organizing for the US Social Forum in Detroit in 2010 and hosted a Migrant Rights Action Camp with NDLON at the Highlander Center in 2011.

[citation needed] The Ruckus Society is made up of three staff and a network of over 150 action trainers and strategists located primarily in the United States but also distributed throughout the world.

[7] The Ruckus Society has been the target of conservative outlets who describe the group as violent anarchists, and as being responsible for training criminal activists who participate in vandalism and destruction of private property.