#
Notes and highlights for
Direct Action: An Ethnography
Graeber, David

## CHAPTER 1: - NEW YORK DIARY: MARCH 2001

### Highlight (yellow) - Friday, March 9 > Page 43 · Location 1218

“ Well , if you want to know the history … I was basically an author back then . I had written several books on paganism , the Goddess religion . The network I’m with , Reclaiming , is based on a principle of Magical Activism — we wanted to use magic as a way of reshaping consciousness , to add a spiritual dimension that wasn’t simply Christian . Because , at first , it was only Quakers who really knew how to do any of this . Spokescouncils , affinity groups — all of that really started with the Clamshell Alliance , working against the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire . There was this rebel Quaker group called Movement for a New Society that conducted trainings on nonviolence , but also taught this new mode of organizing — consensus , spokescouncils , how to make decisions democratically through small groups and then let them coordinate , bottom - up . And it worked so well that it just took off . At first , there was a kind of battle between the old and new ways of doing things . Most of those campaigns still had paid staff — the usual tiny underpaid staff , but paid staff nonetheless — and what were in effect steering committees , and there were always tensions between the top - down principle and the bottom - up . ”

## CHAPTER 6 - SOME NOTES ON “ACTIVIST CULTURE”

### Highlight (yellow) - RANDOM OBSERVATIONS ON ACTIVIST CULTURE > Page 262 · Location 5812

A society that denies us every adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure . — Reclaim the Streets slogan If one sees capitalism as a gigantic meaningless engine of endless expansion that reduces the majority of the planet’s inhabitants to hopeless poverty , that reduces even its beneficiaries to lonely isolated atoms doomed by fear and insecurity to lives of mind - numbing work and meaningless consumerism , even as it threatens the destruction of the planet — but if at the same time , one does not wish to , or does not believe it possible to simply flee the system , but rather wishes to stay and fight — then what precisely can one do ? What sort of social relations is it possible to create among those who wish to make their lives a refusal of the very logic of capitalism , even as they necessarily remain inside it ? The logic of bohemian life has always been an attempt to answer this . It has always tended towards both the cultivation of adventure , danger , and extreme forms of experience , but at the same time , of relations of mutual aid and trust between those pursuing it — even , often , those who might otherwise be strangers . This is precisely the sensibility one encounters in direct actions too .

## CHAPTER 7: - MEETINGS

### Highlight (yellow) - SECTION II: PROCESS > Page 327 · Location 7193

And , whatever the reasons , debate on listservs tends towards everything that consensus meetings try to avoid : posturing , grandiose claims , sarcasm , insults , grand accusations of sexism , racism , stupidity , reformism , hypocrisy . After monitoring activist listservs for years , I can affirm it is almost impossible to find a discussion of a hot - button issue that does not eventually revert to some kind of flame war , usually based on a style of debate — a kind of pugilistic , macho mock - rationalism — that one simply never witnesses in informal face - to - face settings , at least between activists who assume they have anything in common . 62 Without any of the mechanisms to defuse such conflicts ( no facilitator , no twinkles , no body language , above all no way to hear if the entire audience is groaning or clearly wishes you would cut it out ) , conflicts tend to escalate . As activist women endlessly point out , the resulting debate tends to be conducted almost entirely by males . This is partly because of the tone of debate , partly , too , because the apparently impersonal medium allows male participants to revert to sometimes striking patterns of sexism that one could never imagine them employing in person : for instance , systematically replying to female ( as opposed to male ) posters not with counter - arguments , but with condescension or speculations about the poster’s personal qualities .

### Highlight (yellow) - SECTION II: PROCESS > Page 328 · Location 7216

Holloway argues that the very idea that a political party could be in possession of the true , “ scientific ” understanding of the world does violence to everything that was truly revolutionary in Marx’s own ideas . Adopting a distinction , originating from both the radical feminist ( e.g . , Starhawk 1987 ) , and Italian Autonomist ( e.g . Virno & Hardt 1996 ; Negri 1999 ) branches of the movement , between the power to act or create , and the power to constrain or subordinate others — often phrased as a distinction between “ power - to ” and “ power - over ” — he distinguishes two corresponding forms of knowledge . One is knowledge immanent in practice , in some active project of creation or social transformation , the other , which he calls “ knowledge - about , ” pretends to float above such subjective forms of knowledge and attain true scientific objectivity . In its pretense of mastery and transcendence , its tendency to reduce a world of processes into fixed , self - identical objects that can then become the objects of comprehensive knowledge , “ knowledge - about ” is the perfect complement to “ power - over . ” As Marx demonstrated so well , the powerful are always trying to reduce complex processes of making and doing into fixed objects which they can claim to own . Capital itself is the ultimate example . Their “ science ” becomes the means by which they do so . Like all such grand formulations , Holloway’s is no doubt a bit of a simplification . Still , I think there is something profoundly true here — and something important for present purposes , if only because his analysis emerges from precisely the intellectual - practical tradition from which consensus process itself emerged . One might begin , then , by arguing that consensus is an approach that replaces ideology , “ knowledge - about , ” with forms of knowledge immanent in practice . As I’ve written elsewhere ( 2002 , 2003 ) , its practice is its ideology . I’ve also pointed out that , unlike sectarian groups , consensus - based groups tend to avoid debating , let alone basing their identity , on questions of definition . Instead , they always try to bring things back to questions of action . So my first suggestion is that we look at this as if we were dealing with a political ontology that assumes that actions , and not objects , are the primary reality .

## CHAPTER 9 - REPRESENTATION

### Highlight (yellow) - SECTION I: CORPORATE MEDIA > Page 445 · Location 9628

As anyone who has done media work will also point out , there are very good practical reasons for all this . Reporters assigned to cover protests are usually police reporters . They couldn’t continue to do their jobs without the good will of the local constabulary . Their work is in no way , however , dependent on the good will of the activist community . This is true ; but it is at best a partial explanation . It is impossible to think about the role of police in American culture without entering in the domain of myth . The moment one broaches the topic , one is immediately subsumed into an endless maze of mythological imagery and preset narrative frames . For journalists in particular , there are certain stories that one tells about the police , that are very easy to tell ; and it’s very difficult to tell other ones . A WORD ABOUT POLICE Almost every sociological study of the police in a modern world has to begin by carefully disabusing the reader of the idea that the police exist primarily to fight crime . This , they explain is a myth . Criminal law enforcement is something that most police officers do with the frequency located somewhere between virtually never and very rarely . The overwhelming majority of calls for police assistance are “ service ” rather than crime related : in an average year only 15 to 20 per cent of all the calls to the police are about crime , and what is initially reported by the public as a crime is often found not to be a crime by the responding police officer . Studies have shown that less than a third of time spent on duty is on crime - related work ; that approximately eight out of ten incidents handled by patrols by a range of different police departments are regarded by the police themselves as non - criminal matters ; that the percentage of police effort devoted to traditional criminal law matters probably does not exceed 10 per cent ; that as little as 6 per cent of a patrol officer’s time is spent on incidents finally defined as “ criminal ” ; and that only a very small number of criminal offenses are discovered by the police themselves . Moreover , most of the time the police do not use the criminal law to restore order . In the USA police officers make an average of one arrest every two weeks ; one study found that among 156 officers assigned to a high - crime area of New York City , 40 per cent did not make a single felony arrest in a year . In Canada , a police officer on average records one indictable crime occurrence a week , makes one indictable crime arrest every three weeks , and secures one indictable crime conviction every nine months ( Neocleous 2000 : 93 ; see also Bittner 1990 ; Waddington 1999 ) . 108 So what do police actually do ? If one goes just in terms of how police spend the bulk of their time , one can only conclude that we are dealing with a group of armed , lower - echelon government administrators , trained in the scientific application of physical force or the threat of physical force to aid in the resolution of administrative problems . Police are bureaucrats with guns . 109 They are the active face of the state monopoly of the use of violence . Hence Bittner’s definition , cited earlier . Even when police are dealing with problems that seem at the furthest remove from criminal matters — say , breaking into an apartment to check on an elderly resident who no one has seen for several days , talking drunks out of bars , minding lost children — they are still dealing with problems that might require “ non - negotiated solutions backed up by the potential use of force . ” On the other hand , myths are important . The popular assumption that police are there to fight crime , particularly violent crime — an assumption endlessly reinforced by movies , TV shows , and news reporting — has endlessly profound effects .

### Highlight (yellow) - SECTION I: CORPORATE MEDIA > Page 447 · Location 9657

Recall here what I said in Chapter 6 about the ideological effects of government regulation : how , while those regulations concerning objects like cars and buildings are enforced through the threat of violence , that violence becomes effectively invisible and , thus , makes the effect of those regulations seem almost a part of the materiality or “ reality ” of the object itself . Here we encounter , I think , another aspect of the same phenomenon . The police , of course , use violence to arrest , or even very occasionally do battle with , violent criminals . But they are just as capable of using violence in the enforcement of regulations that are not , technically , criminal matters in any sense of the term . Traffic regulations , open container laws , noise complaints , and unlicensed peddling are obvious examples . Police are also available if required to back up enforcement of other regulations that are not normally thought of as being part of their purview — such as , say , fire codes , or regulations concerning the size and placement of advertisements and other signs outside one’s home . Normally , we never think about this . It is , as noted earlier , one of the aspects of the state that direct action tends to bring into the open . Technically , if one violates a fire code regulation , the police do have the right to come in and use all requisite physical force to evacuate the building , even against the occupants ’ will ; this could , and in the case of squatters often does involve smashing through doors with weapons drawn and beating occupants over the head with truncheons . The same is technically true of health code violations , tax code violations , or regulations concerning the handing out of leaflets on street corners or the size and placement of signs . The difference of course is that hardly anyone is willing to risk becoming the object of officially sanctioned violence by openly defying an order to remove , say , an oversize advertisement , or trying to prevent city employees from taking it down themselves . Therefore , it is easy to forget that this is the ultimate sanction for such regulations as well . Regulations thus blend into laws . As a result , since police are assumed to be enforcing “ the law , ” any defiance of their orders is seen as essentially criminal , and , therefore by implication , violent — which means that if police do use force , even against a homeowner determined not to remove a sign , it is assumed to be justifiable counter - violence . All this might seem a bit hypothetical and far - fetched , but , as we’ve seen in the last chapter , this is almost precisely what happens during direct actions . Activists are not usually guilty of anything more serious than infractions of certain codes or ordinances : for instance , regulations against walking or standing in the street . These are not criminal matters . However , when they refuse to comply with police orders , they are , indeed , attacked , and often end up with heads smashed against walls or shackled in torture positions : since for the very reason that police know activists will never be prosecuted in a criminal court , there are few limits to police behavior . So rather than the legal application of force to enforce the law , what we actually have is the largely unregulated use of violence to back up regulations , or even , simply to suppress any public defiance to the police’s right to enforce them violently . This is not , however , how matters are ever represented in the media . In fact , even my own use of the term “ violence ” to refer to police behavior in the paragraphs above is likely to strike many readers as oddly strident . They may be surprised to know that in doing so , I am actually employing the word in its narrowest sense : that is , in what philosophers sometimes refer to as the “ minimal ” or “ restrictive ” sense of the term , where “ violence ” refers basically to harmful acts committed by one individual against another . Let me take the lead from Australian philosopher Tony Coady ( 1986 ) who distinguishes three broad traditions of defining the term , each with its own political implications . What follows is my own somewhat simplified version of his typology : Restrictive definitions : e.g . , “ Violence is intentionally inflicting pain or injury on others without their consent . ” This is often said to be the version typically favored by political liberals , though Coady argues it is the closest there is to a neutral definition . Wide definitions : e.g . , “ Violence is intentionally inflicting pain or injury on others without their consent , or threatening to do so . ” This is often said to be the version typically favored by political radicals . Legitimist definitions : e.g . , “ Violence is harm or damage to either persons or property that is not authorized by properly constituted authorities . ” This is often said to be the version typically favored by political conservatives . It’s easy to see why these get the political attributions that they do . # 1 is , as Coady insists , as close as one can get to a neutral definition . My version of the wider definition ( # 2 ) does not seem in itself that radical — after all , if you pull a gun on someone and demand all their money , you will normally be considered to have committed a violent crime , even if you do not actually shoot anyone . But it has very radical implications , since if you apply it systematically you would have to conclude that the state itself is essentially an instrument of violence . # 3 , the legitimist definition , on the other hand , actually makes it impossible for the state to behave violently ( unless , that is , the state in question is deemed improperly constituted ) . This is obviously the definition favored by conservatives , but it is also , as activists have been complaining since at least the 1960s , the one universally applied by the American corporate media . Police operating under orders from their superiors cannot be described as “ violent , ” even if they are breaking heads or opening fire with live ammunition . Protesters , on the other hand , can be described collectively as “ violent ” even if literally one in a thousand throws a rock or breaks a window . A police officer whose behavior can be referred to as “ violent ” is one who has already been defined as a “ rogue cop ” — that is , one who is acting outside the proper chain of command or legal order . The “ legitimist definition , ” though , is not only the one favored by journalists and social conservatives . It is the one favored by anthropologists as well ( e.g . , Riches 1986 ) . This might seem anomalous , even startling , since anthropology as a discipline always fancies itself politically progressive , but this seems one of those odd paradoxes so often thrown up by cultural relativism . After all , it’s hard to see how a true relativist could come to any other conclusion . If one holds that “ violence ” ( or any other term for that matter ) is simply whatever a culture or society defines it to be , 110 then one is assuming there are uniform entities that can be referred to as “ cultures ” or “ societies , ” authorities that can speak for them on such matters , and some fairly dependable system whereby the outside observer can identify them . In other words , about the only thing the relativist does have to universalize are structures of authority . Starting from such a position , it would be hard not to conclude that “ violence , ” for any given society , should be defined as any forms of hurting or damage that those authorities consider illegitimate . Not only do relativists tend to adopt the authoritarian definition of violence ; the authorities , at least in this culture , are capable of a remarkable degree of relativism in such matters . I first started noticing this during some eight hours I spent shackled in an arrest bus in DC during the IMF meetings of 2002 , along with forty other activists among the several hundred who had been swept up at a mass arrest in a “ green zone ” at Pershing Park . During our sojourn , we spent a good deal of time in a somewhat reluctant dialogue with a police lieutenant who came quickly to be known , among the prisoners , as “ Officer Mindfuck ” — a man who boarded the bus , apparently , simply to entertain himself by debating us . On pretty much every topic , he took the same approach : trying to convince us we were not taking a sufficiently relativistic position . It didn’t seem to be a ploy , either — at least , when he did leave the bus ( to our great collective relief ) the first thing he remarked to his fellow officers outside was “ the problem with those guys is they don’t understand there’s more than one side to any question . ” In a world where there is absolutely no way to know whether IMF policies are beneficial or harmful , there is no basis on which to make a principled stand about anything : it does make sense that one might conclude following the rules , whatever they are , is the only possible moral course of action . And afterwards I began noticing that , whenever police were laying down the law , they treated objections in exactly the same way :

### Highlight (yellow) - SECTION I: CORPORATE MEDIA > Page 452 · Location 9775

On September 17 , 1998 , in Headwaters Forest , an ancient redwood forest in Humboldt County , California , a logger in the employ of Pacific Lumber seems to have decided to test the waters in this regard . He sent a tree falling directly onto a tree - sitter named David Chain , killing him instantly . The initial media reaction was to treat the matter as an unfortunate accident . What follows was written by a forest activist at the time : I first heard about David Chain’s murder on Jefferson Public Radio … First , they announced incorrectly that Chain had been killed not by a tree the logger cut , but by another tree knocked over in a domino effect . Second , after a brief and moving statement by a tearful Earth First ! er , the journalist asked three basic questions . They were , in essence ( I don’t have the direct quotes because I was driving , and so couldn’t write them down ) : 1 ) Members of Earth First ! are aware that their activities are dangerous , aren’t they ? And isn’t it true that this activist was engaged in an especially dangerous form of activism ? 2 ) Of course the logger didn’t do this on purpose , did he ? 3 ) In the aftermath of this death , how is Earth First ! going to change its tactics so this won’t happen again ? I almost drove off the road . 112 In fact , activists soon produced a videotape they had taken an hour before the incident , of the logger in question ( one A . E . Ammon ) shouting obscenities at activists , including Chain , and warning them to clear out or he would “ drop a tree ” on one of them . Even afterwards , though , the media treated logging company claims that the event had been an accident as the most plausible explanation , and the local Sheriff’s Department not only refused to begin a criminal investigation , but even allowed Pacific Lumber to continue logging at the site . This would have destroyed any evidence that might be used in a future investigation .

### Highlight (yellow) - PART III: MYTHOLOGICAL WARFARE > Page 499 · Location 10774

The Boston example is particularly striking because it suggests that , in some cases , police higher - ups might not even be primarily concerned with influencing the media : in some cases at least , the primary target audience is the police themselves . It is hard to see what other reason there would be to order street cops to take part in trainings in which they are taught to expect extremely violent tactics that those in charge must be aware had never actually been used . Of course , there’s only so far one can generalize from a single case . One can only wonder if what happened in Boston was an isolated event , or an example of a much more common practice that usually goes unreported . Similarly , it’s very difficult to know who , precisely , these so - often - cited “ police intelligence ” sources actually are . Here we seem to be entering a murky zone involving information being collected , concocted , and disseminated and passed back and forth between a variety of federal police task forces , private security agencies , and right - wing think tanks , many of whom may well be convinced that at least some of these stories are true , since they get most of their information from the other ones . Here too , though , I suspect probably the first concern of those who tell lurid stories of bleach and urine is simply to rally the troops . As commanders discovered in Seattle , police officers who are used to considering themselves protectors of the public will frequently balk , or at least hesitate , when given orders to make a baton charge against a collection of obviously nonviolent sixteeen - year - old girls . It seems hard , for example , to understand the peculiar obsession with bodily fluids in so many of these reports except as part of a self - conscious campaign to appeal to police sensibilities . Certainly it has nothing to do with activist ones . Presented with endless accusations of hurling and shooting of urine and feces , activists I know are mostly puzzled . Some will tentatively suggest that maybe the stories originally go back to occasions when police laid siege to squatted buildings , and buckets full of human waste were one of the few non - lethal projectiles available . Most , though , have no idea . Certainly , I’ve never heard of anyone actually bringing such items to an action . Yet the accusation is leveled time and time again . If police arrest activists in preemptive attacks , for instance , one can be pretty sure they have planted evidence on them if they announce that the suspects were discovered carrying “ crowbars and vials full of urine . ” Police in press conferences have actually been known to display such bags of excrement or jars of urine they claim were intended to be thrown at them ( leaving activists to wonder where exactly they really got these things ) . The claims seem to echo the endlessly repeated assertion that , during the Vietnam war protesters used to “ spit on anyone wearing a uniform , ” and , of course , the broader notion that the best justification for violence on the part of police are deliberate assaults on their honor . It’s as if someone was trying to imagine the most dishonorable thing one could possibly do to an officer , and then insisting this was precisely what anarchists will always try to do . That there was probably some kind of coordination in this effort might be gleaned , too , from the fact that it was precisely at this time that mayors and police chiefs around America began regularly declaring , in almost exactly identical words ( and of course based on no evidence whatsoever ) that anarchists were actually a bunch of spoiled rich kids , who disguised their faces so their parents wouldn’t recognize them on TV . This accusation soon became received wisdom among law enforcement professionals across America . 138 As I mentioned in Chapter 6 , this sort of claim seems to have been carefully designed to both rally the troops , and convey something of the desired rules of engagement : “ Do not be gentle with these people , take out your resentments on them if you like , but don’t actually maim or kill them because , you never know who their parents might turn out to be . ”

## CHAPTER 10: - IMAGINATION

### Highlight (yellow) - ON REVOLUTION > Page 527 · Location 11331

Consider the following statement from the CrimethInc collective : We must make our freedom by cutting holes in the fabric of this reality , by forging new realities which will , in turn , fashion us . Putting yourself in new situations constantly is the only way to ensure that you make your decisions unencumbered by the inertia of habit , custom , law , or prejudice — and it is up to you to create these situations . Freedom only exists in the moment of revolution . And those moments are not as rare as you think . Change , revolutionary change , is going on constantly and everywhere — and everyone plays a part in it , consciously or not ( CrimethInc 2003 ) . What is this but an elegant statement of the logic of direct action : the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free . The obvious question is how it can contribute to an overall strategy , one that should lead to a cumulative movement towards a world without states and capitalism . No one is completely sure . Most assume it can only be a matter of endless improvisation . Insurrectionary moments there will certainly be . Likely as not , quite a few of them .

### Highlight (yellow) - ON REVOLUTION > Page 532 · Location 11445

It’s here I would emphasize above all the influence of feminism . Historically , the contemporary anarchist emphasis on process emerged — as I observed in Chapter 5 — more than anything else from organizational crises in feminist collectives in the late 1960s and early 1970s . This is what finally drove organizers to begin looking seriously at Quaker practice , and , eventually , developing the whole apparatus of affinity groups , spokescouncils , consensus , and facilitation . Even more , one can see the emphasis of feminism in the whole direction of the movement . “ Situations ” do not create themselves . There’s an enormous amount of work involved . For much of human history , of course , what has been taken as politics has consisted of a series of theatrical stages , and dramatic performances carried out upon them . One of the great gifts of feminism to political thought has been to continually remind us of the people making and preparing and cleaning those stages and , even more , maintaining the invisible structures that make them possible — who have , overwhelmingly , been women . The normal process of politics is to make all these people disappear . One might say that one impact of feminism on direct action circles has been to foster a new political ideal that aims to efface the difference . To put it another way , this new ideal insists that action is only genuinely revolutionary when the process of production of situations is just as liberating as the situations themselves .

### Highlight (yellow) - ON TERROR > Page 538 · Location 11536

It is a peculiar characteristic of life in the United States that most American citizens , who over the course of the day try to avoid any possibility of having to deal with police or police affairs , can normally be expected to go home and spend hours watching dramas that invite them to see the world from a policeman’s point of view . Over the course of the 1960s , police abruptly took the place once held by cowboys in American entertainment . 155 And , by now , these images of American police are being relentlessly exported to every corner of the world , alongside their flesh - and - blood equivalents . What I would emphasize here , though , is that both are characterized by an extra - legal impunity that , paradoxically , makes them able to embody a kind of constituent power turned against itself . The Hollywood cop , like the cowboy , is a lone maverick who breaks all the rules ( which is permissible , even necessary , since he is always dealing with dishonorable opponents ) . In fact , it is generally the cop who engages in the endless property destruction that , as I’ve noted , provide so much of the pleasure of Hollywood action films . In other words , police are the heroes in part because they are the only figures who can systematically ignore the law . It is constituent power turned on itself because cops , on screen or in reality , are never trying to create anything . They are simply maintaining the status quo . In a sense , this is the most clever ideological displacement of all , the perfect complement to the aforementioned privatization of ( consumer ) desire , against which the puppets stand in festive protest . Insofar as the popular festival endures , it has become pure Spectacle , as the Situationists would say — with the role of Master of the Potlatch granted to the very figures who , in real life , are in charge of ensuring that any actual outbreaks of popular festive behavior are violently suppressed . Like any ideological formula , however , this one is extraordinarily unstable , riddled with contradictions — as the initial difficulties of the US police in suppressing the globalization movement so vividly attest . It seems to me more a way of managing a situation of extreme alienation and insecurity that itself can only be maintained by systematic coercion . Faced with anything that remotely resembles creative , non - alienated , experience , it tends to look as ridiculous as a deodorant commercial during a time of national disaster . The anarchist problem remains how to bring that sort of experience , and the imaginative power that lies behind it , into the daily lives of those outside the small autonomous bubbles they have already been able to create . This is a continual problem . There’s no way to be sure it’s even possible . But there seems every reason to believe that , were it possible , the power of the police cosmology , and with it , the power of the police themselves , would simply melt away .