This is a handbook for direct action. It's not the only one—there are thousands: every gardener's guide is a direct action handbook, as is every cookbook. Any action that sidesteps regulations, representatives, and authorities to accomplish goals directly is direct action. In a society in which political power, economic capital, and social control are centralized in the hands of an elite, certain forms of direct action are discouraged, to say the least; this book is about those in particular, for anyone who wants to take control of her life and accept responsibility for her part in determining the fate of humanity. For the civilian born in captivity and raised on spectatorship and submission, direct action changes everything. The morning she arises to put a plan into motion, she awakens under a different sun—if she has been able to sleep at all, that is—and in a different body, attuned to every detail of the world around her and possessed of the power to change it. She finds her companions endowed with tremendous courage and resourcefulness, equal to monumental challenges and worthy of passionate love. Together, they enter a foreign land where outcomes are uncertain but anything is possible and every minute counts.
Practicing direct action means acting directly to meet needs, rather than relying on representatives or choosing from prescribed options. Today the term is commonly applied to the use of illegal protest tactics to pressure governments and corporations to make certain decisions, which at bottom is not much different from voting or making campaign contributions; but it most properly describes actions that cut out the middleman entirely to solve problems without mediation.
Need some examples? You can give money to a charity organisation, or you can start your own chapter of Food Not Bombs and feed yourself and other hungry people at once. You can write an angry letter to the editor of a magazine that doesn't provide good coverage of the subjects you consider important, or you can start your own magazine.
You can vote for a mayor who promises to start a new program to help the homeless, or you can squat unused buildings and open them up as free housing for anyone in need. You can write your Congressman, asking him to oppose a law that would allow corporations to cut down old-growth forests—but if they still pass that law, you can go to the forests and stop the cutting by sitting in trees, blockading roads, and monkeywrenching machinery.
The opposite of direct action is representation. There are many kinds of representation—words are used to represent ideas and experiences, the viewers of a soap opera let their own hopes and fears be represented by those of the protagonists, the pope claims to represent God—but the most well-known example today can be found in the electoral system. In this society, we're encouraged to think of voting as our primary means of exercising power and participating socially. Yet whether one votes with a ballot for a politician's representation, with dollars for a corporate product, or with one's wardrobe for a youth culture, voting is an act of deferral, in which the voter picks a person or system or concept to represent her interests. This is an unreliable way to exercise power, to say the least.
Let's compare voting with direct action, to bring out the differences between mediated and unmediated activity in general. Voting is a lottery: if a candidate doesn't get elected, then the energy his constituency put into supporting him is wasted, as the power they were hoping he would exercise for them goes to someone else. With direct action, one can be certain that one's work will offer results. In marked contrast to every kind of petitioning, direct action secures resources—experience, contacts in the community, the grudging respect of adversaries—that others can never take away.
Voting consolidates the power of a whole society in the hands of a few individuals; through sheer force of habit, not to speak of other methods of enforcement, everyone else is kept in a position of dependence. In direct action, people utilize their own resources and capabilities, discovering in the process what these are and how much they can accomplish.
Voting forces everyone in a movement to try to agree on one platform: coalitions fight over what compromises to make, each faction insisting that its way is the best and that the others are messing everything up by not going along with its program. A lot of energy gets wasted in these disputes and recriminations. In direct action, no vast consensus is necessary: different groups apply different tactics according to what they believe in and feel comfortable doing, with an eye to complementing one another's efforts. People involved in different direct actions have no need to squabble, unless they really are seeking conflicting goals, or years of voting have taught them to fight with anyone who doesn't think exactly as they do.
- I love this part; »people involved in direct action have no need to squabble«.
Conflicts over voting often distract from the real issues at hand, as people get caught up in the drama of one party against another, one candidate against another, one agenda against another. With direct action, the issues themselves are raised, addressed specifically, and often resolved.
Voting is only possible when election time comes around. Direct action can be applied whenever one sees fit. Voting is only useful for addressing topics that are currently on the political agendas of candidates, while direct action can be applied in every aspect of your life, in every part of the world you live in. Direct action is a more efficient use of resources than voting, campaigning, or canvassing: an individual can accomplish with one dollar a goal that would cost a collective ten dollars, a non-governmental organisation a hundred dollars, a corporation a thousand dollars, and the State Department ten thousand dollars. Voting is glorified as a manifestation of our supposed freedom. It's not freedom—freedom is getting to decide what the choices are in the first place, not picking between Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Direct action is the real thing. You make the plan, you create the options, the sky's the limit.
Ultimately, there's no reason the strategies of voting and direct action can't both be applied together. One does not cancel the other out. The problem is that so many people think of voting as their primary way of exerting political and social power that a disproportionate amount of time and energy is focused on electoral affairs while other opportunities to make change go to waste. For months and months preceding every election, everyone argues about the voting issue, what candidates to vote for or whether to vote at all, when voting itself takes less than an hour. Vote or don't, but get on with it! Remember all the other ways you can make your voice heard. This book is for people who are ready to get some more practice using them.
Direct action need not be popular to be effective. The point of a direct action is the action itself, not pandering to supposed public opinion or anticipated media coverage. Those raised in Democracy Monoculture on the assumption that voting is the alpha and omega of social participation often presume that the only possible purpose of any political activity is to convert others to a position in order to build a constituency; consequently, they fail to recognize the broad diversity of roles direct action can serve. These are the people who are always quick to pontificate about how graffiti hurts the public image of »the« movement, or how individual artistic projects are irrelevant to the needs of »the« people. But helping »convert the masses« is only one of many roles a direct action can play. Let's go over some of the others.
- Should this be »helping to convert the masses«?
Direct action may simply solve an individual problem: a household needs to eat, so food is grown, dumpstered, or stolen; an advertisement is offensive, so it is torn down or adjusted; a circle of friends wants to learn more about Latin American literature, so a reading group is established. Direct action can be a means for a small group to contribute to a community: people need to know that a rapist has been active in the neighborhood, so fliers are made and posted; police are out of hand, so a cop-watching program is initiated. Direct action can be an opportunity for small groups to get used to working together in larger networks: the slumlord won't fix anyone's apartment, so a tenants' union forms to organize a rent strike.
Direct action can be applied to sway the opinion of a whole nation, but it can also be addressed to a small, specific group that can more easily be influenced: street graffiti may not be taken seriously by middle-class adults, but some of their children experience it as a revelation. Direct action can be for the benefit of isolated individuals, rather than »the« mainstream: a wheatpasted poster reading »Pity concrete doesn't burn« may not be widely appreciated, but it will help others who share this sentiment to feel that they are not entirely alone and insane, and it might inspire them to turn their silent rancor into expressive projects of their own.
Direct action can give visibility to a group or perspective not otherwise represented, or emphasize the possibility of a viewpoint those in power would deny: a newspaper wrap spreads the news the corporate media won't share, just as broken corporate windows prove that, whatever the pundits say, not everyone is happy under capitalism. Direct action can demonstrate that social facts and physical conditions that seem inevitable are actually subject to change: an unpermitted street party that transforms a shopping district into a free, festive space shows that the function of any space is up for grabs. Direct action can make life less predictable, more magical and exciting or at least humorous, for chance spectators as well as participants. When business as usual is oppressive and depressing, simply interrupting it is a service to all.
Popular or not, direct action can keep important issues in the news and in private conversations: sabotaging an environmentally destructive dam can bring up its ecological effects, whether or not people approve of the sabotage itself. Direct action can give a group political and social leverage: in the 1980s, Dutch squatters racing threat of eviction demonstrated their power with a directed campaign of harassrnent and vandalism that lost Amsterdam its bid to host the Olympic Games, and thus gained an advantage for bargaining with the city for their homes. Direct action can provide a deterrent: after the demonstrations during the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, no nation but Qatar would host the next WTO summit. People who would not otherwise oppose their government's going to war may do so if they know war will trigger massive demonstrations that will cripple business and interfere with daily life.
Direct action can hinder corporate wrongdoing by inflicting financial losses: animal rights activists have driven several fur corporations out of business by means of vandalism, obstruction, and picketing. Direct action can discredit or disable nefarious organizations by connecting them in the public mind to violence and trouble: if every time a racist party tries to hold a meeting it ends in street riots, no city is likely to permit them to meet openly and few converts will join their ranks. Direct action can polarize opponents: when one cannot persuade or at least coexist with adversaries, a campaign of provocation and interference can drive them to a paranoid extremism that will alienate them from everyone else.
Direct action can set an atmosphere for an event: if banners have been dropping and pirate radio stations broadcasting all week, everyone will expect the weekend's corporate trade conference and anarchist counter-demonstration to be historic—and that expectation will help itself come true. Direct action can demonstrate tactics that others can appropriate and use themselves; for years, these tactics may only be relevant to a small minority, until in a time of crisis they are suddenly indispensable to everyone. When the crisis hits, it will be to the advantage of all that some have already been practicing and perfecting these skills, and that everyone else has at least heard of them.
Direct action can save lives and give those who engage in it back their dignity by enabling them to confront injustice directly, as in animal liberation raids. It can be the best form of therapy, helping those who act to cure feelings of boredom, hopelessness, and impotence. When one is doing nothing, everything seems impossible; once one has begun doing something, it is easier to imagine what else is possible and recognize opportunities as they arise.
Direct action offers the chance to cash in one's convictions and desires as the life experiences they rightfully should be. Don't just think about it, don't just talk about it, for heaven's sake don't just bicker about it—do it! Direct action is a means for getting in the healthy habit of acting rather than looking on: every impulse that is allowed to flow into action is a spell cast for more of the same. In this passive, paralyzed society, we desperately need to nourish in ourselves the habits of engagement and participation. As they say, direct action gets the goods.
Anyone with direct action skills stands to gain from sharing them with others. This is the opposite of »converting« people: it means empowering people to be themselves, not attempting to turn them into copies of oneself. The more capable each individual and group is, the more all can offer each other, and the more all are able to enforce their equality. The dissemination of direct action skills fosters relationships of coexistence and mutual aid, as well as undermining hierarchy and oppression: when people are similarly informed, equipped, and versed in taking initiative, they have more at stake in learning to get along, and freedom and equality necessarily proceed.
Accordingly, anarchists and other partisans of direct action do not give orders or offer leadership: direct action is an adjective followed by a noun, not a verb followed by an object! (»direkt handlande« snarare än »dirigera handling«) Instead, they demonstrate options by acting autonomously, being careful to extend to others whatever knowledge and resources experience provides—this book being a case in point.
Many who set out to educate others about injustice make the mistake of providing them with a great deal of data without offering any ideas about what to do. Overwhelmed with facts, figures, and bad news, most people find it harder to take action, not easier; thus, such attempts to raise awareness for the sake of provoking change often sabotage themselves. When informing people, it is wise to apply this rule of thumb: for every issue you introduce, spend as much time and energy presenting skills, suggestions, and opportunities for action as you do presenting information and background. A similar rule of thumb is that the more comparable a person's circumstances are to yours, the more he or she might gain from hearing your suggestions and perspectives; the more your life stories diverge, the more you will benefit from listening and learning, rather than prescribing outside the context you know.
It also happens that some who practice direct action, eager to be out from under the yoke of their oppressors, escalate their engagement with these powers to such an extent that no one else can join in. This is often to their misfortune. When considering a tactic, it's important to ask to what degree it enables others to act as well, rather than leaving them immobilized as spectators. For example, the black bloc at the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 presented a model that others subsequently employed countless times to great effect, while the tactics of the Weather Underground in the 1970s achieved some impressive feats but failed to result in many people becoming similarly active. In the long run, the most powerful tactics are the ones that inspire and equip others to join the fight. It is important to pace the escalation of a struggle so that new people get involved at a faster rate than participants are immobilized by repression: this is how the momentum that generates revolutions is created. Your enemies on high want nothing more than to isolate you from everyone else who is angry for the same reasons. Make a point of staying accessible and connected to others, so they can come with you if they like when you set out on your journey to a new world.
Communities that practice direct action are often plagued by conflicts over which tactics are most effective and appropriate. Such debates are usually impossible to resolve—and that's a good thing. Instead, to the extent it is possible, the activities of those employing different methods and even those pursuing differing goals should be integrated into a mutually beneficial whole.
Accepting a diversity of tactics provides for the broad diversity of real human beings. Every individual has a different life history, and consequently finds different activities meaningful and liberating. Insisting that everyone should adopt the same approach is arrogant and shortsighted—it presumes that you are entitled to make judgments on others' behalf—and also unrealistic: any strategy that demands that everyone think and act the same way is doomed to failure, for human beings are not that simple or submissive. Critics often charge that the tactics they oppose will alienate potential participants, but the more diverse the tactics employed by a movement, the wider the range of people who can recognize among those tactics approaches that appeal to them. it may be necessary for factions applying different tactics to distance themselves from one another in the public eye, but this need not be done in an antagonistic spirit.
A movement that employs a diversity of tactics is able to adapt to changing contexts. Such a movement is a laboratory in which various methods can be tested; the ones that work will be easy to identify, and will naturally become popular. As we haven't yet succeeded in overthrowing capitalism once and for all by any method, all methods are still worth trying, in case one works. In this sense, those who employ tactics other than the ones you favor are doing you a service by saving you the trouble of having to test them for yourself.
Different tactics, applied in conjunction, can complement one another. just as the more confrontational politics of Malcolm X forced privileged whites to take the non-violent civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, jr. seriously, a combination of tactics from accessible and participatory to militant and controversial can simultaneously attract attention to a struggle, offer opportunities for people to get involved at their own pace, and provide those who engage in it with leverage on a variety of levels.
Honoring a diversity of tactics means refraining from attacking those whose chosen approaches seem to you to be ineffective, and instead focusing on what missing elements you can add to make their efforts effective. Thus, it reframes the question of strategy in terms of personal responsibility: at every juncture, the question is not what somebody else should be doing, but what you can do.
The importance of a diversity of tactics doesn't apply only when it is convenient for you. Don't claim to support a diversity of tactics and then argue that—just in this particular case, of course—others should prioritize your agenda over their own. Recognizing the value of diversity of tactics means taking into account that others will make different decisions based on their differing perspectives, and respecting this even when their decisions baffle you.
Accepting the legitimacy of a diversity of tactics means moving from a competitive mindset in which there is only one right way of doing things to a more inclusive and nuanced way of thinking. This contests hierarchies of value as well as of power, and undermines rigid abstractions such as »violence« and »morality.«
Finally, respect for diverse tactics enables disparata groups to build durable solidarity. Such solidarity must be founded on a commitment to coexisting and collaborating in harmony, rather than on limiting demands for unity. Just as some shortsightedly reject tactics other than their own as ineffective, others feel the need to compete to determine whose tactics are the most committed or the most impressive. But the most dramatic triumphs of militant direct action are only possible thanks to the support of people applying more conventional approaches, and vice versa. It is important that we not see tactics as existing in a hierarchy of value, from risk-free and insignificant to dangerous and glorious, but rather in an ecosystem in which all play an irreplaceable role. As revolutionaries, our role in such an ecosystem is to create a mutually-enhancing harmony between our efforts and those of others, even if some of them want to waste time competing with us for the currency of »being right« or »being bravest.« No tactic can be effective alone; all can be effective together.
Sometimes direct action means breaking the law. Indeed, direct action is a way of renegotiating laws, both written and unwritten. When people act according to conscience rather than convention, when they transgress deliberately and en masse, reality itself can be remade. This is not to say that you can get away with breaking laws just by ceasing to believe in them; but if everyone breaks them with you, the dynamics change.
The agents of law enforcement are at the mercy of many factors at once. Their job, of course, is to enforce the laws on the books, protecting power and property and keeping human and financial resources flowing to the judicial industry and the prison-industrial complex. At the same time, to some extent, they are at the mercy of public opinion: the public, or at least the privileged sectors thereof, has to believe that they are »doing their job,« but not overdoing it. They are also limited by simple logistics: if fifty people run out of a supermarket at once without paying, a single police officer can only hope to arrest one or two at best. On top of all this, they are only human (and that's flattering them): they have fragile egos to keep appeased, they can be slow on the uptake, their infrastructures are often badly organized and inefficient. It is possible to distract them, surprise them, even demoralize them.
Whenever you consider breaking the law, take into account all the factors that will influence the police response. Legal and illegal are not immutable aspects of the cosmos-they are as fluid as context itself. Its not against the law if you don't get caught, as every schoolchild and corporate CEO knows. An unpermitted march that would result in twenty arrests if attempted by twenty people can take place unobstructed if undertaken by two hundred; at the same time, twenty people with a plan and the certainty that it can be carried out can easily accomplish objectives that two hundred, less prepared, never could. Ultimately, when it comes to direct action, the laws are immaterial: if what you are doing really is subversive, the authorities will attempt to stop you whether it is legal or not—if they can. Your numbers, your courage, your preparation and foresight, your commitment to supporting one another, above all your conviction that what you are doing is possible: these are your permits, your guarantees, and you need no others.
When you participate in hazardous activities, it's important not to take things farther than you feel ready to go: if you get hurt or arrested or otherwise in trouble while engaging in a level of risk for which you are not emotionally preparied, the effects can be debilitating. Far better that you get started slowly and conservatively, building a sustainable involvement with direct action projects that can continue over a lifetime, than that you rush into an action with wild abandon, have a bad experience, and swear off all such activity. Pace yourself and always quit while you're ahead, so you can learn and develop your instincts at a safe rate. Believe it or not, there are people well into the prime of life who have fought all their lives in the war against capitalism without ever getting caught. Let's challenge ourselves and the world, let's run risks and push limits, but let's do so consciously and carefully, as part of a long-term process, so the experiences we gain in doing so will not go to waste!
One day, when the conflict between people and power approaches its climax, everything we do will be illegal; then, perhaps, courage and cooperation will win out over fear and tyranny, and we will break the law once and for all. In the meantime, every instance of direct action, humble as it may be, is a microcosm of that decisive moment, and a potential seed from which it may grow.
Although nothing is ever so simple, let's postulate that there are four essential elements that must be present for a community to become conscious of its own power and get in the practice of using it deliberately. First, at least a handful of individuals must invest themselves in direct action, mutual aid, and revolutionary social change as life projects. It takes the full-time labor, consumption, and faith of millions to maintain the protection racket that enforces servility, scarcity, and alienation. Whenever even a few of us stop investing ourselves in perpetuating this system and instead apply our resources to create a space outside its dictates, wondrous things can happen.
Second, direct action must be employed to provide for people's basic needs in a way that promotes self-reliance and builds networks of cooperation and trust. This might mean serving free meals in the park, or stopping an eviction by force, or organizing radical concerts and social events—the need for entertainment and camaraderie is no less fundamental than the need for food or for housing. The more people are able to meet their needs directly and together, the less they need the capitalist system and the conditional solutions it offers—and the more they can invest themselves in building alternatives to it.
Third, the power of direct action must be demonstrated in exciting, accessible, participatory ways. Rather than letting direct action become the specialty of a subculture or expert class, those who appreciate its value should arrange opportunities for people of all walks of life to take part in it, starting with the communities with which they are most familiar. Everyone who is involved in such demonstrations should have empowering experiences that indicate the possibility of an entirely different way of life. For this to occur, the character of each demonstration must be dictated by the needs and circumstances of those who are to participate: a class of bored and rebellious high school students might discover their collective power by staging a walkout, while the residents of a neighborhood could experience a similar revelation in the course of tending a community garden. All events and contexts are ripe for conversion into participatory direct action, however hopelessly repressive they may seem: a speech at a stuffy ceremony can swiftly be transformed into a hurricane of creative heckling, just as a crowd of docile consumers at a concert can take to the streets in an unpermitted march—all it takes is for a few individuals to seize a previously unthinkable but longed-for possibility in a way that is contagious. These demonstrations should not simply be isolated events: it should be easy for those they inspire to become connected to ongoing projects and communities in which they can give substance to their new visions.
Finally, an atmosphere must be created that provokes curiosity, builds momentum, and maintains morale. Everywhere people go, there should be evidence that something is afoot, that big changes are in store. The subject of direct action, however controversial, should be on the tip of every tongue, and the substance of it scrawled on every wall and employed in every workplace. Wild speculations, whispered rumors, secret invitations, passionate crusades, epic triumphs, surprises, suspense, drama, adventure: these are the stuff of revolutions, and without them it is not possible to break the deadlock between fear and desire.
Despite your best attempts, there will be periods when momentum dies down and it seems you are losing the ground you gained. During a waning phase of activity, don't panic or give up hope. Pace yourself, take it in stride as part of the cycle of life; it will pass. Weather it with the others that stick around, focusing on the worthwhile projects you can undertake without a crowd around you. Use this period to consolidate what you've learned and built, and to develop new relationships and proficiencies so yo'll be ready to take things even farther when the action starts to heat up again—as it will.
Don't let anyone tell you nothing ever changes. Revolutions always happen, as sure as the earth goes on turning. The only question is whether we participate in them unconsciously, washing our hands of responsibility for the choices we make, or deliberately, bringing our dreams into being with every step.