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Standing With The 99%David Graeber, a radical anthropologist teaching at Goldsmiths, Unive rsity of London, is most

famously credited as the intellectual force behind the Occupy Wall Street movement and the

person who coined its famous slogan, We are the 99% He talks withAdil Hossain about why the

Occupy Wall Street movement has changed the way we think about street protests for forever.

ADIL HOSSAIN 6th Jul 2013

. How did you become an

anthropologist?

A. It came from my

upbringing in away. My

parents wereworking class

intellectuals and radicals

themselves. My father fought

in the Spanish civil war. So I

was brought up in an

environment which was all

about imagining other possible

ways of organising life andsociety. And I often thought

that the existing social order is bad and something needs to be done about it. All this helped

me to become an anthropologist.

Q. People don't think of anarchism in positive sense. But you call yourself

an anarchist anthropologist. So what made you into one?

A. Most people don't think that anarchism is a bad idea, they think it's insane. Everybody

thinks it's Utopian to have no police, no law and let society run on democratic cooperation.

As I told you, my father fought in the Spanish civil war and he was posted in Barcelona as

an ambulance driv er. At that time, the c ity was run for a lo ng time on anarchist principles

with no government at all. So in spite of the international propaganda against anarchists, he

knew that the system could actually work. And because of this family background, it was

never a crazy idea to me and I naturally embraced it.

Q. How did you become associated with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS)

movement?

A. I was earlier part of the anti-globalisation movement in around 2000. So for the last

twelve years I have been involved in mobilisations of people inspired with new forms of

direct democracy that were developing. You see, soon y ou get to the point when you feel

that it's not going to last long. I talk to my friends in Egypt and we talk about the same sort

of thing. You spend all these years organising your political life with the prospect that

something's going to happen and at some point you believe it no longer will and then it

happens! And you are like oh wow, I was right! So I always had this notion that it's going to

explode. Democracy is infectious, you see! It changes the perception of people of what is

politically possible. And for a moment we did.

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David Graeber

Q. What's your opinion on the role of social media in organising protests

like OWS movement?

A. Social media is important but it's not the essence of what's going on. It is possible today

to document police brutality and the like as never before. But to be honest the OWS

movement was not well organised on social media at first. It was just that in the first phase

of the movement, my personal Twitter became the main communication system because I

happened to be there first and people later found about it. But the real power lies with

people and the cause they are struggling for.

Q. The critics say that the problem with OWS is that it doesn't recognise the

state and the movem ent has no sense of direction. They also slam you f or

putting up no demands and thus confusing people at all the stages. How do

you respond to such criticism?

A. I believe it's the secret of our power that we don't recognise the state at all, which they

(the state) always want. Lots and lots of people tried to show up and even at Zuccott i Park

they c ame with their specific set of demands and when we did our thing in our way it

worked. So it seems like strange criticism to me.

{

In China, the level of even simple unrest isextraordinary. There is a tradition of direct

action that nobody talks about: 37000 riots ayear take place over there.

Q. So you think even with such forms of protest with no demands, no

recognition of the state, you can manage to convince people to join your

cause?

A. Yes indeed. The thing is, internationally people know little about how Americans think

about America. T hey think they like it there, that they really believe in stuff the leaders

talk about, that they accept it as a global model of democracy and all that kind of stuff. It's

not true at all! Most Americans are angry about the situation they are in. They have a

different interpretation of the problems in their society, which sometimes switch back and

forth radically from day to day. The political class is especially hated, which is a great

paradox. Democracy doesn't mean to elect leaders to run the government because while

almost all Americans love the concept of democracy, almost all hate politicians and most

are sceptical about the very idea of government. Therefore, they clearly mean something

else by democracy , some distant ideals that would still allow them to manage their own

affairs politically. I think that's our biggest advantage, that generally people reject the

system as fundamentally corrupt. We wanted to tak e that and see how far we can go with it.

Q. In recent times, there has been a

great rise in street protests in India.

People are organising themselves at a

new level and challenging the state for

its failure to control rapes, corruption in

high offices and things alike. How you

see the role of Indians in the present

global context of protest movements?

A. Look in India, there are means of political

mobilisation unlike in places like China. In

China, the level of even simple unrest is extraordinary. There is a tradition of direct action

that nobody talks about: 37000 riots a year take place o ver there. But in India, y ou know

the possibilities of actual direc t organising is so much greater that it means that whatever

policies are being enforced on the micro-level, the possibilities of creating alternatives, if

successful, can become a model to the world at much larger level. There is so much space

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.

Q. India in spite of sustained economic growth still suffers from massive

malnutrition, poverty and hunger among its people. There's controversy

about a Food Security Bill. How would you explain this?

A. I look at poverty not as a simple national issue but as inequality of wealth between

nations. We need drastic steps to change the scenario as the usual policies won't change all

of that. I've suggested previously that a lot of these problems are simply created by the

maintenance of borders. Today we talk about free market, free trade, capital moving freely

from one nation to another nation. So why not people? If everybody in any country of the

world could move to any place they wanted, so for example people in Uganda or India

could move to Amsterdam or California if they wanted to, the first thing people in rich and

powerful countries would do would be to figure out how to encourage people to stay where

they are. And I think they would come up with something very quickly if they had that

incentive (laugh). This is my idea of the solving the issue.

Q. How will history treat the Occupy Wall Street movement?

A. This movement has changed the way we think about street protests now. For the first

time since the Great Depression, Americans are discussing class issues and that's a great

achievement for us. If in 2008 the economic recession brought the world down, our

movement proved to be a new hope for the people. It showed us a way forward towards a

more just and equal world. And I believe history will treat it as this.

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