Review by Laurie Penny on the NewStatesman
JUn 2013
The Democracy Project by David Graeber: The textual life of Occupy lives on
A lot of bad books have been written about Occupy, too, and what saves this from being one of them is its perspective.
“We are the 99 per cent!”
That slogan was coined by David Graeber, the anthropologist and sometime anarchist author who was a constant presence in the intellectual life of the Occupy movement. Graeber was there on the first day, part of the activist group that decided to hold Zuccotti Park, and his new book is the unofficial eulogy for Occupy and its discontents and an explanation of how the movement spread to more than 800 towns and cities across the world. It is shot through with excited disbelief that it happened at all. Like Occupy, The Democracy Project is a lot less gimmicky than it looks.