David Graeber
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
As the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across the country in September, activist David Graeber became a public face for a resurgent leftism based on radical, direct-action protest.
Graeber, 50, describes himself as a “small-a anarchist,” meaning that he is interested in promoting anarchist principles without binding himself to a specific school of anarchist thought. Such principles have led the Occupy movement to early, unexpected successes in occupations across the nation. Graeber is the son of Jewish radicals, and his mother played a leading role in the famed musical “Pins and Needles,” which was sponsored by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1937.
Beyond his early and formative role in Occupy Wall Street (he claims to have coined the rallying cry, “We are the 99%”), Graeber is also a noted anthropologist whose ethnographic works on Madagascar and radical activism are renowned, if controversial. This year, he published “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” which explores the history of debt in a way that challenges deeply held beliefs about the nature of lending and money. For Graeber, the only way out of a society crushed by its own debt is a modern jubilee year, a period of systematic debt relief during which we wipe the slate clean. Though Occupy Wall Street has so far refused to make any demands about debt, or any other issue, Graeber’s impassioned call for a radical political renewal seems to have taken hold in the movement he helped to start.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
