Graeber writes of having to pinch himself as he watched thousands of people mimicking the hand gestures and rallying cries of activists who were more used to shouting at each other across empty rooms. But within weeks the movement had spread to more than 600 cities, and huge crowds were assembling daily in New York. The original occupation of Wall Street on 17 September drew a couple of thousand people, which was considered a triumph. No one noticed, which is what tends to happen with this kind of protest. Bloombergville, a forerunner of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, was a camp of 40 activists living in tents opposite City Hall in lower Manhattan during the summer of 2011. Graeber, who is also an anarchist, is a veteran of actions, rallies and occupations whose participants can usually be counted in the tens, not the tens of thousands. The first is that so many people showed up at all. Graeber has two reasons for believing that Occupy was a huge success. He thinks the question that needs to be answered is: Why did it work? Now, nearly two years on, Graeber wants to draw some of the wider lessons. He also helped coin the slogan 'We are the 99%', which did so much to brand the movement. Graeber, an anthropologist and lifelong activist, was there from the beginning and helped give OWS its start in life in September 2011. W hat's the first question that springs to mind when you think about Occupy Wall Street? Where did it go? Was anything actually accomplished? What went wrong? These are not the questions that David Graeber wants to answer in his new book on the protest and its ramifications.

Graeber debt book