Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Direct action offers the chance to cash in one's convictions and desires as the hfe 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.

Mutual Aid Anyone with direct action skills stands to gain from sharing them with others. This is and Outreach 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! 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 ^^ ^7s 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 misfortiine. 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 effbct, while the tactics of the Weather Underground in the 1970s achieved some impressive feats but failed to resuft 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 momentiim that generates revolutions is created. Your enemies on high want notiiing 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.

Preface 79

Diversity of Tactics 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.