In the terms I’ve been developing, what “the public,” “the workforce,” “consumers,” “population” all have in common is that they are brought into being by institutionalized frames of action that are inherently bureaucratic and, therefore, profoundly alienating. Voting booths, television screens, office cubicles, hospitals, the ritual that surrounds them-one might say these are the very machinery of alienation. They are the instruments through which the human imagination is smashed and shattered.

David Graeber has always been an amazingly lucid proponent of anarchism; for him, it’s not just an ideology but an expression of something intimately humanistic. Following anarchists from 1999 to 2001, Graeber has a front row seat observing key features of the global justice movement, its activists, and many organizations as they organize and act. A solid case for why the anti-globalization movements weren’t chaotic and confused but the embodiment of a praxis which encouraged direct democracy and participation above representation and co-option. The world does not have to be the way it is, but engagement and participation and direct action are required to make an impact. As Graeber shows, the most important and consequential step is to try something–anything at all.

Let black people organize themselves first, define their interests and goals, and then see what kinds of allies are available. Let any ghetto group contemplating coalition be so tightly organized, so strong, that–in the words of Saul Alinsky–it is an “indigestible body” which cannot be absorbed or swallowed up. The advocates of Black Power are not opposed to coalitions per se. But we are not interested in coalitions based on myths.

This book cannot be appreciated without its historical context: the CRM seemed to be dissolving with the assassinations of Malcolm X and MLK Jr; college campuses were exploding with student activism fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War; inner cities were consumed by riots rooted in frustration with endemic poverty and racism. Black people had sight of the political machinery that created their conditions but no way to directly affect its operation. Enter Black Power and its philosophy of self organization–develop your own politics to lucidly challenge power wherever it manifested as racism, either as individual acts or institutional forces which perpetuated alienation from self-determination.

An illuminating text to read if only for entertaining the prospects for creating a black political strategy with the push and pull of other ethnic minorities and lobbies–especially since conditions for swaths of black people have stagnated or decayed since the book’s initial publication. Most notably childhood poverty, household wealth and income, and incarceration rates for black people have barely moved, substantially collapsed, and skyrocketed (respectively). For the authors, Black Power is not as simple as closing the value gap between blacks and whites, it is destroying the institutions which created the gap in the first place so the myths feeding into white supremacy recede and can no longer serve as another hurdle on the path towards making a more humane society.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

A noire New York where elevators are literal corridors of power and metaphorical symbols of uplift. Lila is not only the first colored woman to serve as an elevator inspector but an Intuitionist–an inspector that relies on psychic abilities more than actual mechanical inspection.

So when Intuitionists stand ready to take control of the Elevator Guild, threatening long-established Empiricist (mechanical inspectors) control of New York, schemes unfold that stand ready to unravel and undermine the logic behind each faction’s position. Constant playing with tropes of noir combined with the struggle between Empiricism (white inspectors) and Intuitionism lets Whitehead craft an extended discussion which reaches into the real world–specifically on how black people should identify and organize themselves to elevate in the midst of what can be a suffocating existence in America.