Direct Action: An Historical Novel
by Luke Hauser
More than 7000 people were arrested in nonviolent protests in California in the early 1980s, developing the art of direct action to a peak not reached again until Seattle in 1999, and in many ways never surpassed.
Direct Action is the novelized history of a community of activists who helped lay the foundations for today’s direct action movement, from Seattle to Occupy and beyond.
Direct action is more than getting arrested. It’s solidarity. It’s affinity groups and collective process. It’s nonhierarchy and respect for diversity. It’s coalitions and alliance-building.
It isn’t just a political tactic – it’s a whole new political and cultural practice.
The novel is based on memories, interviews, press accounts, and voluminous archival material (most of which is now housed at the San Francisco Public Library History Department).