Direct Action Network (DAN) was a North American

confederation A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a union of sovereign groups or states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...

anti-corporate Anti-corporate activism refers to the idea of activism that is directed against the private sector, and specifically against larger corporations. It stems from the idea that the activities and impacts of big business are detrimental to the publ ...

anti-authoritarian Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to authoritarianism, which is defined as "a form of social organisation characterised by submission to authority", "favoring complete obedience or subjection to authority as opposed to individual freedom" an ...

and

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessari ...

affinity groups, collectives, and organizations. It grew out of the Seattle chapter which had been formed to coordinate the nonviolent civil disobedience portion of the anti-WTO mobilization in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

in 1999. Seattle DAN was formed in response to the call for direct action against the WTO conference by People's Global Action. Members of the Art and Revolution Collective, based in San Francisco, sought funding for their WTO actions from a coalition of

NGOs A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...

led by

Public Citizen Public Citizen is a non-profit, progressive consumer rights advocacy group and think tank based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Lobbying efforts Public Citizen advocates before all three branches of the Uni ...

and Global Exchange. Simultaneously, local activists in Seattle began meeting to plan disruptive protest. The Seattle group envisioned a "decentralized network of people who would organize autonomous actions," while the San Francisco group envisioned "a coherent organization...that would come together around a fixed day action." According to San Francisco organizer David Solnit, the two groups merged "somewhat awkwardly," with differences over property destruction being a particular source of tension. Soon after the Seattle mobilization, several DAN chapters formed a Continental Direct Action Network (CDAN), which rapidly expanded into branches in 12 cities in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. CDAN, as well as many of the local chapters, adopted principles of unity based on those of

Peoples' Global Action Peoples' Global Action (PGA) was the name of a worldwide co-ordination of radical social movements, grassroots campaigns and direct actions in resistance to capitalism and for social and environmental justice. PGA was part of the anti-globalization ...

. Regional DANs were formed of autonomous affinity groups which coordinated actions via spokescouncils using

delegation Delegation is the assignment of authority to another person (normally from a manager to a subordinate) to carry out specific activities. It is the process of distributing and entrusting work to another person,Schermerhorn, J., Davidson, P., Poole ...

and

consensus decision-making Consensus decision-making or consensus process (often abbreviated to ''consensus'') are group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on e ...

. According to former NYC DAN organizer

David Graeber David Rolfe Graeber (; February 12, 1961September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books '' Debt: The First 5,000 Years'' (2011) and '' Bullshit Jobs ...

Chapters operating in different cities soon came to be classified into two broad tendencies: anti-corporate, or anti-capitalist. The former tended to be more reformist in orientation, more oriented towards the onviolencetradition and suspicious of more militant styles of direct action, more interested in appealing to the middle classes around concepts like fair trade and green consumerism. The latter were more explicitly anarchist and revolutionary. The most prominent examples of the former tendency were Seattle DAN and LA DAN, both of which continued to be dominated by NGO activists...The vast majority of groups that were within the DAN network, however, including NYC DAN, the Philadelphia Direct Action Group (PDAG), San Francisco and Humboldt County DAN, Chicago DAN, and many others, were plainly anti-capitalist. They had little NGO participation, but were made up instead mainly of independent activists and members of local anarchist collectives...

Other than Seattle, DAN played a key role in organizing the following protests/mobilizations: *

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster gl ...

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

protests, April 8–17, 2000 *

Republican National Convention The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the United States Republican Party. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal of the Repu ...

protests, Philadelphia, July 29, 2000 *

Democratic National Convention The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 ...

protests, Los Angeles, August 11, 2000 * George W. Bush Inauguration, Washington, DC, January 20, 2001 *

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

protests, New York City, NY, February 2, 2002 After the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

in 2001, DAN began to fall apart. DAN's last major mobilization was in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

in February 2002, where remnants of the local chapter was responsible for organizing actions against the World Economic Forum attended by between 15,000 and 20,000 individuals. NYCDAN was later eclipsed by the Another World is Possible Coalition (AWIP), a local NYC network which was originally formed by DAN members. Since DANs evaporation, many former activists have gone on to play pivotal roles in regional and national mobilizations and groups, including anti-war organizing, NY Peoples' Global Action, NYC Social Forum, New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists and other organizational work. The websites for both Continental Direct Action Network and Direct Action Network are no longer maintained.

Hand signals in consensus process

A feature of DAN's consensus process was the use of hand signals. These included

twinkling Twinkling, also called scintillation, is a generic term for variations in apparent brightness, colour, or position of a distant luminous object viewed through a medium.Wang, Ting-I; Williams, Donn"Scintillation technology bests NIST" , ''InTec ...

to indicate agreement with a proposal.

References

External links

"What is DAN?" Discussion Notes

Hand signals in consensus process

See also

References

External links

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