review by Jimmy Jazz
 
 
 
 You Don't Have To Fuck People Over To Survive         by Seth Tobocaman
 
......... I don't know if renter's rights advocates or squatters or revolutionaries have coffee tables (though I suspect they do) but You Don't Have to Fuck People Over To Survive should be displayed on it. Even if you're modestly interested in human rights you will dig this book. Seth Tobocman has put together a new version of his graphic manifesto. 

You Don’t Have To Fuck People Over To Survive originally appeared in 1989 from Pressure Drop Press which also put out a great book called Sabotage in The American Workplace. 

The new (Soft Skull Press) version includes illustrations on the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist on Pennsylvania's death row who was convicted for the 1981 murder of a the police officer he may not have committed. The Supreme Court of the Untied States recently denied Abu-Jamal a new trial despite popular support which has rallied around his eloquence and several just plain wrongs in the original trial. Govenor *** has signed his death warrant and the execution is scheduled to take place Dec. 2, 1999. 
 
 
  .......... You Don't Have to Fuck People Over to Survive is a street tough book. It begins "Once I saw a man bleed to death. That night people walked to the movies over his blood. I thought that because I did not throw up I was not upset. But later I found that the dead man was living inside my body." 

Tobocman's text is like a poem and his illustrations are like a punch in the gut. He notes that his artwork has been "picked up by people all over the world and displayed in acts of protest." Tobocman himself has been part of Lower East Side NY's squatter movement for several years. 

The book also contains a story called "A Statement for Jimmy" by Peter Plate (author of a trilogy of novels about San Francisco's Mission District Police and Thieves, Snitch Factory & One Foot Off the Gutter) and a comic strip telling the story of Amadou Diallo who was shot 19 times by the NYPD.
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