New York, 1989: as a decade of activism around the urban housing crisis and beyond comes to a close, legendary graphic artist Seth Tobocman is there to document it all in his bold comic style.
You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive collects many of Tobocman’s most enduring images in a powerhouse assemblage that cuts right to the heart of 1980s activism. All the high (and low) points are there: the imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal; the rise of Reaganomics; the struggle against apartheid; the Miami Race Riots; and, of course, the turf wars that dominated the city of New York, as activists and low-income families alike demanded their rights to the city’s abandoned buildings.
It’s a candid portrait of a decade of struggle to preserve basic human rights and build a better world. Available now in a brand new twentieth-anniversary edition from AK Press, You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive is a critical historical artifact and a phenomenal read, sure to appeal to a new generation of activists ready to demand the right to the city, and worthy of a place on the shelf of every historian of urban struggle.
Seth Tobocman is an author, artist, and educator living in New York City. Perhaps best known as the co-founder and editor of the comic journal World War 3 Illustrated, Tobocman’s bold graphics have been immortalized in exhibitions, in the pages of The New York Times, and on the sides of buildings around the globe.

New York, 1989: as a decade of activism around the urban housing crisis and beyond comes to a close, legendary graphic artist Seth Tobocman is there to document it all in his bold comic style.
You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive collects many of Tobocman’s most enduring images in a powerhouse assemblage that cuts right to the heart of 1980s activism. All the high (and low) points are there: the imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal; the rise of Reaganomics; the struggle against apartheid; the Miami Race Riots; and, of course, the turf wars that dominated the city of New York, as activists and low-income families alike demanded their rights to the city’s abandoned buildings.
It’s a candid portrait of a decade of struggle to preserve basic human rights and build a better world. Available now in a brand new twentieth-anniversary edition from AK Press, You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive is a critical historical artifact and a phenomenal read, sure to appeal to a new generation of activists ready to demand the right to the city, and worthy of a place on the shelf of every historian of urban struggle.
Seth Tobocman is an author, artist, and educator living in New York City. Perhaps best known as the co-founder and editor of the comic journal World War 3 Illustrated, Tobocman’s bold graphics have been immortalized in exhibitions, in the pages of The New York Times, and on the sides of buildings around the globe.