The Book of Leviticus (25:8-13) describes a special year—the jubilee—proclaimed by trumpet sound. In this year they freed slaves, forgave debts, returned land to its owners. It was a ritual of restoring justice and restarting life. In such moments past and present seem to collapse, allowing the community to relive important events anew—the birth of a child, a wedding, gaining freedom.

This year marks five years since David Graeber’s death.

David was incredibly beautiful, beloved, cheerful, dear, endlessly educated and a brilliant writer who handled language like a coin that always fell on the lucky side for him.

He was kind of a celebrity, but in a very special sense: didn’t build a personal brand, didn’t strive for career, treated his own success with irony. Instead he seriously and intensely created leaderless spaces around himself—spaces where people could be happy and free.

As an anthropologist he studied exactly such communities and described them in his books. David said: we are the product of mutual creation, and society is what we ourselves create and recreate every day. When he died, somehow the David Graeber Institute community formed naturally.

The world in these five years has filled with wars, climate catastrophes and open genocide. But the David Graeber Institute and this Carnival are spaces where Ukrainians and Russians, Jews and Palestinians, Lebanese and Israelis, Brazilians and Americans coexist together. Not because we agree on everything, but because we’re part of one world in which we live together and because this world doesn’t demand unification from us.

I saw how David created the Brain Trust project, gathered collective, ever-expanding meetings where he himself spoke little but wrote a lot, recording what was happening. In some sense Brain Trust was very carnivalesque: anyone could become an equal participant, there was no center, everything constantly changed.

Political parties and demonstrations are important—they try to shift social structures. But they proceed from a utopia of unity, assuming everyone shares the same views. In carnival you can be different, contradictory, unfinished.

Today’s carnival is the fruit of wonderful work by Cambridge’s laboratory (LEAP Lab). I’m more of a participant than organizer here, and I really want the carnival to continue living after I leave England.

May tomorrow the life of each of us be freer than today.

And may my life and the life of every Carnival participant tomorrow be freer and happier than today!

We wait and believe in the magic of jubilee!

Come to NW80SF at 19-00 for the Carnival!