Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629634441 ISBN 13: 9781629634449

Verlag: PM Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Decades ago, Malcolm X eloquently stated that communities have the legitimate right to defend themselves “by any means necessary” with any tool or tactic, including guns. This wide-ranging anthology uncovers the hidden histories and ideas of community armed self-defense, exploring how it has been used by marginalized and oppressed communities as well as anarchists and radicals within significant social movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Far from a call to arms, or a “how-to” manual for warfare, this volume offers histories, reflections, and questions about the role of firearms in small collective defense efforts and its place in larger efforts toward the creation of autonomy and liberation.

Featuring diverse perspectives from movements across the globe, Setting Sights includes vivid histories and personal reflections from both researchers and those who participated in community armed self-defense. Contributors include Dennis Banks, Kathleen Cleaver, Mabel Williams, Subcomandante Marcos, Kristian Williams, George Ciccariello-Maher, Ashanti Alston, and many more.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

scott crow is an international speaker and author. His first book, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective, was included on NPR’s Top Summer Reads of 2015. Black Flags and Windmills has been translated into Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. He is a contributor to the books Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab, Witness to Betrayal, The Black Bloc Papers, and What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation.

Ward Churchill was, until moving to Atlanta in 2012, a member of the leadership council of Colorado AIM. He is a life member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and currently a member of the elders council of the original Rainbow Coalition, founded by Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969. Now retired, Churchill was professor of American Indian Studies and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies until 2005, when he became the focus of a major academic freedom case. Among his two dozen books are Wielding Words Like Weapons and Pacifism as Pathology.

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Setting Sights

Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense

By Scott Crow

PM Press

Copyright © 2018 PM Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-444-9

Contents

PREFACE scott crow, 
FOREWORD Ward Churchill, 
INTRODUCTION scott crow, 
ANALYSIS AND THEORY, 
Liberatory Community Armed Self-Defense: Approaches toward a Theory scott crow, 
Politicians Love Gun Control: Reframing the Debate around Gun Ownership Neal Shirley/North Carolina Piece Corps Gun Rights Are Civil Rights, 
Kristian Williams and Peter Little Notes for a Critical Theory of Community Self-Defense Chad Kautzer, 
Three-Way Fight: Revolutionary Anti-Fascism and Armed Self-Defense J. Clark, 
The Liberation Gun: Symbolic Aspects of the Black Panther Party Ashanti Alston, 
Desire Armed: An Introduction to Armed Resistance and Revolution Western Unit Tactical Defense Caucus, 
Mischievous Elves: Defending a Broader Concept of the Self Leslie James Pickering, 
Antagonistic Violence: Approaches to the Armed Struggle in Urban Environments from an Anarchist Perspective Gustavo Rodríguez, 
Ten Ways to Advance Liberatory Community Armed Self-Defense North Carolina Piece Corps, 
HISTORIES OF THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES, 
Russian Anarchists and the Civil War, 1917–1922 Paul Avrich, 
Not Only a Right but a Duty: The Industrial Workers of the World Take Up the Gun in Centralia, Washington, 1919 Shawn Stevenson, 
The People Armed: Women in the 1930s Spanish Revolution Anti-Fascist Action UK, 
Schwarze Scharen: Anarcho-Syndicalist Militias in Germany, 1929–1933 Helge Döhring and Gabriel Kuhn, 
Other Stories from the Civil Rights Movement: A Spectrum of Community Defense Lamont Carter and scott crow, 
Negroes with Guns: Oral History Interview with Mabel Williams David Cecelski, 
Self-Respect, Self-Defense, and Self-Determination: A Presentation Kathleen Cleaver and Mabel Williams with an introduction by Angela Y. Davis, 
Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party Akinyele Omowale Umoja, 
Drifting from the Mainstream: A Chronicle of Early Anti-rape Organizing and WASP Nikki Craft, 
Oka Crisis of 1990: Indigenous Armed Self-Defense and Organization in Canada Gord Hill, 
We Refuse to Die: An Interview with Dennis Banks scott crow, 
Ampo Camp and the American Indian Movement: Native Resistance in the U.S. Pacific Northwest Michele Rene Weston, 
Mujeres en Acción: Indigenous Women's Activism within the EZLN Laura Gallery, 
Twelve Women in the Twelfth Year: January 1994 Subcomandante Marcos, 
On Violence, Disasters, Defense, and Transformation: Setting Sights for the Future scott crow, 
Gut Check Time: Violence and Resistance after Hurricane Katrina Suncere Shakur, 
Breaking the Curse of Forgotten Places in Mexico Simón Sedillo, 
Feminism, Guns, and Anarchy in the Twenty-First Century: A Southern U.S. Story Mo Karnage, 
Defending Communities, Demanding Autonomy: Self-Defense Militias in Venezuela's Barrios George Ciccariello-Maher, 
Toward a Redneck Revolt Dave Strano, 
Defense in Dallas in the Twenty-First Century: An Interview with Members of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club Interview by scott crow, 
Trial by Fire: Democracy and Self-Defense in Rojava Alexander Reid Ross and Ian LaVallee, 
Bibliography, 
Glossary, 
Acknowledgments, 
Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Liberatory Community Armed Self-Defense: Approaches toward a Theory

scott crow

Notions of Defense

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

In this essay, I will try to sketch a set of potential practices, praxis, and thinking centered on the narrow use of what I name as liberatory community armed self-defense. This distinct concept draws upon the histories of community self-defense, as practiced by various groups of people worldwide, and from the liberatory principles derived from anarchist and anti-authoritarian traditions.

The concept of community armed self-defense is a distinct development from grassroots social and political organizing models and notions of community defense, which at their core assert the right of oppressed peoples to protect their interests "by any means necessary." That would include signing petitions and voting on one end of the spectrum to extralegal means of direct action, insurrection, or rebellions on the other. The Black Panther Party, for example, engaged in community defense not only through their armed patrols but also through their survival programs, which opened health clinics and free schools in poor black neighborhoods otherwise lacking these kinds of services. This essay is an attempt at a critical reassessment of liberatory community armed self-defense: to reenvision the histories and analysis, to examine the praxis and bring these lessons forward to future engagements, and to broaden and strengthen our tactics and responses to crisis.

In the first part I attempt a brief working definition and explain how this range of actions differs from those of standing militaries, guerrillas, or other types of armed forces and combat engagements. The section that follows develops some emerging principles or ethics rooted in the anarchist values of egalitarianism and power-sharing.

A Working Definition

Liberatory community armed self-defense is the collective group practice of temporarily taking up arms for defensive purposes, as part of larger engagements of self-determination in keeping with a liberatory ethics.

I am proposing liberatory community armed self-defense as a distinct idea born of a reassessment, spanning decades, of the historical experience of armed struggle and broader theories of the right of self-defense.

Self-defense usually describes countermeasures employed by an individual to protect their immediate personal safety, and sometimes their property. Within the U.S., self-defense is discussed almost exclusively in legal terms relating to "rights" recognized by governments or constitutions, and only occasionally as human rights. By limiting the discussion to the rights attached to individuals, this framing fails to consider community interests, structural violence and oppression, and collective actions. The discourse thus completely neglects the defense of communities as such, and especially leaves out the political demands of people of color, women, immigrants, queers, and poor people.

Community self-defense in any form is not defined by laws but by ethics based in need (to protect) and the principles of anarchy (whether people call it that or not) by which groups of people collectively exercise their power in deciding their futures and determining how to respond to threats without relying on governments.

As a concept, liberatory community armed self-defense attempts to take into account unrecognized types of violence and the limits marginalized groups face in their ability to determine their own futures or collectively protect themselves. For example, in 1973, when the American Indian Movement took up arms to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1629634441
• ISBN 13: 9781629634449
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Herausgeber: Crow Scott
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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