Posts tagged ‘pacifism’

Setting Sights Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self Defense – Coming 3/18

Excited an essay I wrote will be published in this upcoming anthology! Stay tuned for its publishing and tour! Follow and like on Facebook – Setting Sights Book

From the PM Press website: Setting Sights Book PM Press

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, Mable Williams, Subcomandante Marcos, Kristian Williams, George Ciccariello-Maher, Ashanti Alston, and many more.

Praise:

“This book is a must read. It looks like self-defense and resistance today, but it is more. It is about courage, lucidity, and tools to create new worlds under the storm, in the midst of disaster.”

—Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra and author of The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto

“In Setting Sights, scott crow pulls together an important collection of historic and contemporary essays and interviews on politically informed armed self-defense. Thoughtful, considered, compelling, and even provocative, this edited collection brings together many perspectives, raises important questions, and gives considerable attention to the ways race and gender inform these crucial issues.”

—Emilye Crosby, author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi

“This provocative book, well worth reading, confirms that there is intellectual heft in revolutionary ideas. A valuable contribution to the history of community self-defense.”

—Charlie E. Cobb Jr., author of This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

“An extensive volume that vividly illustrates the foundations and necessity of community armed defense in struggles for freedom against injustice and racism.”

—Robert Hillary King, author of From the Bottom of the Heap

“. . . crow is considered armed and dangerous. He is proactive in civil disobedience skills and goes to events to instigate trouble.”

—FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force

About the Contributors:

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.

Product Details:

Editor: scott crow • Foreword by Ward Churchill

Publisher: PM Press

ISBN: 978-1-62963-444-9

Published: 03/2018

Format: Paperback

Size: 9×6

Page count: 416

Subjects: Politics / Civil Rights

See and hear author interviews, book reviews, and other news on page HERE

Click here for one-page information sheet on this product

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Orlando Whiplash – Yall We Forgot the Intersectionality

The massacre at a gay club in Orlando has created a groundswell of unfortunate responses by both the political right and left on the issues of immigration, guns, and policing. These poor responses include erasure of a queer identity and (un?)intentional racially/immigration status oppressive politics.

I have been trying to hold back my initial reactions to the Orlando shooting. Some of that has been a deliberate with holding of opinion, and some has been due to how numbing these sorts of events can be. Processing the news, the grief, the fear, and then the responses on all sides is a major intellectual and emotional undertaking. A lot of my friends in LGBTQ communities around the world have been struggling with the fear, sorrow, anger, etc. that the massacre created.

What I have noticed is similar to the observations of others – mainstream reaction to the Orlando shooting involves a lot of jumping to conclusions and ignoring the victims and survivors. What this does is add insult to injury for lgbtq and poc communities, and ultimately I say leave the door open for more future oppression and violence against those communities.

The reality that the shooting at Pulse happened on Latinx night and involved many people of color and immigrants seems to have been overshadowed by outside agendas to promote an anti-immigrant response. Even though the shooter was a man of color and american citizen born and raised. Outside forces are twisting this tragedy to fit the narratives they have already written. The anti immigrant crap is largely coming from the political right. Were this a white shooter, it would be a lot easier to suggest it was a racially motivated attack. The shooter being of color himself, and a first generation American makes it not so cut and dry. However, the issue of the identity of the victims must not be ignored in analysis. Many of the victims were immigrants, the children of immigrants, from the colonized territory of Puerto Rico and some undocumented folks as well. Responding to this shooting with anti immigrant legislation, and legislation which will ultimately result in more racial profiling is NOT honoring the victims and survivors. It is basically spitting on their graves.

The political left has their own contradictory bill of malarky to sell the public in response to this incident. The anti gun whiplash response is in full effect, largely ignoring the facts about existing gun laws, guns, and the not great political implications of their suggested gun laws.

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