community control of the poor community

8/3/2019 Community Control of the Poor Community

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Community

Control of the PoorCommunity

An Organising Manualfor Community Activists



Community

Control of the PoorCommunity

An Organising Manualfor Community Activists

Community Control of the Poor Community 0

highly proficient.We might not need the immediate waging of urban guerrilla warfare, espe-

cially where there is no mass base for such activities. But we need to under-stand armed self-defence and the knowledge of tactics to resist militaryaggression against the Poor community. It is a foolish and unfortunate traitamong Anarchists, the Middle Class Left and sections of the Working Classmovement to condemn the study of military skills as premature or adventuris-tic, or on the other hand, to cast oneself into a blind fury of bank expropria-tions, kidnappings, bombings or plane hijackings. Too many people in themovement have a death trip approach to guns - they assume that if you arenot fooling around, then you should prove your convictions via a suicidal

shoot-out in the streets. It doesn’t have to be that way.But the movement doesn’t even have the luxury of such tepid debates, andmust have an armed defence policy because we have a long tradition of gov-ernment political repression and vigilante paramilitary violence. Although suchattacks have been directed primarily at poor communities, in the past theyhave also been directed at labour unions and dissident political groups. Suchviolence makes it absolutely necessary to acquire familiarity with firearms andmilitary tactics. In fact, the Poor resistance movement that I spoke of earliershould think of itself as a paramilitary movement, rather than a strict political

association. We must assert our rights to armed self-defence and revolution,even though it is true that there is a lot of loose talk about guns, self-defence,revolution, urban guerrilla warfare, etc., in the Working and radical move-ments, but with very little study and practice in handling and using weapons.Some of the same folks think picking up the gun means that you pick one upfor the first time on the day of an insurrection or confrontation with police. Thisis nonsense and is the real revolutionary suicide; you could get killed notknowing what you are doing. But many instances attest to the fact that armedcommunity self-defence can be carried out successfully. Even as important as

the act of defence itself is, is the fact that these instances of successful self-defence can make a tremendous impact on the Black community, encourag-ing other acts of resistance.

Onward to the Social Revolution!

community control of the poor community

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