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Setting Sights
Setting Sights

Setting Sights

Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense

Edited by scott crow, Foreword by Ward Churchill

POLITICAL SCIENCE

336 Pages, 6 x 9

Formats: Trade Paper, EPUB, PDF, Mobipocket

Trade Paper, $24.95 (US $24.95) (CA $33.95)

Publication Date: January 2018

ISBN 9781629634449

Rights: WOR X UK & EUR

PM Press (Jan 2018)

eBook

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Overview

This wide-ranging anthology uncovers the hidden histories 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 20th and 21st 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.

Reviews

"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  

"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

"If these factors are, as Taylor presents them, bound together like blood and sinew, then gun control should be a left-wing position. The history is certainly more complicated than that. And, if you're on the fence about the potential for armed self-defense, Setting Sights will certainly give you a lot to think about." —Ben Curttright, https://philadelphiapartisan.com/

"'The rise of white nationalism and racism has reared its ugly head in ways i haven't seen in 30 years,' said Scott Crow, an author, spokesman for Agency, an anarchist media collective, and former anti-fascist organizer. 'Anarchists are willing to take steps that other people aren't.'" —Author quoted in USA Today

Author Biography

scott crow is an international speaker and author. His first book, Black Flags and Windmills was included on NPR's Top Summer Reads of 2015. 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. Until 2012, Ward Churchill was 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 Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969.