MXGM Self-Defence Manual

;
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement March 2013
• Build Alliances, Coalitions, and/or Fronts. None of our political and social formations
has the ability to successfully defend our people from the external and internal threats
that we face on their own. This means that we have to rely on each other to expand
our overall reach, capacity, and power. This calls for building solid alliances,
coalitions, and/or fronts based on a shared agenda, strategy, and principles to meet
the needs of our people.
• Build the Broader Movement. Alliances, Coalitions, and United Fronts are also limited
in their capacity and ability to create the broader social transformation that we need.
Our organizations and coalitions must build and inspire mass movements that appeal
to millions of our people. Those millions are not in political organizations. Only a
mass movement will change their views of the system and compel them to act in
concrete ways to transform it by organizing directly against its interests (copwatch,
self-defense networks), disrupting its functioning (non-compliance campaigns),
directly confronting its policies and structures (direct action and demonstrations of
various kinds), or building autonomous institutions (people’s assemblies).
Our organizing must aim for a balance between two strategic goals. First, we need initiatives
to radically transform the social structures of the world to eliminate the systems of oppression
like capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heterosexism that confine us to
states of oppression and exploitation. Second, we need initiatives to transform ourselves and
our communities through autonomous, self-reliant institution building, resource
maximization, resource development, and community care.
8