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[This will likely be my final word on gun matters at this point] Speaking as a life-long activist organizer: Thanks for posting that, [oldest son] John [Salter]. [Attached] It's very difficult for people in cloistered settings, even those inclined to be very sympathetic, to really grasp the realities of frequently lethal danger in highly charged atmospheres -- especially where one and one's family are special targets. They can read about these things in their living rooms, see sanguinary events far and away on television sets. But it's impossible to fully and deeply grasp the potentially deadly atmosphere unless one is actually and tangibly on the scene itself. You have to be in a targeted house in Chicago or living on the very edge of the Tougaloo College campus and a very, very short distance from Klan-traveling County Line Road, a house on the edges of a small and isolated fine little Navajo community like Tsaile [with night-time Skinwalkers on the predatory prowl], on an isolated rural road in Mississippi or Eastern North Carolina or the copper district in Arizona -- or quite a number of other places and situations I can personally and experientially cite [as can others in our family] such as right here and right now on the far-up edge of an Idaho town. Or, for other and non-activist people, living in low-income settings where the crime rate is high and police service is negatively discriminatory -- or sluggish and slow -- or non-existent. Those are the times where firearm possession was and is the very best insurance policy. At some points in my organizing career, my only conventional insurance policy was my GI policy [$10,000] -- since I couldn't get a commercial policy for obvious reasons. This is why I'm tired -- not tired of fighting for that will never happen. But damned tired of cloistered anti-gun bleating by people who have never been in those situations -- and never will be. Hunter Bear [for himself and a very large family and for all of the real -- real -- activist social justice organizers and the grassroots people of the fewest alternatives.] >From John Salter: What I recall growing up, especially in Chicago, were threatening phone calls, hostile police, lurkers in the yard intent on harm. We weren't allowed to answer the phone or door, which had a huge chain around it. Bars on the windows, etc. It was comforting to see the rifles on the wall, because these rifles, in our father's hands, were the only thing protecting us. There are inner-city women with protection orders against abusive men; in some of these places, especially in the projects, police response time can be too long to prevent violence, if they show up at all. Do any of yuo wish to deny these victimized women the right to protect themselves and their children? The FBI's own numbers show that over 700,000 times a year, gun-owning people prevent themselves and their families from being crime victims. And that inumber is based only on reported incidents. HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old. It contains a vast amount of social justice material -- including much on techniques of grassroots activist organizing. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See - Outlaw Trail: The Native As Organizer: http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions & Voices: Native American Activism [2009] See - Just What Makes A Damn Good Community Organizer: http://www.hunterbear.org/just_what_makes_a_damn_good_comm.htm And See - Gray Lands And Gray Ghosts: The Time Of Flint: http://hunterbear.org/GRAY%20LANDS%20AND%20GRAY%20GHOSTS.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
