Several niche, left-leaning gun advocacy groups said that since the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, they can hardly keep up with the surging demand for firearms training.
With Donald Trump sending armed federal agents into communities around the country, even more once gun-shy liberals and leftists are considering getting armed.
And while Americans tend to think of gun owners as leaning more Republican and male, already more women, gay people and people of color have taken up arms in recent years, particularly after 2020.
I agree with ensuring not to subordinate leftist orgs to liberals BUT we must be open to them joining our spaces. How else are we going to bring our ideas to them? Many liberals just need a push in the right direction to seeing the web of evil that all comes from capitalism but they aren’t going to get that as readily if we are actively turning them away. We have to be willing to meet people where they are at and educate them especially these people self selecting into more radical groups who are definitely more easily agitated into broader political engagement.
We can work with them in their own organizations and share ideas and when they align closer to socialist/communist ideology then they can join us. Nearly 40 years of activism has taught me the Black Panther approach to organizing works best.
I fundamentally disagree with this as an effective tool for building a mass movement that is necessary for the change we want to foment. We cannot achieve these goals by beginning our fight as a fractured base - this is why political education is such an important part of the process in organizing new people into these movements. Not a single person raised in liberal society popped out of the womb as a leftist - every one of us had someone pull us into this fight in one way or another and kick start our development as political actors. As people able to do that for others now I see it as our duty to do so.