s just some petty bourgeois, HOA-ass,...¶

Unironically, yes.

Not like Shomrim though, that's just some petty bourgeois, HOA-ass, peeping-through-curtains-with-binoculars-at-Debra's-eyesore-of-a-birdbath, white nonsense.

But yes, oppressed groups absolutely should be defended by organized, armed, trained security forces https://t.co/39WLAOEmtd By the way, if your "radical org" has no plans to ever progress to the point of having both the mass support and the organizational resources to form such security forces, it's not really a radical organization. And any gains you hope to make will be gone in an instant. By the same token, if you have intentions of just jumping right in and appearing on the streets with a dozen armed strangers without any internal ideological development or community buy-in, you are just LARPing, and you will similarly be crushed. Militarization needs to be developed as part of an organization's general political program, emerging from the mutually-reinforcing process of building trust and support among your people and materially demonstrating why you can be trusted. Any armed movement must be democratic. In the coming years, the need for this will only ever increase. Especially if you plan to build a movement which actually materially improves the lives of oppressed people -- you will be under attack, from both fascist vigilantism and the state itself. The ability to actually meet this violence and repulse it is a critical step in heightening the struggle to a more mature stage. Armed resistance becomes more and more necessary, and will require more and more organization and centralization. Failing to militarize means failing to progress, and relegating both your community and your movement to constant repression by those who already do and will continue to wield violence to keep you in line. This understanding marks the distinction between reformism and revolution.