It seems only common sense, with the state out to get you, that you supplement community organizing and nonviolent action tactics with armed self-defense. While I know of instances when individual violent self-defense paid off pragmatically, the track record of organizations that have tried that policy is sobering.

The best-known case in the U.S. is the Black Panther Party, which did community organizing, ran educational programs, created breakfast programs for poor children, and adopted a policy of armed self-defense. The Panthers were not developing an armed struggle for social change. That choice enabled them to stay close to the people they were organizing, in contrast to the experiment by the Weather Underground to try to create an armed revolution that resulted in their isolation from the people and political irrelevance.

Even though the Panthers claimed a right to self-defense that many fair-minded U.S. citizens would say is part of our tradition, they were cut down. Their effort to create the capacity for armed self-defense gave the racist federal government the opening it needed to destroy at least one of its enemies.

The government would have liked to destroy the nonviolent Black freedom organizations as well, and F.B.I. chief J. Edgar Hoover did try to destroy the influence of Dr. King, but the government could only go so far in acting against explicitly nonviolent organizations. That's why governments repeatedly pay spies to join nonviolent movements and try to turn them violent. The government often needs movements to be violent in order to be able to repress them effectively.

In a strange twist, there are times when violent forces actually need to be protected by nonviolent action.

When the Black Panther Party wanted to have a national convention in Philadelphia, they had difficulty getting a venue. Quakers gave them the use of their largest Meetinghouse. Police chief Frank Rizzo saw this as an opportunity to swagger and threaten, and no one could be sure what the provocation might lead to. So Quakers circled the Meetinghouse and stood shoulder to shoulder to create a protective shield between the police and the Panthers.

On a larger scale this was repeated in the Philippines during the 1986 overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Toward the end of the struggle a part of the army, led by General Ramos, went over to the people's side. Marcos still controlled the larger part of the army, which he ordered to attack Ramos' camp and subdue the rebellion. Catholic radio stations working with the people power movement sounded the alarm. Many thousands of Filipinos rushed to the site, intervened between the Marcos loyalists and the rebels, and nonviolently immobilized the loyalist troops, thereby saving the outgunned rebel soldiers.