The characteristics crow identifies as setting community defense apart are fundamental, touching on questions of ideology, strategy, and organization. Ideologically, he says, "the liberatory framework is built on anarchist principles" such as mutual aid, direct action, solidarity, and "collective autonomy (community-self-determination)." Strategically, the objective is not "to seize state power" but to defend the social space in which communities may develop relationships and exercise power outside of the state's control. Organizationally, crow recommends "maintain[ing] a balance of power, [by] rotat[ing] all armed tasks and training among all those willing to participate." Likewise, the armed work needs to be integrated within the larger political project: "All firearms training needs to include dynamic and evolving liberatory ethics and practices in addition to how-to and safety." It follows too that violence ought never to be given primacy, either to the internal politics of the movement or in its relations with the broader society: "Those engaged with guns should hold the same power as others involved in other forms of community defense or self-sufficiency. Carrying arms should be seen as... [having] the same importance as childcare, growing food, or taking out the garbage–and not more." Even in narrowly defensive terms, the military capacity should not be the defining approach to political problems: "Arms are not the first line of defense and are only taken up when other forms of conflict resolution have been exhausted." In every respect–ideologically, strategically, and organizationally–military capacity, while necessary, must always remain secondary to the political project. Perhaps the most important element of "Liberatory Community Armed Self-Defense" is community. (Armed should be the least important.) However liberatory the ideology motivating it, to the degree that the group bearing arms understands itself as a distinct and sepаrate entity, there are likely to be problems–elitism, vanguardism, authoritarianism, machismo, and the myriad ills they produce.

— Gang Politics by Kristian Williams (Page 118 - 119)