This is an essay that proposes a simple hypothesis with enormous political effects: every time in history a minority is prohibited from using its own force to defend itself, a group is empowered to arm itself and use those weapons against that minority. Expropriated violence, legitimized violence. This is how the history of the English anarchist suffragettes, the slaves, the American black women and the Black Party, the French militia women and… some of us in the big cities is revived and made visible.