RENWL

Dreaming of Justice, Still in the Struggle
… An Afternoon with
Angela Y. Davis

February 21, 2010
WLCAC, Phoenix Hall
10950 Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90059

Black civil rights icon and social activist the extraordinary Angela Davis will be appearing in Los Angeles at a speaking engagement on Sunday February 21.  The event is a fundraiser for A New Way of Life organization, a not-for-profit that helps women transition from prison. The organization helps women reunite with their children, get jobs and stay sober while providing political education to help them understand the criminal justice system and how to change it.

Angela Davis’s life story is so amazing and bigger than life that is VERY easy to romanticize her —much like the public does a mythic super-star. But the fact is, that’s where she’s at historically—-the realm of superstardom in terms of activism, black consciousness and social revolution . She certainly was the most famous female figure of the civil rights movement. For LGBT activists and community members not in the know, Angela Davis, now a retired university professor, gained notoriety during the black civil rights movement in the ‘60s. A member of the Black Panther movement, Davis landed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List in 1970 for her alleged involvement in the murder of Marin County Judge Harold Haley. She was eventually arrested and put on trial. After spending a year and a half in jail she was acquitted of any charges related to Judge Haley’s murder.

But what gets washed over about this amazing woman is her incredible educational background prior to becoming involved with the Black Panther movement and her work since her acquittal in 1970. At the time of her trial, Davis was assistant professor in the philosophy department at UCLA. (It should be noted that she was fired from her position at UCLA for being a communist under Reagan’s California governorship). She’d been educated at Brandeis University and spent some time study abroad in France and Germany. Upon her acquittal in 1972, Davis moved to Cuba for a spell where she joined fellow Black Panther Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael.

Davis ran for Vice President on the Communist ticket in 1977. Later on, was one of the principal founders of Critical Resistance, an organization founded to abolish the prison system in the US. She continued to lecture at various universities and colleges throughout the US before teaching full-time in the History of Consciousness Department at UC Santa Cruz. She also became director of the University’s Feminist Department.

In 1997 Davis came out as a lesbian, a subject about which she had long been reluctant to speak openly.  However in 1999 she delivered an address at Johns Hopkins University’s “Living Out Loud” program, a series of lectures, films and events presented by the Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance, an undergraduate group on campus. In her speech, Davis focused on how issues of race and class affect the gay movement.

Retired from teaching, today Davis is a member of the executive board of the Women of Color Resource Center, a San Francisco Bay Area organization that emphasizes popular education – of and about women who live in conditions of poverty. She also works with Justice Now, which provides legal assistance to women in prison and engages in advocacy for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant strategy for addressing social problems. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, a similar organization based in Queensland, Australia.

Miss Davis is about the empowerment and advancement of women of color straight up. For ticket info to her speaking engagement here in Los Angeles you can go to this link: A New Way Of Life

Watch this interview with Davis October 2008 one month prior to Baraka Obama’s election. Very interesting some of the things she has to say on race and the idea of a post-racial America.

List of Davis’s books:

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003); Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women (2001); Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader (1999); The Angela Y. Davis Reader (1998); The House That Race Built (1998); Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture(1996); Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism (1992); Women, Culture, and Politics (1989); Women, Race, and Class (1981); Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974); and If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (1971).

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