Angela Y. Davis

Activist, teacher, author and icon of the Black Power movement Angela Davis talks Ferguson, Palestine, and prison abolition.

Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

Placing the question of violence at the forefront almost inevitably serves to obscure the issues that are at the center of struggles for justice

If you seek collective liberation, then you will be collectively punished

Sophia 

imprisonment is increasingly used as a strategy of deflection of the underlying social problems racism, poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and so on. These issues are never seriously addressed. It is only a matter of time before people begin to realize that the prison is a false solution. Abolitionist advocacy can and should occur in relation to demands for quality education, for antiracist job strategies, for free health care, and within other progressive movements. It can help promote an anticapitalist critique and movements toward socialism.

We are still faced with the challenge of understanding the complex ways race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, and ability are intertwined but also how we move beyond these categories to understand the interrelationships of ideas and processes that seem to be separate and unrelated. Insisting on the connections between struggles and racism in the US and struggles against the Israeli repression of Palestinians, in this sense, is a feminist process.

It is easy to feel discouraged and simply let go. There is no shame in that. We are, after all, engaged in a struggle that seems, if we look at it using a mainstream political framework and through a mass media prism, unwinnable. On the other hand, if we take a step back, look at things from a broader angle, reflecting on what is happening all over the world and the history of struggle, the history of solidarity movements, it becomes clear, sometimes even obvious, that seemingly indestructible forces can be, thanks to people's willpower, sacrifices, and actions, easily broken.

Angelyn Francis

There were many good nuggets of wisdom and connections here. It's a good read from 2016 and prior, especially now. Since it's speeches and interviews, it isn't as in-depth as it could be, but many of the mentions invite further research.

angela y. davis is my biggest hero and i cannot believe we get to exist on the same planet as her 

annalyse! 

Molly M

the importance of this book speaks for itself, so i don’t have anything to add there, but we must demand better for trans liberation, body liberation, disabled liberation, and everyone who is in the margins of the margins. i don’t think we have to doom ourselves to become the modern versions of our racist grandparents.

cried multiple times while reading this book,, reading about global struggles through angela y. davis fuels me with hope....a lot of us are struggling rn to navigate our relationships with individuals + communities as we become more politically/socially agitated and this was a good reminder that it's part of the struggle and that to a certain extent, we have to trust people can be good and there are many ways we can engage in dialogue. angela davis does an amazing job connecting many global struggles together in a way that makes sense to all audiences.

kezzie

so so so bleak how the the interviews and speech that were written 10 years ago are still very prevalent in these days’ issues… so so so much work to be done but. palestine will be free and power to the people. 

Syasya Diyana 

This is a must read for anyone wanting to learn more about how “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Summerlyn Grainger

I learned a lot. This book was a good starting point into nonfiction texts for me. The separate speeches/essays made reading and digesting information more approachable. I highly recommend this book. 

It’s a collection of essays. Various speeches hold by Angela Y Davis where she gives thoughtful analysis on oppression, systemic racism, the role of feminism in all this and so on. Angela Y Davis is so full of knowledge and I like that her analysis is not US centred and is aware of the struggles in other countries’ minorities and so on. 

 « Too often people feel that they are not sufficiently informed to consider themselves advocate of justice in Palestine. »

 « How to explain to people what is happening in Palestine is also about them and vice versa for the people of Palestine. How to make the struggle truly a global one which everybody on the planet has a part to play and understands that role. How do we respond collectively to the millitarisation of our societies. »

Amira BEN

A few words

Mind blowing and Eye Opening. 

It’s a collection of essays. Various speeches hold by Angela Y Davis where she gives thoughtful analysis on oppression, systemic racism, the role of feminism in all this and so on. Angela Y Davis is so full of knowledge and I like that her analysis is not US centred and is aware of the struggles in other countries’ minorities and so on. 

Freedom IS indeed a constant struggle.

 « Too often people feel that they are not sufficiently informed to consider themselves advocate of justice in Palestine. »

 « How to explain to people what is happening in Palestine is also about them and vice versa for the people of Palestine. How to make the struggle truly a global one which everybody on the planet has a part to play and understands that role. How do we respond collectively to the millitarisation of our societies. »

Nice topic,  hard to stay engaged though  

Amanda Collier

Unfortunately I thought the three first interviews to be a bit underwhelming.

Nonetheless all her speeches were next to brilliant.

Oscar Kömpel

Great!

Unfortunately I thought the three first interviews to be a bit underwhelming.

Nonetheless all her speeches were next to brilliant.

Rebecca Lum

Emily Morgan

“We will have to go to great lengths. We cannot go on as usual. We cannot pivot the center. We cannot be moderate. We will have to be willing to stand up and say no with our combined spirits, our collective intellects, and our many bodies.”

Bowie 

Imane

She made all the points and she connected all the dots!

Alyssa Jacunski

As we've all been navigating 2020 through the pandemic and the murders of several Black individuals that have received national attention, I knew it was time to visit a book by the one and only Angela Davis. 

A collection of interviews, essays and speeches, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle is an illuminating view of the struggles against state violence throughout history and around the world. Notably, Davis shares context and information related to Ferguson, Palestine and the South African anti-Apartheid movement. 

Being familiar with the events of 2020 and the calls to defund the police, this collection resonated with me. I found myself motivated by Davis' words, while continuously learning new information and perspectives. Reading an e-copy from my library, I highlighted so many lines that I truly cannot wait to get my hands on my own physical copy. It's been several week since I read this and I still cannot formulate coherent thoughts on this collection. It's well-written / articulated, covers a lot of topics and all related to items that are still relevant today. I'm looking forward to reading more of Davis' works.

There are trigger and content warnings with this collection. Notably, state violence and oppression.

Sophie Shrimpton

Getting through this book was agonising. I should have done my research in advance so that I knew it was a collection of speeches that were unlikely to analyse any particular topic in any depth. The repetition was almost the death of me, and I only got through by spacing out each speech and zoning out unless there was a shiny new example or piece of analysis for me to think about. Otherwise, I knew all the basic principles and ideas. To sum up: all struggle is endless and interconnected. 

Audiobook 'read'

The shiny pieces of analysis that got me thru:
- G4s, biggest private security group in the world, third largest private company in the world, is involved in prisons, detention facilities and security everywhere (American prisons, Israeli defence etc)
- Complaining about Palestinians starting the violence is saying the oppressed need to ensure the safety of the oppressor
- Militarisation of the police: purpose of the police is to protect and serve, but soldiers are trained to shoot to kill.
- Israeli police have been involved in the training of US police
- Does not matter if a black woman heads the police - the technology, regime and targets are the same
- Intersectionality was initially about bodies and experiences, but now is about global solidarity
- On black people not turning up to anti-racist events: they need to be present in the organising from the beginning and to see it as their struggle (not just be invited along later). Movements need to be created in the context of the struggles themselves. 
- People only support movements if it is their struggle, not merely your struggle
- People are wrapped up with their narrow concerns - need to make them see the bigger picture/identify with broader ideas to support broader struggles
- Can't just remove material institutions. Need to ask deeper questions. E.g. prisons foreclose the question of what is bad and good, need to ask questions AND remove institution
- Quakers created prison as a more humane alternative to then-existing forms of punishment because it would allow rehabilitation
- Prison serves as an institution that consolidates a states inability and refusal to address social issues
- Removing slavery is not enough. Also have to create institutions that allow formerly enslaved people to enter democratic world
- Problem with prison reform: if think of prisoners as objects of charity of others, defeat purpose of anti-prison work as you are constituting them as inferior. Need actual participation of prisoners
- Have to end narrow identitarian thinking if we want people to embrace these struggles as their own
- Can't rely on governments to do the work that only mass movements can do
- Insights do not belong to individuals, but to moments, and our role is to share them
- Gramsci - optimism of the will, and pessimism of the intellect
- There was collaboration between the CIA and the South African apartheid government. CIA agent gave whereabouts of Nelson Mandela so he could be imprisoned. His name was only taken off the terrorist watchlist in 2008.
- Schools use the same methods of detection as schools, and sometimes even the same law enforcement agents. Some schools patrolled by armed officers. Teachers given guns and target practice.
- Palestinians transformed into immigrants against their will, on their own ancestral lands
- Lincoln did not free slaves with a stroke of his pen. Did not impact four border states (as they were not in rebellion) and it exempted some of the confederacy. Left 750k slaves in bondage. Focus on it also erases the agency of black people themselves
- Du Bois: Black worker won the Civil War through a general strike which transferred his labour from the confederate planter to Northern invader
- Black Panther 10 point plan
- Acknowledge connections between 19thC anti-slavery struggles, 20thC civil right struggles and 21stC abolitionist struggles
- We cannot romanticise leaderlessness. We should disinvest from Messianic, charismatic leader who promises political salvation. Still need strategy, organisation, mobilisation and consensus building. 
- Any criticism of racism must involve a criticism of universalism e.g. "human" did not include black people for a long time
- Don't try to assimilate transwomen into the category "woman", which remains the same, but the category itself has to change so it does not reflect normative ideas of what a woman is
- We reflect retributive justice in our own emotional responses - the retributive responses of the state are inscribed in our emotional responses
- William Faulkner: The past is never dead, it's not even past
- Knowledge so commodified that most people don't even know how to acquire it because it is subordinated to the future capacity to make money
- More black people incarcerated in 2010's than were enslaved in 1850
- Our political discourse has become flat e.g. can't talk about working class anymore
- Can be opposed to the military but can support gay rights within it - embrace feminist contradiction
- Marriage as a capitalist institution designed to guarantee the distribution of property
- Capitalist production of food making people ill/suffer ("food politics")
- Marthin Luther King Jr: Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Ivy League Universities were founded on slavery
- Our histories never unfold in isolation. Cannot tell our own histories without telling the other stories. Dialectical process that requires us to always retell and revise our stories.
- Native Americans have highest per capita incarceration rate
- Carceral feminisms (criminalising those who engage in domestic violence) do the work of the state
- Focussing on individual perpetrators (e.g. white cops shooting black people) is racist - reproducing the same violence you assume you are contesting
- We often do the work of the state through our interior and emotional lives. It is produced elsewhere and is recruited to do the work of racism and oppression. Corporations have worked out how to use this e.g. express our innermost dreams in terms of capitalist commodities (internalised exchange value)
- Distinguish between outcome and impact (even if no tangible outcome, can still be impact e.g. solve problems without police and how to be together without the scaffolding of the state)

In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, the renowned activist examines today’s issues—from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition and more. Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis has been a tireless fighter against oppression for decades. Now, the iconic author of Women, Race, and Class offers her latest insights into the struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build a movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “freedom is a constant struggle.” This edition of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle includes a foreword by Dr. Cornel West and an introduction by Frank Barat.

Brook

This was a really incredible book, and the first time I'd read one by Angela Davis. Powerful words about feminism, Palestine, Black Lives Matter, dismantling the security state, prison and police abolition, and trans rights. It's a collection of interviews and speeches, and a lot of the included sections retread the same territory, as her message is consistent. Despite this, I read every speech with joy, as her writing is well-crafted, and strongly conveys her message. I hope more folks read this and absorb her message. We'll need to stay centered on black feminism and an intersectional and international lens for our work in the coming days and years.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

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