Angela Davis
Last night (12/4/00), I went to go see Angela Davis speak at Martin Luther
King, Jr. Middle School on Rose Street in Berkeley. Her topic for the evening
was "The Criminalization of Our Youth." I'd asked several friends to join
me for the evening and was excited when I heard from Marcus late in the
day that he was interested in heading over there with me.
Ms. Davis commented on the recent presidential race and associated legal
proceedings. She read from a "column" from a newspaper
in Zimbabwe. I received this "article" from several different friends via
e-mail.
The strongest message I received for the evening was to take the our losses
(For most of us in the packed auditorium, either Gore or Bush as president
represents a loss.) and create victory.
The evening began with a brief discussion of the sponsor/beneficiary of
the evening's event,
the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library.
Then a young lawyer introduced Angela Davis with a powerful retelling of
the history of Ms. Davis' personal "criminalization" by the FBI, her flight
trial, acquittal and subsequent career as a leader of speaking from outside
of the orthodoxy. I was struck by the impact Ms. Davis had quite obviously
had on the life of the young woman who was introducing her.
Angela Davis looked much as she had every other time I've seen her in recent
years. She spoke somewhat professorially in tone, but not in content. She
talked about the economics of the "Prison
Industrial Complex." She pointed out that 1/3 of African-American males
of voting age in Florida were unable to vote because of their history of
interface with the Prison Industrial Complex. She talked about the folks
who had come together a couple of years ago at UC Berkeley called Critical
Resistance and the upcoming second round in New York early next year.
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