REBELIÓN: Angela Davis is not a legend, she is still an activist

21-09-2010

Ángela Castellanos Aranguren

SEMIac

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=113362

“Women have been fighting against sexual and domestic violence, and they have achieved important legal rights at an important national level, yet despite this, such violence has not diminished, it is pandemic in the world at large”. This statement was reiterated to SENlac at a press conference, by Angela Davis the American veteran activist for African-American rights, who visited Bogotá from September 13 -17.

She no longer sports the famous ‘afro’ which made her so recognizable, but she maintains a hair mop that bounces with her decisive step and accentuates her head as it nods through her affirmations against the penitentiary system, racism and machoism.

Her smile and ease with words continue to accompany her at conferences both at the University of California —where she is professor of Philosophy— and at external speaking events such as the recent one at the National University of Columbia having been invited by the School of Gender Studies at said institution.

The seventies leader of struggle against racism in the United States, student of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, member of the Communist Party and of the Black Panthers, and in those years persecuted by the FBI, today continues to be active in both teaching and civil struggles.

Women and Feminisms

Feminism has been perceived as a movement of white women; yet Davies, in her book Women, Race and Class (1981) holds that the feminist movement has its roots in the struggles of African-American working class women, and not just in the white middle classes. Davis, at 66, assures that “In the processes of taking industrialisation from the North to the South, it is women who are the workers in the global assembly line. Thus, we can’t visualize a future of gender or race equality without a struggle against capitalism”.

She prefers to speak about the feminist context rather than the feminist movement. In fact, she refers to the latter as a strategic approximation. She explains that “independently of whether a woman or a man recognise themselves as feminists, what matters is that they act from a feminist perspective; that is, that they generate strategies to advocate different struggles and assemble many people”. The activist-docent adds that “one of the contributions of ‘Black Feminism’ was to collectively think about topics that up to that point had been thought of separately. She iterates, “we need to connect struggles; for example, indigenous issues with those of Afro-descendants. This is a feminist strategy”.

Racism is present

According to Davis’s view, racism has transformed but it has not disappeared; even though the presidency of the United States of America is held by an African-American. “The thing is, we thought that we fulfilled the task of getting (Barack) Obama to the presidency and then we just continued with our everyday lives, when in fact now is the time when we must put the most pressure on issues such as the total withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan” she stressed.

For Davis, racism is profoundly entrenched within different social spheres. An example of this, is that the majority of the student population is white, whilst the majority of people in jail are black. “Racism manifests in people’s attitudes, but it is actually deeply inserted in the economic, social and political structures. This is why we need a strong movement that fights for free health and education for all, as these are areas where racism is strong” Davis proposed.

For the abolition of jails

At the beginning of the seventies, Davis was interested in the improvement of conditions for prisoners; and this led to her involvement in the murder of the Soledad Brothers. As will be remembered, in 1973, Nolen, an African-American member of the Black Panthers together with two other prisoners were murdered by a guard of the La Soledad prison in the United States. After this, a jail man of the San Quintin prison murdered George Jackson, friend and co-party member of Nolen.

According to the official version, Jackson was trying to escape and was armed with a gun. Davis was accused of introducing such a weapon to the recluse centre and was subsequently included in the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ list, detained, and finally freed without charges.

These events awoke in her a questioning of the penitentiary system that she had been fighting to eliminate for a decade through the abolitionist movement. Davis acutely argues that “we are dedicated to thinking not how to punish violence, but how to bring an end to a system that produces violence”.

Her participation in social movements and her defence of civil rights were recognised in 2006, when she received the Thomas Merton award for individuals fighting for justice.

Translated by Yael Gerson Allen / Ciranda