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

by Angela Y. Davis, Cornel West (Foreword), Frank Barat (Introduction)

In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.

Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, 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 the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "Freedom is a constant struggle."

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Feminism, Race, Social Justice, History, Essays

158 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2015

About the author

Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.

Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.

Reviews

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are all so lucky to be alive at the same time as Angela Davis.

[len ❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement carries a lot of important information that we should know. Angela Davis not only talks about movements and topics she is passionate about - like prison abolition, feminism, rights for BIPOC - but also emphasizes on the importance of understanding the history Black people have gone through, what civil rights movements have achieved for the people in the United States and other countries around the world, and what it means to stand in solidarity with Black people and other minority groups.

Although the book cites and specifies many important things we should start considering, understanding, and realizing, the speeches provided were repetitive. I appreciated the interviews more because of the questions asked along them, which allowed me to ask myself questions and get a broader understanding of the point trying to be made. I understand how sometimes it is necessary to repeat points over and over because, sadly, sometimes people don't want to listen. With that being said, instead of putting repetitive and similar interviews and mentioning topics that were not covered too in depth, I feel like the structure of the book would have been better if, instead of repeating things and only touching on them, the writer/author went more in depth of what she tried to convey. For example, Angela is clearly passionate about prison abolition, so instead of repeating her similar points, it would have been better to go more in depth about it. The same goes for the mentions of feminism, Palestine, and more on Ferguson.

The book is still an educational read, and I think it is still important to read it because of how much information is provided. Going into it with an open-mind is important, but I truly wish I had enjoyed this book more.

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant collection of interviews and speeches by Angela Y. Davis concerning racism, activism, feminism, state violence, and more. I read this over a period of two days but I think it would be better to read an interview or essay a week as it becomes repetitive after a while if you read them all at once.
 
The world needs more Angela Davises. She is incredible, compassionate, intelligent, insightful, and passionate about creating an equal world for all. These qualities shine through on every page of this book.

Though my interest waned towards the end, it was because I read it all at once instead of over time. It still deserves the 5 stars I'm rating it. I will be reflecting on Ms. Davis' words for some time to come.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful collection of interviews, speeches, and essays from Angela Davis. She focuses on the importance of Black Lives Matter and Black feminism, while emphasizing the importance of connecting white supremacy within the United States to other forms of state violence and oppression throughout the world. Some salient takeaways I walked away with included: the drawbacks of individualism and the strength of collective movements for social justice, the necessity of taking a global perspective on issues of equity and justice, and how we can opt into oppressive systems even if we hold marginalized identities (e.g., Black people becoming members of the police force). Davis also expresses solidarity with Palestinians’ struggles for liberation and writes about the interconnections of Israeli and US militarization.

The pieces in this collection are brief so folks may want to read additional texts to gain a more in-depth perspective on the issues Davis raises. Still a solid place to start and articulated intelligently and forthrightly too.

[Jean Menzies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to talk about this one more either on my channel or on my blog (or both?) but in the mean time everyone else should read it!
The discussion on my channel so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CWJB...

[Tunde · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given this book a five stars but the second half of the book pulls from different speeches Angela Davis has given over the past couple of years. Some of the speeches became repetitive. While what she was saying needed to be repeated I felt those pages could have been better served diving deeper into the history of certain Palestinian or Turkish political prisoners instead of glossing over names.

[li.reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remains incredibly relevant, 10 years after publication, and decades into angela y. davis’ activism.

[Emma Griffioen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very impressed by the first Angela Y. Davis work I've read. I wouldn't suggest this as your first read on this topic, but it was very informative. Review to come! ❤️

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Wanted to love this, but I found myself getting confused as to whether or not I was re-reading the same speech. It was redundant and didn't feel like time and care was put into making this. The points about the connections from Ferguson to Palestine weren't really completely filled out, because it was just quick mentions in various speeches. There were some nice teachings on prison abolition, but overall I wanted more.

[Prerna · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these various speeches, interviews and essays, Angela Davis strikingly and brilliantly (as always) draws the parallels between capitalist individualism, neoliberalism and racism, poverty, repression. They perpetually feed on and spawn each other. She also points out the dangers of tying down entire revolt movements to single, deified individuals. While these individuals (like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr) certainly had prominent roles to play, these movements are a collective phenomena, and to identify them with single, monumental personas is to remove our own personal agencies from an expanding community struggle.

As always she talks about feminism, prison industrial complex, racism but she also advocates for a new vocabulary to talk about repressive systems since many of the terminologies we currently use are historically obsolete and only provide a shallow understanding. She provides the example of thinking that changes in the law spontaneously correspond to real world changes, when countless examples have shown that this is far from the truth. She also says that feminism must involve a consciousness of capitalism, post-coloniolism, racism and a much broader understanding of gender and sexuality. She writes about how the personal is political, about how our struggles against institution recrafts who we are.

Most interestingly she talks about Palestine and expresses solidarity with Palestinians' struggle for liberation. Israel has also helped US in military training and security, so she emphasizes on how the forced apartheid is a global issue that we all need to identify with.

[Anabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I urge everyone to read this. Inform yourself about Palestine, the Prison-industrial complex, abolition movements, Black freedom struggles, and many other interconnected struggles. This book consists of interviews and speeches by Angela Y. Davis and it's such an important read, I couldn't recommend it enough.

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has known about Angela Davis but never read anything by her before, this was a great introduction to her. It's very accessible, told either in the form of conversations with Frank Barat or through various transcripts of speeches Davis gave around 2013-2015. Because of this nature, it is at times a bit redundant. But the ways in which she brings to light connections between various freedom movements across the world is powerful.

It's refreshing to read something that moves so far beyond the individual, in fact rejecting the ideology of neoliberal capitalism completely, and focusing instead on how we can only move forward as a species when we recognize the intersectionality of our causes. I imagine this would be great on audiobook too, if that will help you get into the material more. It's 10 chapters, each can be read in a short sitting. So even if you're not someone who is inclined to pick up non-fiction or perhaps just not a reader of this type of non-fiction, I'd encourage you to check it out.

My biggest takeaways were learning about what G4S is, how much the US is financially supporting Israel every day, how Israeli military practices have literally been used as training for the militarization of the US police department, and thinking in new ways about how to deconstruct the myths of capitalism and the very real effects it has on our day to day lives. For such a short book, it's surprisingly dense and has a lot to unpack.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Freedom is still more expansive than civil rights."

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about what was excluded from my education. Why are some voices or contributions left out? Is it simply a factor of a formula that there are only so many hours in a day, so many days in Black History month, or could there be other philosophies in play? Why do we only teach about civil "disobedience" that is peaceful and within a Christian framework? So Martin Luther King Jr., yes. Malcolm X and Angela Davis, no. Is it that she's a woman? A Communist?

I make no accusations. I do think it is interesting to think about. I finally heard Davis's name in Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and decided to read more.

Davis has been a radical activist for decades. She goes back to Black Panther Party days, although she did not stay a member for long, choosing the Communist party over the BPP when faced with the directive to choose. She still worked closely with the social justice mission of the party, and has ever since.

This book is slim, partially composed of a written interview exchange between Davis and the editor, and finished up with transcriptions of recent speeches Davis has given. Because of this structure there is a fair amount of repetition, but this does demonstrate which issues are prominent - militarization of police, getting rid of prisons, systemic racism, Palestine, immigration, ... actually let's let Davis sum up the issues:

"Here we are in the twenty-first century and we still can’t say that we have affordable housing and health care, and education has thoroughly become a commodity. It has been so thoroughly commoditized that many people don’t even know how to understand the very process of acquiring knowledge because it is subordinated to the future capacity to make money.”

Davis is a radical, but I enjoyed pushing my thinking farther than it usually goes. A few of her ideas I wanted to do more research on, so I was not agreeing with her on everything (but to be fair, not disagreeing either, just my first exposure to some of the ideas.) I admire her lifelong commitment to these causes, I can't imagine where she finds the emotional energy to persist.

Oh and one more quotation because it made me laugh:

“...We recently witnessed the reelection of Barack Obama. By this time everybody who may have been hoping that Obama was the messiah realized that he was simply the president of the United States of America. Simply the president of the racist, imperialist United States of America.”

[myo ⋆｡˚ ❀ * · Rating 5 out of 5]

this does get a bit repetitive and discusses the same thing over and over at one point but i really just took it as the author stressing how important that point in the conversation was?

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful and thought-provoking collection of essays and speeches from Angela Davis. It's wild that this was published in 2015 because so many things she talks about feel even more relevant now. Topics range from racism in America and the prison-industrial complex, to the treatment of Palestinians, intersectional feminism, and (presciently) how marriage equality was not nearly the end of the fight for LGBT+ rights including trans rights. Clearly I need to read more from Davis.

[Ebony (EKG) · Rating 5 out of 5]

in a society that continually pushes individualism, angela davis’ “freedom is a constant struggle” is an important reminder of the transnational struggle for freedom. drawing connections between the beginnings of the black lives matter movement, the occupation of palestine, and other instances of colonialism and genocide, this book is a collection of interviews and speeches that encouraged their audiences (and now readers) to reject an isolated view of both current and past events, and to see how each struggle for freedom is connected, no matter the time period, location or group involved. this was such an important read for me because i needed this reminder at this time. i read some and listened to davis’ narration of the audiobook, which i found to be even more impactful. i’m curious to read and hear her thoughts on what is presently happening, since all of these transcriptions come from the 2010s.

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm just gonna say this: I get along better with Palestinians than with American left wing people by far.

So Angela Davis is, of course, a prominent person in the fight against racism. Well known for her socialist activism, she's definitely had a lot of influence, especially with the Black Panthers. I'm always amazed by older people who are activists for so long. I imagine it takes a lot of character and grit so I was excited to learn more about her.

The book is built of short speeches and interviews. It's short but unfortunately, repeats itself. For example, Davis mentions that Palestinians tweeted Ferguson activists advice about tear gas 4 times or that she was on the FBI wanted list 5 times. Ideas weren't always coherent enough, as often happens in interviews and short speeches. I imagine this is a great book for people who are already familiar with her activism and want some more extra content.

Davis speaks of a broad framework: pro feminism, queer rights, immigration rights, Palestinian rights, anti- racism and capitalism. In her eyes, these are all one. Justice requires our full support of each of these. It is a personal failure not to equally support all of them equally or to see them as one cause.

On one hand, this makes sense on some level. If we claim to support Black people, there is room to fix all systems that hurt them. Systems feed each other. We cannot argue for Black liberation without recognizing the struggles of Black women, Black queer people, etc. We must recognize that the losers of capitalism are also often related to race.

However, what happens when principles clash? For example, climate change definitely hurts people of color and especially poor nations who are already suffering under the bulk of the capitalist world order. However, poverty is also incredibly destructive. How much do we spend on climate change vs alleviating poverty now? Intersectionality doesn't quite pinpoint prioritization- precisely because it is all encompassing.

In general, most of Davis' arguments can't quite translate into policy. It's great to speak of problems but it seems like it's all very theoretical and emotional, rather than actual ideas on how to change systematic issues. What are the correct policy decisions in order to alleviate poverty? How do we correctly apply those ideas? What does a post-colonial or post-capitalist society look like in practice?

I have an issue with intersectionality. There, I said it. Please notify me if I get kicked out of the leftist club. Sometimes, there are clashes between intersections and that's fine. As a queer person, an ideal world for me would be one where no one would ever speak of gender. This is not the ideal world of a cultural feminist. It's also not the ideal world for many cis trans people. Who gets priority here? Intersectionality cannot help us. Compromises and mutual understanding can.

And finally, let's talk about Palestine.

When Davis writes "end the occupation on Palestine" what does she means? Is she talking about the military occupation in the West Bank or is she talking about the entirety of Israel, as some Palestinians claim?

Moreover, what does she see as an end to the occupation? A Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza like the one that was offered several times and was turned down? Is she talking about one state? Does she know that one state binational solutions are unpopular, both among Israelis and among Palestinians? Does she care about what average Palestinians and Israelis think?

This is my ultimate issue with framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a similar situation to South Africa or the US. There's no road map for what comes next. This isn't a case of "give everyone equal rights and it gets solved". Neither Israelis nor Palestinians dream of a joint country. Partition plans have been floating around since before 1948 and haven't been implemented which suggests a systematic failure.

This is our challenge: finding a way to guarantee self determination and equal rights without partitioning the land. This is the heart of the problem. Not racism, not antisemitism, not global terror, not colonialism. If you can't see it, you've been reading biased sources.

And it's wild to me that Americans feel comfortable to take an 100 year issue and dumb it down to a side note in their own quests for liberation. There's something incredibly performative about this activism. It seems like an attempt to globalize an internal American issue, as if talking about a conflict across the ocean somehow adds validity to your own struggles. Like putting *Middle Eastern* sprinkles on your own cause.

And this idea that the militarization of American police came from Israel is laughable because Israeli police aren't militarized. Davis is confusing between police and magav- army police. They are, as the name implies, in the army. They're not the police and most of their work is involved with border control.

These are Israeli police.



These are magav soldiers.



How little accountability do you need in order to blame Israel for America's police brutality? Like, I am sorry but that's on the US. Israel teaches counter-terrorism. That's it. The Israeli police are well known for being incompetent, they are not capable of teaching anyone anything.

If Davis would pay more attention to Israel, she'd know that Israeli-Arabs/48 Palestinians have been begging the Israeli government for more policing, not less. While Americans call for defunding the police, the Israeli police lacks budget, skills and manpower in order to effectively counter crime in poverty areas.

There's also this strange assumption that Palestinians are all allies to her cause. In practice, my impression is that Palestinians (much like Israelis) don't really get American race issues nor are they very intersectional. Sure, Palestinians are always down to bash Israel but presenting Palestinians as though they're this uber woke crowd is somewhat hilarious- you're more likely to find Israelis who passionately care about critical race theory and even that is quite rare. In some ways, this is a challenge I see as an Israeli. I'm queer and very liberal but I will stand up for Palestinians, even if they're often homophobic. I don't want to create conditions for improving people's lives- we shouldn't condition help on liberal values.

Davis complains that people say the conflict is complicated in an attempt to shut down conversation. I often say the conflict is complicated but I never intend to shut down the conversation. I want to jump in, I want us to delve into the reality here which yes, is messy. I want us to unpack failures and talk about it all, without shying into blind ideology. Especially Soviet ideology that has resulted in horrible things being done to Jews.

To conclude, I think this is a nice book for fans of Angela Davis but I didn't feel this is quite the must read leftist book that it is often claimed to be.

What I'm Taking With Me
- This review is a mess but hey, the academic year is over and I have no interest in writing coherently anymore.

- I often worry that intersectionality creates borders. I do not blame the immigrant who supports capitalism in order to climb ahead.

- And it's funny how in this book the word "Israelis" doesn't get even mentioned once. Heck, she talks about white people significantly more than she talks about Israelis. Antisemitism also only gets mentioned in regards to the confederacy, never as part of the conversation on Israel-Palestine.

-I hope to write my bachelor thesis precisely on why we're talking about Palestine here. I mean, throughout the book, Palestine is the only foreign cause mentioned. It's fascinating- racism and oppression exist on some scale or another in most countries (and heck, in every Middle Eastern country) but there's this focus on Israel.

- There's a part of me that thinks it would be cool to create a tour of Israel and Palestine that focuses on actual issues, rather than conflict tourism areas. Let's take foreigners to see Bat Yam's poverty and Jisr's shitty infrastructure. Let's talk about how Israeli periphery gets shunned while Tel Avivian academics sit around in conferences and discuss racism, as if it can be disconnected from the overarching societal issues. Let's visit the neighborhoods of Jerusalem that never ever see any tourists. Let's talk about the Palestinian hierarchies, let's talk about how the army both changes the class struggle but also shapes it, the way wealth and politics are intertwined and how they shape police brutality in Israel.

- A good rule for recognizing antisemitism- if you replace Zionists with Jews, is it antisemitic? Or, in other words, talking about "the Zionist's media's tentacles" plays into a classic antisemitic troupe of Jews controlling the world, of Jews doing evil and getting away with it because they're so powerful. Literally, the octopus imagery is an antisemitic canard. Do better, socialists.

----------
3.5 stars and I'll round down because I'm tired of Americans assuming their own racial troubles reflect internationally.

Review to come!

[♥Milica♥ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The structure of this book didn't fully work for me, and the repetitiveness of the second half didn't help either. I liked the topics covered & the ideas shared, but I was left wishing that this went more in-depth and was a bit longer.

If you, like me, are new to reading Angela Davis, this is not the place I'd recommend you start. I would go back to this book however, at some point in the future, it's worth rereading.

3.5

[Tomes And Textiles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This felt a lot like having coffee with a friend who's letting you ask them all the questions about something they're an expert in. It tied so many struggles together for me and gave me a huge reading list to further my understanding. A wonderful read for a beginning who's looking to understand the interconnectedness of abolition on this planet.

[Max Moroz · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels weird to rate this. So important to read

[zaynab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interviewing is an art form. It require the ability to transition from one question to the next while being able to connect questions thematically. The interview questions tend to jump from one subject to the next without drawing clearer or better connections between each subject matter. So the interview section of this book wasn't as interesting to read besides Angela's answers. The speeches she gives are honestly the better part of this book, not only for the theoretical connections Davis makes but because it gives insight into her speech patterns. I didn't realize how fairly stream of consciousness her speeches tend to be, and how much she deviates in the middle of a speech to draw in a connection between what she's talking about and whatever comes to mind. I guess I've admittedly been a little star struck every time I've seen her speak live, so it was interesting to read her speeches and delve into the syntactical realms of her rhetoric and psycho-linguistic processes.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angela Davis is one of my heroes and this book did not disappoint.

Her aligning the freedom movements of Ferguson & Palestine together and painting a clear picture of the ways in which they are linked and the ways that they can help others to understand international conflict, local dynamics, racism, police brutality and government measures to oppress people is so well articulated you can't pick up this book and not learn something.

Her conversations/speeches around the legacy and influence of Assata Shakur and place she holds/what she means to the idea of resistance and how that's linked to black women is just — it's everything.

I've been lucky enough to see Ms. Davis speak in university and the weight of her presence, the fact that she's struggled against the government and is here.. her intensity even when speaking lightly, it impacted me profoundly. This book continued that impact on me and I'm going to continue to read all her work.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The speeches and the interviews in this book left their mark, but they would have been even more powerful had they included more context. The book's format presents these pieces with little annotation and background, and few explanations of the issues presented. Adding "Selected Works" to the title might have helped, signifying that more reading (or background) on the subjects may be necessary.

Davis is a brilliant speaker and a passionate voice. Hearing her read her own words in this audiobook version was particularly fulfilling.

[Grapie Deltaco · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this immensely informative and layered collection of interviews and statements has a tendency to be distractingly repetitive, I also recognize that that may be the point. Everything’s connected and everything refers to one another and it develops into other things and then it all circles back to itself.

As much as this collection felt like constant deja vu, it hammers home the cyclical and interconnected nature of marginalized communities on a historical and international level.

CW: recurring discussions centering racism, sexism, genocide, slavery, homophobia, transphobia, and war

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first official meeting with Angela Y. Davis and I have to say I'm in love! The wisdom, the politics... I mean, I'm biased, because according to this, we kinda align politically in a perfectly overlapping way, so this felt soothing and like being held in a way (funny how these days political writing about organizing is simply sustaining me and keeping me alive). There's commentary here on the carceral state, the occupation of Palestine, mass solidarity and organizing, queerness & gender (particularly loved the emphasis on trans people and Black trans people), the carceral institution of marriage and so on.

Intimate violence is not unconnected to state violence. Where do perpetrators of intimate violence learn how to engage in the practices of violence? Who teaches them that violence is okay?

I wish I was as brave as Davis and do a speech on genocide, while mentioning the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey, a speech held specifically while in Istanbul (Turkey has never acknowledged this genocide and talking about it can land you in jail, which almost happened to author Elif Shafak, but has happened to others). That is so courageous!

we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as “normal.” Prisons are constituted as “normal.” It takes a lot of work to persuade people to think beyond the bars, and to be able to imagine a world without prisons and to struggle for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant mode of punishment.

If this little book is not full stars for me it's because of the format: it collects speeches and interviews and so there's a lot of overlap in what's covered in the different items and it can be a bit repetitive. But still, super enjoyable to listen to as an audiobook read by Davis herself. I am super pumped to read Davis's autobiography and learn a lot more than what I know now!

[Book Riot Community]

I’ve been trying to get into the book club scene locally (and possibly failing) but this was the pick of the month. I’ve always to read more by Angela Davis. This book of interviews and essays clearly distills many complex current issues, highlighting how local struggles are also global ones. Racism, capitalism, and the prison-industrial complex are all explored in depth. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone wanting a big picture look at social issues.

— Jessica Yang



from The Best Books We Read In October 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/10/31/riot-r...

[Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended for Americans looking to connect the dots between BLM and Palestinian liberation

[Emily M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now, the title of this book might sound depressing. And it is certainly sobering, a reminder that the US didn’t just recently start acting like a police state; to Black people, Native people, “undesirable” immigrants, queer people…it always has. The level to which that is felt by various groups has varied over time, of course. For example, us Ls, Gs, and Bs got to feel pretty good about the way things were going for the last 15 years or so – which is why some now are eager to throw the other letters under the bus to try and retain status (To whom I’ll say: Stop that right now! You are NOT in the clear, because the same people still hate you!) But the encouraging part of reading this book is a reminder that, throughout that history, people have been fighting back. Dr. Davis was imprisoned and demonized, but she’s still here.

"I made the Ten Most Wanted criminal list. And I was represented as armed and dangerous...I remember thinking to myself...what is this all about?...And then I realized it wasn't about me at all; it wasn't about the individual at all. It was about sending a message to large numbers of people whom they thought they could discourage from involvement in the freedom struggles at that time."

Moreover, we can be stronger when we recognize the commonalities in our struggles, both within the US and beyond. Especially given recent discourse, I found Dr. Davis’s consistent support in these pieces for trans people and their place in feminism, prison abolition, and Black rights movements particularly heartening. Likewise, her observation that “The appalling treatment of undocumented immigrants from the UK to the US compels us to make connections with Palestinians who have been transformed into immigrants against their will, indeed into undocumented immigrants on their own ancestral lands” made me think that perhaps that’s why there’s been such a crackdown on those who’ve participated in demonstrations against the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. Because realizations of the similarities can go in the other direction as well!

"Our histories never unfold in isolation. We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories without knowing the other stories. And we often discover that those other stories are actually our own stories...We can thus not pretend that we do not know about the conjunctures of race and class and ethnicity and nationality and sexuality and ability."

Regarding how the civil rights movement has not only been sanitized, but made about individual “great men”: "I would dare say that most people who are familiar with Dr. Martin Luther King...know little more than the fact that he had a dream. And of course all of us have had dreams... Relatively few people are aware of the Riverside Church speech on Vietnam, and the way that he came to recognize the intersections and interconnections of the Black liberation movement and the campaign to end the war in Vietnam."

Despite the “constant struggle”, it is also worth thinking bigger:
“But freedom is still more expansive than civil rights. And in the sixties there were some of us who insisted that it was not simply a question of acquiring the formal rights to fully participate in a society…It was about substantive freedoms. It was about free education. It was about free healthcare. Affordable housing.”

This is quite a slim book, less than 150 pages of text, but I found myself taking my time because each speech, essay, or interview has a lot to chew on.

The thing I’m going to try and remember is this: The US in 1925 had a LOT of issues, but civil-rights-wise there were wins relative to 1825. 1975 was better than 1925. And the 2020s have been better than 1975 for a lot of groups too. That’s despite all the dark periods in between, including a civil war, economic depression, the heights of the KKK, and so on. As Dr. Davis points out, the legacies of slavery, colonialism, etc. continue to mess with our attempts to build a more just society, and far too many people have suffered or died in the attempt to get there. But change HAS happened. Especially for those of us with a shot of making it to 2075 (ie anyone under 50-ish)…wouldn’t you like to look back and say that pattern continued, that the current dark times didn't last forever? Or at least hope that our children or niblings can say that? If so, we can’t passively rely on “the arc of history”. To quote Dr. Davis again: "If one looks at the history of struggles against racism in the US*, no change has ever happened simply because the president chose to move in a more progressive direction. Every change that has happened has come as a result of mass movements...I don't see why things would be any different today."

*Or for women’s suffrage. Or gay rights. Or accessibility for the disabled. Or…

So: "I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic...even if it's only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. What has kept me going has been the development of new modes of community...It is in collectives that we find reserves of hope and optimism."

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I fear that if we don’t take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist—the bad apple type who is the perpetrator—then we won’t ever succeed in eradicating racism.”

A nice collection of essays, lectures, speeches and interviews in which Angela Davis challenges us to think harder, to reason more, and to question the status quo. I made over seventy notes. Here are five of them:

Intersectionality

It is not a question of whether or not one should prioritize a movement, be it a feminist movement or a black freedom movement—there should be BOTH. The real emphasis needs to be on the strong and coherent connections between the two.

We Were Eight Years In Power

Although there were a lot of disappointments with the presidency of Barack Obama we would NOT have been better off with Romney in the White House. It's not that we needed a better black president, it is that we lacked an organized movement.

Systemic Racism

Racism is extant not necessarily because of individual actors but because it is so deeply ingrained in the system. We cannot assume that the worst is over just because white people are no longer burning crosses or screaming the n-word.

Systemic Violence

Institutions such as the police, the prisons, and the military hold the vast monopoly on violence. You cannot claim support of the establishment and simultaneously disavow their modus operandi.

Gaza

When talking about the Middle East, why is Palestine held more accountable and liable for violence than Israel? Why do people assume that the oppressed are responsible for the safety of the oppressors?

Davis asks the tough questions. She comes down hard (and rightly so) on the Bush administration. I am dying to read anything she published post-November 2016, after the election of a POTUS that made Bush look like Jane Fonda. That will be an interesting read.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

angela davis's words are incisive and rousing, calling upon all of us to listen, to learn, to act, to do all we can within our power. this collection of essays and speeches is powerful. i love the way davis is all about drawing likenesses, filling in contexts, examining the ways different oppressions and movements are quietly interconnected.

particularly moving are the parallels drawn between the prison abolition movement and slavery abolition, and between ferguson (& other BLM protests) and resistance in palestine (both facing militarized police forces). i think we collectively struggle to have a global understanding of these things, and i love the way she talks about intersectionality of movements.

i also really like the discussion of looking beyond our lifetimes, the necessity of imagining changes for future generations.

i worked through this slowly. while there is overlap in content across the pieces, there is so much to absorb. and it feels somber to read about all the momentum of obama-era activism and compare it to where we are now.