The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture

P.O. Box 22748

Oakland CA 94609
Phone: (510) 601-0182
Fax: (510) 601-0183
info@speakoutnow.org
www.speakoutnow.org

AngelaDavis
Through her activism and scholarship
over the last decades, Angela Davis has
been deeply involved in our nations
quest for social justice. Her work as an
educator both at the university level
and in the larger public sphere has
always emphasized the importance of
building communities of struggle for
economic, racial, and gender justice.
Professor Davis teaching career has
taken her to San Francisco State
University, Mills College, and UC
Berkeley. She also has taught at UCLA, Vassar, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford
University. She spent the last fifteen years at the University of California Santa Cruz
where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness, an
interdisciplinary Ph.D program, and of Feminist Studies.
Angela Davis is the author of eight books and has lectured throughout the United States
as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a
persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with
incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most
affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the
early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being
placed on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted List. She has also conducted extensive research
on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her most recent books are
Abolition Democracy and Are Prisons Obsolete? about the abolition of the prison
industrial complex, and a new edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Angela Davis is a founding member Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated

to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with
Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia that works in
solidarity with women in prison.
Like many other educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general
tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational
institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a prison industrial complex, she
now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without
prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.
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.
Like many other educators, Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to
devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions.
Having helped to popularize the notion of a prison industrial complex, she now urges
her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons
and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.

Angela Davis - Possible Lecture Topics

Cultural and Historical Studies of Race and Ethnicity
Feminist Theory
Cultural and Ideology
Democracy and Civil Engagements
American History and Prisons
Prisons and Democracy
Institutional Racism in the Penal and Criminal
Justice System
Youth and the Prison Industrial Complex
Leadership for the 21st Century
Building Communities of Activism
Activism and Diversity in Higher Education
How Does Change Happen?
Art and the Feminist Revolution
Art and Resistance
The Role of Art in Society
Women and the Blues
Women and Music
Civil and Human Rights in a Democracy
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture
Radical Theories of Penalty
Women of Color

Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism

Transformative Strategies for Women

Books by Angela Davis

Abolition Democracy
(Seven Stories 2005)
Since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison story in April 2004, a debate has
raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world's
leading democracy. Within this context Angela Davis gave a series of
interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics,
and prison. Davis talks about her own incarceration, her experiences as an
"enemy of the state," and about having been put on the FBI's most wanted list.
She talks about the crucial role that international activism played in her case
and the cases of many other political prisoners.

Are Prisons Obsolete?

(Open Media 2003)
In this brilliant, thoroughly researched book, Angela Davis swings a
wrecking ball into the racist and sexist underpinnings of the American prison
system. Her arguments are well wrought and restrained, leveling an
unflinching critique of how and why more than 2 million Americans are
presently behind bars, and the corporations who profit from their suffering.
Davis explores the biases that criminalize communities of color, politically
disenfranchising huge chunks of minority voters in the process.
Uncompromising in her vision, Davis calls not merely for prison reform, but
for nothing short of 'new terrains of justice. Cynthia McKinney, former
Congresswoman from Georgia

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American

Slave, Written by Himself - A New Critical Edition by Angela
Y. Davis (City Lights Publishers 2010)
A masterpiece of African American literature, Frederick Douglass's Narrative
is the powerful story of an enslaved youth coming into social and moral
consciousness by disobeying his white slavemasters and secretly teaching
himself to read. Achieving literacy emboldens Douglass to resist, escape, and
ultimately achieve his freedom. After escaping slavery, Douglass became a
leader in the anti-slavery and women's rights movements, a bestselling author,
and U.S. diplomat.
In this new critical edition, legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis sheds
new light on the legacy of Frederick Douglass. In two philosophical lectures originally delivered at
UCLA in autumn 1969, Davis focuses on Douglass's intellectual and spiritual awakening, and the
importance of self-knowledge in achieving freedom from all forms of oppression. With detailed
attention to Douglass's text, she interrogates the legacy of slavery and shares timeless lessons about
oppression, resistance, and freedom. And in an extended introductory essay written for this edition,
Davis comments on previous editions of the Narrative and re-examines Douglass through a
contemporary feminist perspective. An important new edition of an American classic.

The Angela Y. Davis Reader

(Wiley-Blackwell 1998)
"Over the past thirty years Angela Davis has stood as a courageous voice
of conscience on matters of race, class, and gender in America. Since her
imprisonment in the early 1970s hers has been a voice of principle on
behalf of the rights of the incarcerated. Joy James has provided a great
service in pulling together and making accessible for the first time in a
single volume Angela Davis's seminal writings, revealing at once the
considerable range of her insightful intellectual contributions across
politics, philosophy, and culture." -- David Theo Goldberg, Arizona State
University
"This collection refutes that often-heard statement - that it is impossible
today to be both a true intellectual and a true activist. Everyone who is concerned with the life of the
mind as it illuminates the struggle for social justice will be provoked, even inspired, by these writings." - Barbara T. Christian, Professor of African-American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey,

Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
(Vintage 1999)
In her provocative book, Davis finds, in the work of three pivotal artists of
the blues and jazz era, rich terrain for examining a historical feminist
consciousness that reflected the lives of working-class black communities.
Through her close readings of their lyrics, Davis explores the meanings behind
the performances of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and Bessie Smith. Toppling the
prevailing image of the tragic blues woman, she finds that the songs don't
portray the desolate and deserted woman; rather, the most frequent stance
assumed by the women in these songs is independence and assertiveness,
indeed defiance, bordering on and sometimes erupting into violence.
Publishers Weekly

Women, Culture and Politics

(Vintage 1990)
In this 1983-1987 collection of speeches, essays, lectures, and conference
reports, Angela Davis continues her unrelenting effort to bring the light of
intelligence, internationalism, and inclusion to United States politics. A
classically trained scholar who took her learning to heart and put it into
action despite the personal risks and political persecution that resulted, she
makes her message clear: "The roots of sexism and homophobia are found in
the same economic and political institutions that serve as the foundation of
racism in this country. . . .Drawing from a vast store of knowledge gathered
from statistics, history, classic literature, contemporary poetry, political
speeches, international events, and official government policies, Davis offers
wisdom and hope in her ruthless analysis of how things are, and an elegant
vision of how things could be. -- Jesse Larson

Women, Race and Class

(Vintage Books USA 1983)
Angela Davis brings us this expose of the women's movement in the
context of the fight for civil rights and working class issues. She
uncovers a side of the fight for suffrage many of us have not heard: the
intimate tie between the anti-slavery campaign and the struggle for
women's suffrage. She shows how the racist and classist bias of some in
the women's movement have divided its own membership. Davis'
message is clear: If we ever want equality, we're gonna have to fight for
it together.

Angela Davis: An Autobiography

(International Publishers 1989)
The political autobiography was published in 1974 by Random House
and reissued in 1988 and 2004. The book is built around Davis evading
police, but finally being captured in New York City and being charged
with three capital offenses due to her alleged participation in an escape
attempt at the Marin County Hall of Justice. Davis then weaves her story
through her 16 months in jail while awaiting trial, a world-wide
campaign calling for her release and her acquittal of all charges in 1972.

If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance

(Signet; 2nd edition 1972)
This is an account of Angela Daviss early days. Topics include
revolution, racism, sexual discrimination, the incident, and
imprisonment, her own experience as well as many others. In addition,
there are contributions from some of the most famous revolutionaries
of the 20th century.

What People are Saying about Angela Davis

"Long before 'race/gender' became the obligatory injunction it is now, Angela Davis was
developing an analytical framework that brought all of these factors into play. For those
who only see Angela Davis as a public icon . . . meet the real Angela Davis: perhaps the
leading public intellectual of our era."
Robin D. G. Kelley author and cultural critic
"Angela Davis has stood as a courageous voice of conscience on matters of race, class,
and gender in America."
David Theo Goldberg, Arizona State University
"Angela Davis offers a cartography of engagement in oppositional social movements and
unwavering commitment to justice."
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Women's Studies, Hamilton College
"One of America's last truly fearless public intellectuals."
Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia
"Angela Davis's revolutionary spirit is still strong. Still with us, thank goodness!"
Virginian-Pilot
"There was a time in America when to call a person an 'abolitionist' was the ultimate
epithet. It evoked scorn in the North and outrage in the South. Yet they were the
harbingers of things to come. They were on the right side of history. Prof. Angela Y.
Davis stands in that proud, radical tradition."
Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v.
the U.S.A.
"Behold the heart and mind of Angela Davis, open, relentless, and on time!"
June Jordan, poet
"The enormous revolution in Black consciousness which has occurred in your generation,
my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America. Some of us, white and Black,
know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new
consciousness, a new people in an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we
are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your
life as though it were our ownwhich it isand render impassable with our bodies the
corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for
us that night."
James Baldwin, author and scholar

'We Used to Think There was a Black Community'

With her towering afro and radical rhetoric, Angela Davis was one of the iconic faces of black politics
in 1970s America. She talks to Gary Younge about Barack Obama, the racism of the black middle class,
and how it feels to be remembered as a hairdo
by Gary Younge
The Guardian, Thursday 8 November 2007
Angela Davis was intrigued to see recently that a significant number of young black women to whom
she was delivering a talk were wearing images of her from the 70s on their T-shirts. She asked what the
image meant to them. "They said it made them feel powerful and connected to other movements," she
says. "It was really quite moving. It really had nothing to do with me. They were using this image as an
expression of who they would like to be and what they would like to do. I've given up trying to
challenge commodification in that respect. It's an unending battle and you never win any victories."
For all her many achievements over the past 37 years, Angela Davis remains, for many, a symbol frozen
in time. The time was 1970. It marked the end of a tumultuous era of civil rights struggle that
culminated in the assassination of two of black America's most renowned leaders - Martin Luther King
and Malcolm X. A period of peaceful demonstrations for integration in the rural south had been
followed by a spate of violent disturbances in the urban north. The focus had shifted from integration to
black power; the influences from Gandhi and the Bible to Mao and Marxism. In 1967, Aretha Franklin
called for "r-e-s-p-e-c-t"; by 1970, the anthem was Edwin Starr's War.
The symbol was resistance. Smart, handsome, eloquent, fearless and stylish, Davis strode the political
stage with her fist raised high and her afro combed even higher. A rebel and a revolutionary. A
silhouette for summerwear. Radical and chic like Che - except that she has lived to see her political
resistance transfer into popular culture.
A student in her history of Afro-American women's studies class at San Francisco State University
during the 80s recalls: "She wanted to teach and she was a very conscientious teacher, really engaging.
But she would make some cogent point about history and then someone would literally put up their hand
and make some comment about her hair. I thought, 'They're not letting her be who she wants to be.'"
Davis once said: "It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the
events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo."
A few weeks ago, at the Women of Colour Resource Centre in Oakland, California, Davis presented the
Sister of Fire award to a young poet from Queens in New York who could barely contain her excitement
at being in her presence. "I can't believe I'm on the same stage as Angela Davis," she gushed. "I read
about her in school ... And she's still alive." Davis and her contemporaries at the ceremony laughed.
"I have reconciled myself to the existence of this historical figure and its relationship to the work that
I'm trying to do today," she says. This is less difficult than it might seem since her present work is
intricately connected to both the work she has been doing most of her adult life and the incident that
made her famous: prisons.

Back in the 60s, as the American state moved to criminalise radical black protest, she primarily
campaigned on the issue of political prisoners such as the Black Panther George Jackson. Her political
activities had already made her a target for the conservative establishment. In 1969, she was fired from
her job as assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, for being a member of the
Communist party, only to see that decision overturned by a supreme court judge.
Then, on August 7 1970, her own infamous run-in with the criminal justice system started. On that day,
Jonathan Jackson, 17, held the Marin county courthouse at gunpoint and sprung three prisoners - James
McClain, William Christmas and Ruchell Magee - who were either witnesses or on trial. The men led
the judge, Harold Haley, the prosecuting attorney and some jurors to a waiting van and fled. In the
ensuing chase, Jackson, Christmas, McClain and Haley were shot dead, while the attorney was paralysed
by a police bullet.
Jonathan was the younger brother of George Jackson, whom Davis had fallen in love with during the
campaign for his release. Jonathan's gun was registered in Davis's name. Davis was nowhere near the
shoot-out, but a warrant was issued for her arrest, for conspiracy to kidnapping and murder. She went on
the run.
Davis's disappearance sparked an intensive, public search and propelled her to the FBI's top 10 most
wanted, and to international attention. Two months later, she was arrested in a motel in mid-town
Manhattan. President Richard Nixon branded her a "terrorist". Facing the trinity of rightwing hate
figures - Nixon, the then California governor Ronald Reagan and FBI director J Edgar Hoover - Davis
became an international cause celebre. A global campaign called for her release. Aretha Franklin offered
to post quarter of a million dollars in bail. "I have the money," she said. "I got it from black people and I
want to use it in ways that will help our people."
In January 1971, Davis appeared in Marin county court, unapologetic and defiant, facing charges that
could have lead to her execution. A year and a half later, an all-white jury acquitted her. As an academic
of great renown, she went on to enter the canons of black and feminist theory with her books - on
women, on race and class and women, on culture and politics. She wrote a bestselling autobiography
and stood for vice-president in 1980 and 1984 on the Communist party ticket.
Much has changed in her life since the days of her trial but a great deal has remained the same. Davis
still teaches at the University of California - although now at Santa Cruz, where she is professor of
history of consciousness and feminist studies. At 63, she is still recognisable from those iconic 70s
shots, although her hair is now a cascade of corkscrew curls. And her primary focus remains the
criminal justice system. According to the US justice department, on current trends, one in three black
boys born in 2001 will end up in jail.
"The prison system bears the imprint of slavery perhaps more than any other institution," she says. "It
produces a state that is very similar to slavery; the deprivation of rights, civil death and
disenfranchisement. Under slavery, black people became that against which the notion of freedom was
defined. White people knew they were free because they could point to the people who weren't free.
Now we know we're free because we're not in prison. People continue to suffer civil death even after
they leave prison. There is permanent disenfranchisement."
The US, argues Davis, is still struggling with its refusal to address slavery's legacy. "There was the
negative abolition of slavery - the breaking of chains - but freedom is much more than just the abolition
of slavery. What would it have meant to provide economic security to everyone who had been enslaved;

to have brought about the participation in governance and politics and access to education? That didn't
happen. We are still confronted by the failure of the affirmative side of abolition all these years later."
Does that not leave black politics entrenched in a paradigm set almost 150 years ago? "The problem is
that we [as a country] haven't moved on," she says. "Certainly it's important to recognise the victories
that have been won. Racism is not exactly the same now as it was then. But there were issues that were
never addressed and now present themselves in different manifestations today. You only move on if you
resolve these issues. It took 100 years to get the right to vote."
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944, Davis was raised in the tightknit world of the black middle
class in a small southern town. It included the families of secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Alma
Johnson, who would later marry former secretary of state Colin Powell.
Davis was seven years younger than Johnson and 10 years older than Rice. Their worlds intertwined but
never quite collided. Rice's father, John Wesley Rice Jr, worked for Johnson's uncle as a high-school
guidance counsellor. Johnson knew Rice as a child; Davis knew Johnson, because they attended the
same church. Birmingham became notorious during the 60s as the town that set dogs and hoses on
African-Americans seeking the vote, and for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church, in which
four little girls were killed in 1963, one of whom was Rice's friend. Its reputation was so bad that Colin
Powell's parents considered not going to their son's wedding and joked about the likelihood that they
would be lynched when they got there.
Although all three emerged from that time and place to take advantage of the new opportunities
available, Davis's perspective on her achievements could not be more different to Rice's. "In America,
with education and hard work it really does not matter where you come from," Rice told the Republican
convention in 2000. "It matters only where you are going." She later told the Washington Post: "My
parents were very strategic. I was going to be so well prepared, and I was going to do all of these things
that were revered in white society so well, that I would be armoured somehow from racism. I would be
able to confront white society on its own terms."
Davis insists this is disingenuous. "It was never about individuals. I never grew up thinking that the
measure of my success was as an individual. There was always a sense that the measure of your success
was to a large part one that was linked to community advancement. Most people weren't going to make
it as far as she or I did. She never would have had the opportunities she had without the benefit of the
struggles that took place in the 60s. If you can, with conscience, talk about a post-civil rights era, we
have to talk about the limitations of civil rights. It produced individual successes but it never produced
group successes."
The advancement of the likes of Powell and Rice within the Bush administration, argues Davis,
exemplifies a flawed understanding of what it means to tackle modern-day racism. "The Republican
administration is the most diverse in history. But when the inclusion of black people into the machine of
oppression is designed to make that machine work more efficiently, then it does not represent progress
at all. We have more black people in more visible and powerful positions. But then we have far more
black people who have been pushed down to the bottom of the ladder. When people call for diversity
and link it to justice and equality, that's fine. But there's a model of diversity as the difference that makes
no difference, the change that brings about no change."
This, she says, is how the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama is generally understood. "He is being
consumed as the embodiment of colour blindness. It's the notion that we have moved beyond racism by

not taking race into account. That's what makes him conceivable as a presidential candidate. He's
become the model of diversity in this period, and what's interesting about his campaign is that it has not
sought to invoke engagements with race other than those that have already existed."
Davis's initial response to Obama is one she often gives to questions both specific and general: "It's
complicated," she says. Her answers are candid but measured. Not measured necessarily to fit prevailing
public opinion - she believes prisons should be abolished, for example - but for their consistency and
precision. She talks slowly and in long whole sentences and will often deconstruct the question before
replying. Asked about the class stratification in the black community and its implications for black
political leadership, she says, "It's complicated. We used to think there was a black community. It was
always heterogenous but we were always able to imagine ourselves as part of that community. I would
go so far as to say that many middle-class black people have internalised the same racist attitudes to
working-class black people as white people have of the black criminal. The young black man with the
sagging pants walking down the street is understood as a threat by the black middle class as well. So I
don't think it's possible to mobilise black communities in the way it was in the past.
"I don't even know that I would even look for black leadership now. We looked to work with that
category because it gave us a sense of hope. But that category assumes a link between race and
progressive politics and, as Stuart Hall says, 'There aren't any guarantees.' What's more important than
the racial identification of the person is how that person thinks about race."
The confluence of black and progressive politics in the US has been further diminished, argues Davis, as
a result of 9/11, which gave all Americans the option of retreating behind the flag or responding to a
world that was reaching out. "In that sense, 9/11 was a pivotal moment," she says. "It was a multicultural
moment. Black people aren't immune to the nationalism in this country. That was a moment when global
solidarity was pouring in and instead of people reaching out, they closed down. So this was a moment
that clearly involved black people. But it clearly didn't envelop Arabs."
Black Americans may not have been immune to the hyper-patriotism of recent years, but they were
more resistant to it. Of all racial groups, African-Americans have still been the least likely to support
both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. None the less, explains Davis, "enough black people perceived it
as a consolidation in nationalism. They finally felt part of the nation. It didn't matter that one million
were in prison. It only mattered that they were part of the nation."
Davis is, however, encouraged by the youth of all races. "I'm amazed at the sophistication of a lot of
younger people," she says. "We didn't have the ability when I was younger to say all the things we
wanted to say. We didn't have the conceptual opportunities for that. A lot of this stuff just rolls off their
tongues. Whatever they produce won't be an insurgency of the old type, although I do think that
engagement with race and racism will be an important part of it. You have to get over the idea that you
win something once and for all and that struggles have to look the same."
The situation they have inherited, however, is "complicated". "I don't envy people trying to give political
leadership now," she says. "In the past it was easy. There was black and white."
Angela Davis, Gary Younge, Heather Small, Wole Soyinka and Stuart Hall will discuss, perform and
share ideas on the meaning of the bicentenary of the parliamentary abolition of the slave trade on
Saturday at the Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London SE1, 10.30am to 5.45pm. To book tickets, go
to southbankcentre.co.uk

Angela Davis Advice to the Movement

by Eduardo Mendieta
Published at In These Times.org
February 6, 2006
This article was adapted from Abolition DemocracyBeyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture: Interviews
with Angela Y. Davis, which was just released by Seven Stories Press.
What role can activism play in strengthening democratic and critical practices? What lessons might we
learn from past movements of resistance and apply to contemporary struggles?
That is a very difficult question because the terrain on which organizing takes place is so different today
from what it was 30 years ago. There are some lessons that have contemporary resonances. Here I want
to add the disclaimer that I do not mean to encourage nostalgia about those good old revolutionary
daysnot at all. But I do think, that there is a sense today in which movements today are expected to be
self-generating. There is a lack of patience. It is difficult to encourage people to think about protracted
struggles, protracted movements that require very careful strategic organizing interventions that dont
always depend on our capacity to mobilize demonstrations.
It seems to me that mobilization has displaced organization, so that in the contemporary moment, when
we think about organizing movements, we think about bringing masses of people into the streets. Of
course it is important to encourage masses of people to give expression with their bodies and their
voices to collective goals, whether those goals are about ending the war in Iraq or in defense of womens
reproductive rights. I have always thought that demonstrations were supposed to demonstrate the
potential power of movements. Ongoing movements at certain strategic moments need to mobilize and
render visible everyone who is touched by the call for justice, equality, and peace.
But these days we tend to think of that process of rendering the movement visible as the very substance
of the movement itself. If this is the case, then the millions who go home after the demonstration have
concluded that they do not necessarily feel responsible to further build support for the cause. They are
able to return to their private spaces and express their relationship to this movement in private,
individual ways. If the demonstration is the monumental public moment and people return afterwards to
lives they construe as private, then, in a sense, we have unwittingly acquiesced to the corporate drive for
privatization.
Organizing is not synonymous with mobilizing. Now that many of us have access to new technologies
of communication like the Internet and cell phones, we need to give serious thought about how they
might best be used. The Internet is an incredible tool, but it may also encourage us to think that we can
produce instantaneous movements, movements modeled after fast food delivery.
When organizing is subordinated to mobilizing, what do you do after the successful mobilization? How
can we produce a sense of belonging to communities in struggle that is not evaporated by the onslaught
of our everyday routines? How do we build movements capable of generating the power to compel
governments and corporations to curtail their violence? Ultimately, how can we successfully resist
global capitalism and its drive for dominance?

What factors do you think are mitigating community organizing today? I completely agree with the need
for day-to-day organizing and community building, but not having an experiential sense of what it was
like on the ground in the early 1970s, I would like to hear your reflections.
Well, you see, everything has changed, so I dont think this kind of discussion would be as helpful as
one might think. Everything has changed. The funding base for movements has changed. The
relationship between professionalization and social moments has changed. The mode of politicization
has changed. The role of culture and the globalization of cultural production have changed. I dont know
how else to talk about this other than to encourage people to experiment. That is actually the lesson I
would draw from the period of the 1960s and 1970s, when I was involved in what were essentially
experimental modes of conventional civil rights organizing. Nobody knew whether they would work or
not. Nobody knew where we were going. I often remark that young people today have too much
deference toward the older organizers, the veterans, and are much too careful in their desire to rely on
role models.
Everyone wants some guarantee that what they do will have palpable results. I think the best way to
figure out what might work is simply to do it, regardless of the potential mistakes one might make. One
must be willing to make mistakes. In fact, I think that the mistakes help to produce the new modes of
organizingthe kinds that bring people together and advance the struggle for peace and social justice.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS
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HONORARIUM TO BE PAID

18.

CLOSEST AIRPORT

19.

NAME, TITLE, DAY, EVENING AND CELL PHONE OF PERSON WHO WILL PICK
PROFESSOR DAVIS UP AT THE AIRPORT (Very important)

20.

HOTEL NAME, PHONE, ADDRESS AND CONFIRMATION NUMBER

Return request form to:

SpeakOut
P.O. Box 22748 | Oakland, CA 94609
Phone: 510-601-0182
info@SpeakOutNow.org