Nov 15 2011
Angela Davis on the Occupy Movement, Art and Resistance, and the Prison Industrial Complex
The birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement was raided early this morning by New York police, leaving Zucotti Park cleared of all tents. About 200 people who had been regularly camping overnight were arrested, most on charges of “disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.” Among those arrested were reporters for the New York Times and NPR, as well as Democratic City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez. Sanitation crews scooped up tents and other belongings, clearing the park after the surprise raid. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the raid saying “New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself…What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” The mayor added that “health and safety conditions became intolerable” at the park. The National Lawyers Guild, which has been providing legal observation and support to the Occupy Wall Street movement, said that it had obtained a court order preventing New York City from evicting Occupiers.
The Occupy movement is barely two months old and yet it has taken hold of the nation’s progressive imagination like no other movement in recent history. Veterans of historical social justice movements like Angela Davis have embraced it. Davis addressed the Occupiers at Zucotti Park on October 30th saying “You are re-inventing our political universe. You have renewed our collective passion. You reminded us that it is still possible to build vibrant communities of resistance.”
Angela Davis is a retired professor at University of California Santa Cruz, and the former director of the University’s Feminist Studies Department. She is also the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization whose goal is to abolish the prison industrial complex. Angela Davis became a household name in the 1970s when she was arrested and imprisoned in connection with a court room murder. The “Free Angela Davis slogan” became a rallying cry among activists across the country who saw her incarceration as symbolic of the mass arrests and police violence targeting leaders in the Black Power and civil rights movements. She was eventually acquitted of all charges. Although Angela Davis was not a member of the Black Panther Party, she was closely aligned with many of its leaders, and an active member of the Communist Party USA.
Today Davis remains a giant among progressives. She was recently awarded the Historian of the Lions Award by the Los Angeles based Center for the Study of Political Graphics. Alongside the famed civil rights leader Reverend James Lawson, and Bay-area based artist Doug Minkler, she spoke in Los Angeles at CSPG’s 25th Annual Dinner on November 6th. Today, as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives’ national broadcast, we present excerpts of that conversation, which was moderated by LA-based journalist Erin Aubrey Kaplan.
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2 Responses to “Angela Davis on the Occupy Movement, Art and Resistance, and the Prison Industrial Complex”
I very respectfully disagree with Ms. Davis regarding the President. And I wonder WHAT MORE does he have to do to demonstrate that he is a “pretender”, and that we, and the hopeful young people of this country have been duped, and that he is an elitist, a supremacist, a fascist. People from Africa who knew his people are not fooled: listen to Spotlight Africa, especially the program with the Ethiopian filmmaker. . . . The President called the Occupiers “those people”.
And speaking of prisoners, it’s very telling that the grisly tortures of child prisoners over there in Chicago took place under his watch; and for that matter, under Rev. Jackson’s watch. The Chicago Police Torture Archive: http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/
I very respectfully disagree with Ms. Davis regarding the President. And I wonder WHAT MORE does he have to do to demonstrate that he is a “pretender”, and that we, and the hopeful young people of this country have been duped, and that he is an elitist, a supremacist, a fascist. People from Africa who knew his people are not fooled: listen to Spotlight Africa, especially the program with the Ethiopian filmmaker. . . . The President called the Occupiers “those people”.
And speaking of prisoners, it’s very telling that the grisly tortures of black children and teenagers over there in Chicago took place under his watch; and for that matter, under Rev. Jackson’s watch. The Chicago Police Torture Archive: http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/