Angela Davis

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/angela.jpg

I saw the documentary this afternoon. Can't find a thread, and she should have one. I knew some of the basic story, but learned lots. I want to track down a copy of the 1970 Life with her on the cover. There's a clip in the film where I recognized the interviewer but couldn't place him, and turns out it's Barry Callaghan, Morley's son, who used to be all over Canadian TV--I'll post an excerpt from the interview below. One of Davis's three lawyers, Leo Branton, Jr., not only sounded exactly like the famous baseball broadcaster Red Barber, he even looked like him--somewhat amazing, as Barber was a Southern white (who in the Ken Burns baseball film talks movingly about how Jackie Robinson forced him to grow up) and Branton a light-skinned African-American. There's probably a good film to be made about Rodger McAfee, the white farmer from California who put up Davis's bail money just before the trial began. Nixon provides the film's postscript as only Nixon can. Looked online for a reasonably priced Free Angela Davis button and was quickly disabused of that notion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sLIDscuc-M&feature=related

Black radicalism of the late sixties went off like a boxcar full of skyrockets. Their frequently expressed desire to tear down all the structures of white oppression was 100% understandable, but jesus, the backlash was fierce. What MLK Jr. accomplished was almost blown down in that gale. Still, I can't find it in my heart to denounce either the panthers or davis completely, considering the shit they had to swim in from birth.

have tickets for this at the london film festival, dead excited. there was a fair amount about her in the Black Power Mixtape doc, wasn't there?

as a young radical being groomed for activism I got to meet her (or more accurately stand there while adults I was with listened to her speak to them) when I was like 12 - one of my earliest understandings of charisma

Weird, I was thinking "when push comes to shove, 'Sweet black angel' is my favourite RS song" in the shower just now

I watched The Black Power Mixtape a few months ago, and the Swedish television interview with Davis used there isn't in the new film, so there's no overlap. Found out that the farmer who put up her bail money died in 2006.

74 years young today

preach, Angela

The Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award is supposed to honor the civil rights leader's legacy and raise funds for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. But after some members in the city's Jewish community objected to giving the award to human rights activist Angela Davis, this year's award presentation is derailed and the community is divided.

In October, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's board announced it would honor Davis at a February event. Now, it says, the award presentation is canceled because Davis' statements and public record do not "meet all of the criteria on which the award is based." Attempts to get more details from the board regarding its decision have been unsuccessful.

The controversy set off social media responses around the country and a protest outside the Civil Rights Institute, where local activists called for leaders of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to resign after the organization canceled plans to honor Davis. The Birmingham mayor said he's dismayed by the decision....

In the Southern Jewish Life article, author Larry Brook took issue with Davis' stance as an "outspoken voice in the boycott-Israel movement" and her comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to police shootings of African-Americans.

Davis responded late Monday, saying she asked for more substantive details on the board's decision and learned that her long-term support of justice for Palestinians was at issue.

"This seemed particularly unfortunate, given that my own freedom was secured — and indeed my life was saved — by a vast international movement," Davis said. "And I have devoted much of my own activism to international solidarity and, specifically, to linking struggles in other parts of the world to U.S. grassroots campaigns against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly."

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/08/683250815/civil-rights-award-rescinded-from-angela-davis-after-jewish-community-objections

#AngelaDavis issues a scathing rebuke of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute @bhamcivilrights after they rescinded her award https://t.co/8D2En4nW3X #RolandMartinUnfiltered https://t.co/8D2En4nW3X

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 9, 2019

she's great

THIS TRACK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAHDpnb03_0

I’m very optimistic... and of course I often borrow Antonio Gramsci’s notion of pessimism of the intellect but optimism of the will. Yes we always have to believe that, ultimately we will be able to change the world and I think that today as we try to generate powerful resistance movements against Islamophobia, to protect undocumented immigrants,to protect the rights of trans people, that we are drawing upon forces and drawing upon energies that have been created over decades. so now we are, in a sense, reaping the fruits of the work that people, activists, like ourselves... just as we are creating the terrain for something that may happen fifty years from now... And oftentimes when i say this people become depressed because they say “well, maybe i won’t be around in fifty years…?" but so what? you know, what difference does that make? Capitalism forces us and the neoliberal ideologies you were talking about compel us to measure the world in a very small way. We cannot measure the work that we are doing by our own selves.

that’s great

it is!

the idea seems so obvious but it's shocking and exciting to hear it so clearly expressed.

also, the track is fucking gorgeous.