Are Prisons Obsolete? Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Women, Culture & Politics (2004)

• published: 06 Feb 2015
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Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture 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, although she was never a party member. Her interests included prisoner rights; she founded 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 a former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.[2] Davis was arrested, charged, tried, and acquitted of conspiracy in the 1970 armed take-over of a Marin County courtroom, in which four persons died.[3] Her research interests are 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 twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s. On January 28, 1972, Garrett Brock Trapnell hijacked TWA Flight 2. One of his demands was Davis' release. The Rolling Stones song "Sweet Black Angel", recorded in 1970 and released in 1972 on their album Exile on Main Street, is dedicated to Davis and is one of the band's few overtly political releases.[27] However, the first song ever published in the world in favor of Davis was "Angela" (1971), written by Italian singer-songwriter and musician Virgilio Savona with his group (The "Quartetto Cetra"), and for this he received some anonymous threats.[28] John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded their song "Angela" on their 1972 album Some Time in New York City in support. The jazz musician Todd Cochran, also known as Bayete, recorded his song "Free Angela (Thoughts...and all I've got to say)" that same year. Also in 1972, Tribe Records co-founder Phil Ranelin released a song dedicated to Davis titled "Angela's Dilemma" on Message From The Tribe, a spiritual jazz collectable. After her acquittal, Davis visited Cuba. In doing so she followed the precedents set by her fellow activists Robert F. Williams, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Assata Shakur. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak.[30] Davis perceived Cuba to be a racism-free country, which led her to believe that "only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed." When she returned to the United States her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles within the US. Davis opposed the 1995 Million Man March, arguing that the exclusion of women from this event necessarily promoted male chauvinism and that the organizers, including Louis Farrakhan, preferred women to take subordinate roles in society. Together with Kimberlé Crenshaw and others, she formed the African American Agenda 2000, an alliance of Black feminists. Davis has continued to oppose the death penalty. In 2003, she lectured at Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts women's college in Atlanta, on prison reform, minority issues, and the ills of the criminal justice system.[48] At the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz), she participated in a 2004 panel concerning Kevin Cooper. She also spoke in defense of Stanley "Tookie" Williams on another panel in 2005,[49] and 2009.[50] On April 16, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the University of Virginia Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies symposium on The Problem of Punishment: Race, Inequity, and Justice.[51] On October 31, 2011, Davis spoke at the Philadelphia and Washington Square Occupy Wall Street assemblies where, due to restrictions on electronic amplification, her words were human microphoned.[52][53] In 2012 Davis was awarded the 2011 Blue Planet Award, an award given for contributions to humanity and the planet.[54] At the 27th Empowering Women of Color Conference in 2012, Davis mentioned that she was a vegan, saying that "[w]hen they're eating a steak or eating chicken, most people don't think about the tremendous suffering that those animals endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings."[55] Davis has called for the release of Rasmea Odeh, associate director at the Arab American Action Network, who was convicted of immigration fraud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis