Obviously there are some organizations that go out on the street and say we want an end to the capitalist system. But obviously that is not going to happen as a result of just assuming that stance.
We can’t talk about the black community. It’s no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community.
Well I teach in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. So that’s my primary work. I lecture on various campuses and in various communities across the country and other parts of the world.
The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one’s contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.
Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.
The campaign against the death penalty has been – while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.
We still have to struggle against the impact of racism, but it doesn’t happen in the same way. I think it is much more complicated today than it ever was.
Where cultural representations do not reach out beyond themselves, there is the danger that they will function as the surrogates for activism, that they will constitute both the beginning and the end of political practice.
Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today.
I think that the response to the OJ Simpson trial was based on a kind of sensibility that emerged out of the many campaigns to defend black communities against police violence.
As soon as I got out of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first of all, during the time I was in jail, there was an organization called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted that it be called National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners.
My name became known because I was, one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom.
I’m thinking about some developments say in the 80s when the anti-apartheid movement began to claim more support and strength within the US. Black trade unionists played a really important role in developing this US anti-apartheid movement.
Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was – 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within – internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing.
Kids these days are kind of going back to Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of people that stand for something.
I guess I would say first of all that we tend to go back to the 60s and we tend to see these struggles and these goals in a relatively static way.
I would suggest is that in the latter 1990s it is extremely important to look at the predicament of black people within the context of the globalization of capital.
But at the same time you can’t assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life.
And I guess what I would say is that we can’t think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can’t necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation.
I’m involved in the work around prison rights in general.