Sunday, November 15, 2020

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Yvonne Davis

  • Exciting, smart mind and world traveler and she can see things that we can’t see in our own bubble.
  • Birmingham is her hometown and she was friends with the families of the girls and UCSC
  • Prisons are a system that allows us to not deal with our social issues
  • In prisons, mental health not being treated and rights being taken
  • She really helped us understand intersectionality 
  • This resource was mentioned: From Privilege to Progress https://www.facebook.com/privtoprog

From Online Summary

1) What does this book say about the power of well-Organized mass movements over individualism?

Davis offers two pieces of advice to movement builders in their effort to chip away at individualism: 1) Teach, learn, and disseminate the socio-historical conditions and foundations of structural inequalities in movements through advocacy and organizing; 2) Focus on grassroots organizing that involves the most affected. For example, if prisoners are treated like objects of charity by academics, lawyers and policy-makers, where conferences are held about them and not with them, we not only defeat anti-prison work, but constitute the prisoners as inferior in the process of working to defend their rights.

 

2) How can we build transnational solidarity between US movements and related international movements?

Davis importantly draws the connection between US law enforcement agencies and the Israeli military. The Israeli military, which leads a regime that occupies a population and condones apartheid, has trained, and continues to train US sheriffs, police chiefs, and FBI agents on combatting terrorism. When we challenge the Israeli military, it affects what happens in over-policed communities in the US, since US police departments are now equipped with military equipment and receive training from the Israeli military.

 

3) What do we need to consider when the Word “terrorist” is used?

Black Panthers were called terrorists. Davis uses her personal account of growing up in Birmingham, Alabama to unpack how “there is almost always a political motivation” when the word terrorist is used (or not used). The multitude of bombs that were used to destroy Black homes, churches, and lives while Davis was growing up were never described as acts of terror. Yet somehow communities of color have endured centuries of unacknowledged terror, at the hands of those in power, which has shaped the history of the US.

 

4) What is the role of radical women of color in movement building?

Angela Davis firmly states, “every change that has happened has come as a result of mass movements.” If you look deeper, it is evident that it was not individuals such as Abraham Lincoln, MLK, Jr., Barack Obama, or even herself who demanded change – well-organized mass movements always did. The title of her book suggests that new solidarities between young organizers have created the foundation of a (new) movement. Davis believes that the future lies in young people and the young generation is informed by feminism and anti-racist struggles in a way that Davis’s generation was not. It is in this collective that Davis “finds reservoirs of hope and optimism”.