Angela Y

10/5/2014 Angela Y. Davis on what's radical in the 21st century - Los Angeles Times

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Column Angela Y. Davis on what's radical inthe 21st century

MAY 6, 2014, 5:45 PM

Patt MorrisonLOS ANGELES TIMES

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UCLA professor Angela Y. Davis. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Forty-five years after her first UCLA teaching gig attracted the wrath of Gov. Ronald

Reagan, Angela Y . Davis is back on campus this semester, as regents' lecturer in the

gender studies department. Her Thursday address in Royce Hall, about feminism

and prison abolition, sums up some but not all of her work — a long academic career paralleled

by radical activism. President Nixon called her a "dangerous terrorist" when she was charged

with murder and conspiracy after a deadly 1970 courthouse shootout. She was acquitted, and

since then, the woman born in the Jim Crow minefield of Birmingham, Ala., has written,

taught and lectured around the world. Her iconic Afro has morphed from its 1970s silhouette;

her intensity has not.

Congress is working on prison-sentence reform. Many states have banned capital

punishment. Isn't this encouraging?

I've associated myself with the prison abolition movement; that does not mean I refuse to

endorse reforms. There is a very important campaign against solitary confinement, a reform

that is absolutely necessary. The difference resides in whether the reforms help to make life

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more habitable for people in prison, or whether they further entrench the prison-industrial

complex itself. So it's not an either-or situation.

What would a just prison system look like to you?

It's complicated. Most of us in the 21st century abolitionist movement look to W.E.B. Du Bois'

critique about the abolition of slavery — that it was not enough simply to throw away the

chains. The real goal was to re-create a democratic society that would allow for the

incorporation of former slaves. [Prison abolition] would be about building a new democracy:

substantive rights to economic sustenance, to healthcare; more emphasis on education than

incarceration; creating new institutions that would tend to make prisons obsolete.

You think prisons won't be necessary one day?

It is possible, but even [if it doesn't happen], we can move to a very different kind of justice that

does not require a retributive impulse when someone does something terrible.

Do you watch the prison-themed comedy-drama "Orange Is the New Black"?

I not only saw the series but I read [Piper Kerman's] memoir. She has a much deeper analysis

than one sees in the series, but as a person who has looked at the role of women's prisons in

visual culture, primarily films, I think [the series] isn't bad. There are so many aspects that

often don't [appear in] depictions of people in those oppressive circumstances. "12 Years a

Slave," for example — one thing I missed in that film was some sense of joy, some sense of

pleasure, some sense of humanity.

You are back this semester at UCLA, the campus from which Gov. Ronald Reagan

had you fired.

This was an offer I could not refuse. The students are very different from the students of 1969,

1970. They're so much more sophisticated, in the sense of having more complicated questions.

When you consider feminism today, do you think women have retreated, except

maybe when it comes to boardroom feminism?

One can talk about multiple feminisms; it is not a unitary phenomenon. There are those who

assume feminism is about moving up the hierarchy into positions of power, and that's OK, but

that's not what feminism does best. If the women at the bottom move up, the whole structure

moves up.

The kind of feminism I identify with is a method for research but also for activism.

Stokely Carmichael sort of joked that the position for women in the civil rights

movement's Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was "prone." Are women

full partners in politics today?



Perhaps not completely, but we have made a lot of progress. In the way we think about past

movements, I encourage people to look beyond heroic male figures. While Martin Luther King

is someone I revere, I don't like to allow his representation to erase the contributions of

ordinary people. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott was successful because black women,

domestic workers, refused to ride the bus. Had they not, where would we be today?

You support free birth control and abortion, which is denounced in some quarters

as genocidal.

Sometimes [in] what might appear to be outlandish statements, we discover there may be a

kernel of truth. While I would never argue that birth control or abortion rights constitute

genocide, I have to take into consideration how sterilization has been imposed on poor people,

especially people of color, and that someone like Margaret Sanger argued [birth control] was a

privilege for affluent women but a duty for poorer women.

What do you think of the nation's first black president?

There are moments of enormous possibility, and the election was such a moment. People all

over the world felt as if we were moving toward a new world. However brief that sense of

euphoria was, we should not forget that. That allows us to understand what possibilities might

reside in the future. [But] many people tended to deposit so many aspirations in this single

individual that they failed — we failed — to do the work [to take] better advantage of that

moment. People went to the polls and said, "We've done our job," and left it up to Obama.

Is democracy a good chassis on which to build a political system?

I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated

from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality,

gender equality, economic equality will elude us.

You ran for vice president on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984; was

that about faith in the democratic process?

It was about suggesting that there are alternatives. No one believed it was possible to win, but

the '80s [saw] the rise of the globalization of capital, the prison-industrial complex, and it was

important to provide some alternative political analyses.

What's your thinking on communism now?

I still have a relationship, [but] I'm not a member. I left the party because I didn't feel it was

open to the kind of democratization that we needed. I still believe that capitalism is the most

dangerous kind of future we can imagine.

Why did communism fail where it did?



That would require a long conversation. There may have been economic democracy, which we

lack in the West, but without political and social democracy, it just doesn't work. I don't think

we should throw the baby out with the bathwater; it would be important to look at what really

worked and what didn't.

Like no free speech?

Yes.

2016 will be the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party; you were a member

for a time.

The civil rights movement tended to be focused on integration, but there were those who said,

"We don't want to assimilate into a sinking ship, so let's change the ship altogether." The

emergence of the Black Panther Party marked a moment of rupture, and we are still in that

moment.

The party had two different kinds of activism: grass-roots activism that helped to create

institutions that are still working — for example, the Agriculture Department now runs free

breakfast programs. On the other hand, the posture of self-defense and monitoring the police.

If one looks at the party 10-point program, every single point is as relevant or more relevant 50

years later. The 10th point includes community control of technology. That was very prescient.

It's about using technologies rather than allowing them to use us.

Some people must still see in you the young woman who endorsed violence against

police, violence in political movements.

It's important to understand the differences between that era and this era. Our relationship

with guns was very different, largely revolving around self-defense. Today, when there's

something like 300 million guns in the country, and we've experienced these horrendous

shootings, we can't take the same position. I am totally in favor of gun control, of removing

guns not only from civilians but also from police.

Guns you owned were used in the 1970 kidnapping and shootout at the Marin

County Civic Center. You were acquitted of all charges. I read you purchased the

guns for self-defense.

Yes, and I talked about the fact that my father had guns when I was growing up; our families

needed to protect themselves from the Ku Klux Klan. We have laws against hate crimes [now];

I am ambivalent about [them] because oftentimes they end up being used against people who

were initially the victims. Anti-lynching legislation is issued more against black kids and so-

called gangs. Oftentimes the tools against racism are being used in the service of a kind of

structural racism.



Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

The documentary "Free Angela and All Political Prisoners" makes much of your

relationship with George Jackson, the prison activist killed in Soledad Prison. Too

much?

I would have placed the emphasis elsewhere. If you talk to [director Shola Lynch], you'll see

she was working with conventional genres; she sees the film as a political drama, a crime

thriller and a love story. Even so, the research she did was quite amazing. She found archival

material I had never seen before. She interviewed one of the FBI agents who arrested me, and

in that interview, I discovered how they caught me. I'm impressed by the way the film has

affected young people. It can help intergenerational conversations that teach me something

and teach younger people something.

What became of the radical, personal, confrontational writing of the 1960s and

'70s?

It's an interesting question. In many ways we were on our own. We were experimenting.

Those experiments are important because without moving into realms about which one knows

nothing, there will never be any change.

I expect people say to you, "If you don't like it in America, why are you here?"

I have lived in other places but this is my home, and I feel committed to transforming this

country. I have felt that way since I was a child. My mother was an activist believing in the

possibilities of transforming the world. I still have not given that up.

This interview was edited and excerpted from a transcription.

Top of the TicketPolitical commentary from David Horsey

MAY 9, 2014, 12:00 PM

'Bring back our girls' is a cry heard far beyond Nigeria

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“Bring back our girls” is the international rallying cry of those demanding the return of more

than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists. It should also be a constant

imperative for all civilized people who seek the release of females, both young and not so

young, from the chains of ideology, tradition and exploitation.

On April 14, a small army invaded a girls’ school in northern Nigeria. The contingent was part

of the Islamic guerrilla faction called Boko Haram, a name that translates as “Western

education is forbidden.” The soldiers kidnapped 276 female students and burned down the

school. In the days since, the terrorist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has threatened to sell

the girls into slavery or marry them off to Boko Haram members, which would be just

another form of slavery.

Boko Haram’s brazen, evil act has been met with outrage around the world. President Obama

condemned the abductions and has sent a military and law enforcement team to Nigeria to

help... READ MORE >

MAY 8, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Republicans abandon Americans to the calamities of climatechange


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Of all the ways the strident wackiness of the Republican Party is harming our country, the

absolute worst is the obstinate, willfully ignorant refusal of GOP leaders to deal with the

biggest existential threat facing the United States: climate change.

Tuesday was the release date of a congressionally mandated status report on the effects of

climate change written by more than 240 scientists, businesspeople and a range of other

experts. It details for every region of the country the negative effects already being

experienced due to global warming.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for the distant future, has moved firmly into the

present,” states the report, officially known as the National Climate Assessment. “Corn

producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington state and maple syrup producers in

Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of our recent experience.”

The report goes further than ever before in asserting that more frequent floods, huge...

READ MORE >

MAY 7, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Clintons are poised to steal the national spotlight from Obama


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Monica Lewinsky is back in the news, a clear harbinger of the country’s imminent return to a

political world dominated by the Clintons.

In the upcoming issue of “Vanity Fair,” Lewinsky declares that she wants to take control of

her own narrative. “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress,” she says. “I, myself,

deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I.

Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”

Lewinsky affirms that the affair that led to Clinton’s impeachment was consensual. “Any

‘abuse’ came in the aftermath,” she says, “when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his

powerful position. ... The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the

political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that

brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.”

Whether Lewinsky can now, or ever, regain control of her own story is questionable. She

continues to dwell on the weak side... READ MORE >

MAY 6, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Obama's White House Correspondents Dinner joke could havebeen mine



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Did President Obama steal a political gag from me for his routine at the White House

Correspondents Dinner?

I know quite a few conservatives think I’m a fanboy for the president (that’s not true -- I’m a

fanboy for his amazing wife), but if he has stooped to ripping off my cartoons, I may have to

open my own investigation into Benghazi and demand that he give back his premature Nobel

Peace Prize.

The possible cartoon theft happened Saturday night at the White House Correspondents'

Assn. annual banquet in the nation’s capital. When the reporters first hosted a president --

Calvin Coolidge in 1924 -- the dinner was a private, all-white, all-male soiree. Now, it has

become a celebrity roast that draws nearly as many attendees from Hollywoodas from inside

the Beltway. This year, everyone from Zooey Deschanel and Jessica Simpson to Julianna

Marguiles and Sofia Vergara showed up to pose for a phalanx of photographers, just as if it

were the Emmys. Actors from the trio of alternative-... READ MORE >

MAY 2, 2014, 11:30 AM

Koch brothers face an unexpected new foe: tea party conservatives

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In their quest to cripple solar power and protect the profits of their fossil fuels-based

businesses, the Koch brothers have run into an unexpected and potent adversary: tea party

conservatives.

Recently, I wrote about how the billionaire Koch boys, conservative state legislators and big

utilities are leading the charge in several states to force private citizens with solar panels on

their homes to pay extra fees to be connected to the power grid. At the time it looked as if

they had won a big victory in Oklahoma, where the Republican-dominated Legislature passed

a bill authorizing just such a fee scheme.

It turns out all the hard work of the anti-solar forces was immediately blunted by an executive

order issued by Gov. Mary Fallin. The order directs the state energy commission to impose

solar fees only as a last resort and to continue making expansion of solar power a priority.

The question is how a Republican governor in a deep red state can go against the Kochs, the

most notable... READ MORE >

MAY 1, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Toyota exit from Torrance inflames Texas/California rivalry

After six decades of doing business in California, Toyota is moving its North American

headquarters to Texas. That means 3,000 of the carmaker’s jobs will be leaving Torrance and

going to Plano, perhaps convincing California officials they should stop Texas Gov. Rick

Perry at the border the next time he attempts to come to the Golden State for another raid on


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-toyota-exit-20140501-story.html#navtype=blogroll





businesses.

Toyota’s surprise relocation will throw more gasoline on the burning argument about which

state is a better economic model for the nation. California and Texas, two giant, powerhouse

states that could stand on their own among the world’s biggest economies, are seen as the

perfect contrast between a high-regulation blue state and a low-regulation red state. And it is

no surprise that people arguing the superiority of one state or the other tend to choose their

facts based on their political biases.

Fans of Texas say the state’s lower taxes, lower cost of living and light-handed regulatory

system have created a booming... READ MORE >

APRIL 30, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy share weird, antique racialbias

Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, should give Cliven Bundy a call. After

Sterling loses his NBA franchise and the deadbeat Nevada rancher loses his cattle to the

Bureau of Land Management, the two old racists will both need a buddy. Maybe they can

team up together and open an all-white rodeo.

As most of the country has learned in the last couple of days, Sterling wrecked his three-

decade tenure as the unsuccessful and unliked boss of L.A.’s No. 2 professional basketball

team by making racially charged comments to his girlfriend -- comments that the girlfriend

recorded and that, mysteriously, ended up on the TMZ website.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-donald-sterling-20140429-story.html#navtype=blogroll




Actually, girlfriend does not quite capture the disputed nature of the relationship between

Sterling and the former Maria Vanessa Perez, who now goes by the name V. Stiviano. In the

lawsuit that has been brought against the 31-year-old Stiviano by the 80-year-old Sterling’s

80-year-old estranged wife, Rochelle, Stiviano is accused of engaging "in... READ MORE >

APRIL 25, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Putin's Ukraine incursion brings back the bad old bear

Besides sending a chill up the spine of the international community, Vladimir Putin has

accomplished one other thing by seizing Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine: Putin

has brought back the bear.

Like Uncle Sam, the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey, the Russian bear was a

stock character in decades of political cartoons drawn by pretty much every caricaturist in

the business, including me. The dissertation I wrote for my master's degree in international

relations was titled “Visions of the Bear” and surveyed British and American political

cartoons to track Western perceptions of the Soviets during the Cold War. In those cartoons,

bears abounded. The animal seemed a perfect personification of the USSR -- big, brutish,

shambling and dangerous.

One day not long after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, I drew a

cartoon that retired the bear as the symbol of the new Russia in my commentary. The beast

had become toothless and it was time to find a... READ MORE >


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-bad-old-bear-20140424-story.html#navtype=blogroll





APRIL 24, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Crackpot Cliven Bundy waves the flag and flouts the law

The right-wing insurrection at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., has taken another weird

turn with new revelations about the family history of Cliven Bundy.

Bundy justifies his two-decade-long refusal to pay the Bureau of Land Management for

grazing rights on the public land where he runs his cattle by claiming his ancestors gained

livestock water rights in the 1870s, long before the federal government horned in on the deal.

Now, it turns out, that is not exactly true.

KLAS, the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, checked out the Bundy family’s history with the land

and found Bundy’s grandmother was born in 1901 to parents who had moved a few years

earlier from Utah and farmed, not in Bunkerville, but in neighboring Mesquite County. All his

other relatives came to the area years later from Arizona and other states. Although Bundy

says water rights were somehow handed down to him, records show Bundy’s ranch bordering

the BLM land was not purchased by his family until 1948.

In 1998, a... READ MORE >

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-crackpot-cliven-bundy-20140423-story.html#navtype=blogroll

http://www.8newsnow.com/story/25302186/an-abbreviated-look-at-rancher-cliven-bundys-family-history





APRIL 23, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Koch brothers and big utilities campaign to unplug solar power

The Koch brothers have a new ploy to protect the traditional energy business that helped

make them the planet’s fifth- and sixth-richest humans. They are funding a campaign to

shackle solar energy consumers who have escaped the grip of big electric utilities.

Of all the pro-business, anti-government causes they have funded with their billions, this may

be the most cynical and self-serving. On Sunday, a Los Angeles Times story by Evan Halper

outlined the Koch’s latest scheme. Along with anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, several

major power companies and a national association representing conservative state

legislators, the brothers are aiming to kill preferences for the burgeoning solar power

industry that have been put into law in dozens of states. Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona

are their first targets, with more to come.

They already have their first victory. On Monday, Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Mary Fallin

signed a bill passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature that authorizes... READ MORE >

APRIL 22, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Cliven Bundy's militiamen are neither terrorists nor patriots

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Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is a scofflaw with screwy ideas about the Constitution, and the

armed oddballs who have joined his skirmish with the Bureau of Land Management are a

nutty vanguard of the deluded conspiracy-mongers who dominate the far right wing in

American politics. Given their actions, they do not deserve to be called patriots, but neither

are they terrorists.

They have been characterized as both. Appearing together on a TV news show, Nevada’s two

U.S. senators disagreed about the nature of the armed men who scared off federal agents as

they attempted to confiscate Bundy’s cattle. Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, the majority

leader, called them “domestic terrorists.” In response, Republican Sen. Dean Heller said,

“What Sen. Reid may call domestic terrorists, I call patriots.”

Reid went too far. The two brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon were terrorists. The

anti-government militants who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City were terrorists.

The neo-Confederates... READ MORE >

APRIL 18, 2014, 5 :00 AM

Corporate success should be shared with workers, not just CEOs


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Of the many statistics that expose America’s increasingly wide wealth gap, there is one that

has stuck with me this week: The top 10% of wage earners in the U.S. receive half the

income of all wage earners combined.

It is a function of simple math that people at the top of a wage scale will grab a bigger share

of the money, but that share is not constant. According to Thomas Piketty of the Paris School

of Economics, the highest 10% took in just a third of all income in 1960. In a New York

Times interview, Piketty said a large proportion of the current rise to nearly 50% is due to

the recent sharp increase in “supersalaries” being paid to senior executives.

Now, this may be simplistic math, but it strikes me that if supersalaries are taking a larger

share, that means there is less left to pay workers and managers well down the corporate

ladder. In other words, one cause of middle-class income stagnation might just be the greed

at the top.

At many American corporations, the stark... READ MORE >

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Angela Y