Activist Angela Davis, Professor Emerita of the University of California-Los Angeles, has dedicated her life to the struggle for human rights. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, a segregated black neighbourhood, and from her earliest years witnessed racist violence both from the Ku Klux Klan and the police. In the 1960s she joined the revolutionary Black Panther Party and was later implicated in a fatal shooting. After appearing on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list, she went on the run. Eventually found guilty of conspiracy, she spent a year in prison before being acquitted in 1972 after an international campaign for her release.
Over the decades, Angela Davis has been tireless in using her writing, teaching and leadership to stand up for the rights of black people, but also those of other oppressed groups: indigenous populations, transgender people, the Palestinians etc. In fact, she argues that the only way to achieve lasting change is by bringing together diverse struggles and encouraging cooperation between oppressed peoples. The title of her latest book sums up her life’s work: Freedom is a Constant Struggle.
A DIGNIFIED LIFE
In a meeting with the international press, Angela Davis reflected on what inspired her to become an activist, how the model of resistance has changed over time and her hopes for the future. She began by considering whether there were any moments in her life that galvanised her into taking up the struggle for freedom.
Angela Davis (Standard American accent): I don’t know whether I can argue that there were any catalytic moments that caused me to devote my life to the struggle for freedom. I attribute, you know, what I have done and what I’m continuing to do basically to the context within which I was born and reared. There was literally no possibility other than that of taking up the struggle against racism if one wanted to live a dignified life, in what was the most segregated, the most racially segregated city in the United States, Birmingham, Alabama, at that time. And my mother was an activist. I grew up from the time I can remember being conscious, recognising how important it was to resist and stand up and fight back. So it’s just the way I’ve learned to live my life and I like to point out that it’s nothing really special. It’s a way of being in the world. And I can’t imagine any better way to live.
A CLIMATE FOR REVOLUTION
Davis was then asked how she now viewed the armed struggle that took place the 1960s.
Angela Davis: I actually prefer to speak about the climate of revolution that existed during that period. And even then most of us did not assume that armed struggle was a synonym for revolution. But certainly, given the success of the Cuban revolution, the struggles that were unfolding throughout the continent of Africa, the African Liberation Movements, the fight back in Vietnam, that period did appear to be one in which radical change was on the agenda. And within the US, what you refer to as the armed struggle, would perhaps be better expressed as a desire to engage in self-defence. Organisations like the Black Panther Party, with which I was affiliated, of course I was a member of the Communist Party, and I was also a member of the Black Panther party… The role of weapons at that time was precisely to, first of all, stand up against state violence, against police violence, the police occupation of black communities. And more broadly, to defend the gains of the Black Liberation Movement. There were of course those who had a more romantic notion of the way in which armed struggle might of itself produce revolution, but I think those who were most serious recognised that revolution entailed deep and structural transformation of various apparatuses, the apparatus of production for example.
A NUANCED APPROACH
And what would she say to young activists today?
Angela Davis: For those who attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the sixties and for those who assume that the challenge of this period is to produce the kind of resistance that existed fifty years ago, I would say that revolutions cannot be imported either over space or over time and that this particular moment presents very different challenges. And, as a person who was active then and I continue to be active today, it’s very exciting to witness the ways in which younger activists have developed a much more nuanced approach to radical change.
HOPE AND OPTIMISM
But with so many people in the world facing oppression, is it possible to be optimistic about the future?
Angela Davis: I think that, for me, I always look for sites of hope. And I know there are others who perhaps don’t want to assume that optimism is possible. But you know, I like what Gramsci said: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”. So I’m always looking for signs and sites of hope and possibility. The work that we do right now may not bring down the system in the way we urgently want and need for it to be brought down, but it may help in the future. And I like to think of a kind of continuum of struggle that goes back to the era of slavery and resistance to colonisation. Those who fought those processes must have hoped that their work was making a difference, and we are the ones who benefit from their struggles a hundred years ago. And so we also have to imagine that the work that we do today, even though it may not bring down the system right now, is going to eventually make a difference.