Angela Davis

I watched The Black Power Mixtape a few months ago, and the Swedish television interview with Davis used there isn't in the new film, so there's no overlap. Found out that the farmer who put up her bail money died in 2006.

74 years young today

preach, Angela

The Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award is supposed to honor the civil rights leader's legacy and raise funds for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. But after some members in the city's Jewish community objected to giving the award to human rights activist Angela Davis, this year's award presentation is derailed and the community is divided.

In October, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's board announced it would honor Davis at a February event. Now, it says, the award presentation is canceled because Davis' statements and public record do not "meet all of the criteria on which the award is based." Attempts to get more details from the board regarding its decision have been unsuccessful.

The controversy set off social media responses around the country and a protest outside the Civil Rights Institute, where local activists called for leaders of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to resign after the organization canceled plans to honor Davis. The Birmingham mayor said he's dismayed by the decision....

In the Southern Jewish Life article, author Larry Brook took issue with Davis' stance as an "outspoken voice in the boycott-Israel movement" and her comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to police shootings of African-Americans.

Davis responded late Monday, saying she asked for more substantive details on the board's decision and learned that her long-term support of justice for Palestinians was at issue.

"This seemed particularly unfortunate, given that my own freedom was secured — and indeed my life was saved — by a vast international movement," Davis said. "And I have devoted much of my own activism to international solidarity and, specifically, to linking struggles in other parts of the world to U.S. grassroots campaigns against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly."

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/08/683250815/civil-rights-award-rescinded-from-angela-davis-after-jewish-community-objections

#AngelaDavis issues a scathing rebuke of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute @bhamcivilrights after they rescinded her award https://t.co/8D2En4nW3X #RolandMartinUnfiltered https://t.co/8D2En4nW3X

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 9, 2019

she's great

THIS TRACK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAHDpnb03_0

I’m very optimistic... and of course I often borrow Antonio Gramsci’s notion of pessimism of the intellect but optimism of the will. Yes we always have to believe that, ultimately we will be able to change the world and I think that today as we try to generate powerful resistance movements against Islamophobia, to protect undocumented immigrants,to protect the rights of trans people, that we are drawing upon forces and drawing upon energies that have been created over decades. so now we are, in a sense, reaping the fruits of the work that people, activists, like ourselves... just as we are creating the terrain for something that may happen fifty years from now... And oftentimes when i say this people become depressed because they say “well, maybe i won’t be around in fifty years…?" but so what? you know, what difference does that make? Capitalism forces us and the neoliberal ideologies you were talking about compel us to measure the world in a very small way. We cannot measure the work that we are doing by our own selves.

that’s great

it is!

the idea seems so obvious but it's shocking and exciting to hear it so clearly expressed.

also, the track is fucking gorgeous.