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Good afternoon.
It's nice to see you all here in Elstad Auditorium today.
We have an exciting program this afternoon.
We're thrilled, absolutely thrilled to have
Dr. Angela Davis here with us this afternoon.
Now, before we begin our program,
I would like to acknowledge
some of our very important members of the audience.
With us we have Dr. Alan Hurwitz,
and the first lady of Gallaudet, Vicki.
Hello to both of you!
Provost *** is in the audience.
And we have several members of the Board of Trustees.
Would you please stand to be recognized?
Members of the Gallaudet University Board of Trustees
are here in attendance with us
this afternoon as well.
Family and friends, faculty and staff,
members of the Gallaudet community,
welcome to this Diversity Lecture Series.
I would like to take a moment to introduce
our mistress of ceremonies. Elena Ruiz.
Thank you so much, and welcome everyone.
I am Elena Ruiz.
I am a graduate student at Gallaudet University.
So today Gallaudet University is graced
with the presence of one of today's greatest thinkers,
authors, scholars, organizers, and activists
of our time, Dr. Angela Davis.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, during the time
of the segregationist era, Dr. Davis was raised,
surrounded by activist families and community members
and certainly these community and family members
were formative in her later political endeavors.
Dr. Davis received her bachelor's degree
from Brandeis University, her master's degree
from University of California, and her doctoral degree
from Humboldt University in Berlin.
Upon obtaining her Ph.D., Dr. Davis returned
to the states and became engaged
in various community organizing projects
with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
the Black Panthers, and Communist Party U.S.A.,
just to name a few.
Dr. Davis began her first post as a professor
at the University of California Los Angeles in 1969.
However, Dr. Davis was unjustly targeted by the State
due to her radical, political engagements.
Shortly after, Dr. Davis' organizing work
in prisoner's rights activism has led her to be targeted
by the FBI, an unjust campaign.
This resulted in Dr. Davis spending 16 months in prison.
This was in Marin County, California.
Most of which she was in solitary confinement.
During the struggle, Dr. Davis produced works
that became foundational contributions to the work
of anti-racism, women of color, feminism,
and anti-violence.
Additionally, a "free Angela" movement launched
Dr. Davis into public notoriety
as a political intellectual,
and many rejoiced upon her release.
Dr. Davis continued to engage in various instances
of social justice activism.
She has published many significant works,
and is currently Professor Emerita
at the University of California Santa Cruz's
History of Consciousness Program.
As you can see, Dr. Davis' lifetime achievements
are nothing short of inspirational,
especially pertinent is how Dr. Davis' work is
grounded in concepts of intersectionality.
Indeed, as our campus wrestles with embracing
this concept of intersectionality,
how our varying identities and experiences come together,
they do not need to be threats to our unification,
but rather factors that can strengthen our collectivity
through deliberate analyses, dialogue, and processes
of accountability, as Dr. Davis has written extensively about.
As someone who has been and will continue
to be professionally, politically,
and personally inspired by Dr. Davis,
I venture to say that her presence at this University
is nothing short of ground breaking for those of us
who are marginalized within the marginalized.
She speaks to us when many others will not.
For those of us who exist on the peripheries,
Dr. Davis' intersectional works and thinking give us life
and a glimpse of liberation.
We look forward to this, and without further ado,
Gallaudet's community is honored to welcome Dr. Davis.
(Applause)
Is the microphone working now?
Well, first of all, Good afternoon!
It has been so wonderful to spend time
on the campus of Gallaudet.
I have followed the struggles and the radical activism
associated with this campus for many years,
and over multiple student generations,
Gallaudet has become a model for people everywhere
who are striving to make justice a reality.
This is Black History Month.
It is also the week when *** History Week was
first celebrated beginning in 1926.
And having grown up in Birmingham, Alabama,
I remember as a child
when we used to celebrate Black History Week each year.
Abraham Lincoln's birthday is on February 12th.
Frederick Douglass' birthday is today, February 14th.
(Applause)
But today is also Valentine's Day,
when we tell each other, "I love you."
(Laughter)
And it is a day on which we might reflect
on our love for justice,
and the interconnections of love and justice.
The theme of my talk this afternoon
comes from Dr. Martin Luther King's observation
that justice is indivisible.
And injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere.
And as people on this campus have demonstrated
through the defense of the rights of deaf people
and the forging of a vibrant deaf culture,
including a black Deaf Culture, history reveals --
(Applause)
history reveals the expanding parameters of justice.
We cannot make the mistake which is the formative error
of this country which is assuming
that democracy can work if it is confined
only to a specific group of people.
It used to be the case that affluent white,
straight, hearing men
controlled the destiny of this country.
The recent election demonstrated
that even though the majority of white men voted for Romney,
which I found very troubling,
their will could still not prevail
because 96% of black women, 87% of Latina women,
the majority of white women, and all of the other people
who stood up for justice won out over the will
of the majority of affluent, white, straight, hearing men.
(Applause)
And so what does that mean?
It means that this is a new day
for the United States of America!
Black History Month, black history in the Americas
is the history of the quest for liberation,
and it thus belongs to all who identify with
and cherish historical and ongoing struggles for freedom.
Black history whether here in North America
or in Africa or in Europe has always been infused
with the spirit of resistance, an activist spirit
of protest and transformation.
And, therefore, when we celebrate black history,
it is not primarily for the purpose of representing
black people in the numerous roles as,
first, to break the barriers in many fields
that have been historically closed to people of color,
although it is important to acknowledge these firsts.
But rather, we celebrate black history
because it is a centuries' old struggle to achieve
and expand freedom for all.
Black history is, indeed, American history.
But it is also world history.
Now, this is a special year.
It is the 150th anniversary
of the Emancipation Proclamation.
And I would like to ask you: What does it mean
that we have not been called upon to celebrate
the 150th anniversary of this Act
that supposedly liberated the slaves.
Obama issued a proclamation on December 31st,
I believe, asking us to celebrate
the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation
on January 1st.
How many of you engaged in that celebration?
Not too many of us, right?
And perhaps we're not celebrating it
because there was a fraudulent aspect
to the Emancipation Proclamation.
It was more -- when I say "fraudulent," I mean
that it wasn't really an act to emancipate the slaves.
It was a military strategy.
It was a military strategy much more
than it was a measure to free human beings
from a oppressive, racist, immoral institution.
It was a military strategy.
And, therefore, all of those states
and all of those sections of states that remain loyal
to the union were allowed to keep their slaves.
And, as a matter of fact, Frederick Douglass said in 1865
that the Civil War, and I am quoting,
was begun in the interest of slavery on both sides.
The south was fighting to take slavery out of the union,
and the north was fighting to keep slavery
in the union.
The south fighting to get it beyond the limits
of the United States Constitution,
and the north fighting for the old guarantees.
Both despising the Negroes.
Both insulting the Negroes.
This was Frederick Douglass' observation in 1865.
Now, how many of you have read the Emancipation Proclamation?
Then if you have read it, you know that the majority
of the document deals with the exceptions.
The majority of the document lists the states
and the neighborhoods even, and the parishes
that will be allowed to keep their slaves.
Very bizarre, isn't it?
Very bizarre.
Yet, Abraham Lincoln was a very shrewd man.
He knew that if some slaves were free,
they would join the Union Army, and they would fight
even more passionately, or far more passionately
than white soldiers to win the Civil War.
And, as a matter of fact, it was according
to W.E.B. Du Bois in "Black Reconstruction in America",
it was the precisely freed black slaves
who joined the Union Army
who were responsible for winning the war.
As a matter of fact,
I suggest that during this 150th anniversary
of the Emancipation Proclamation,
or perhaps over the next couple of years,
we encourage everyone who has not yet read Du Bois'
"Black Reconstruction in America" to read that book.
High schools, colleges, universities,
graduate-level students, everyone should read
"Black Reconstruction in America."
Du Bois argues that the Emancipation Proclamation
brought about, in effect, a general strike.
And Chapter 4 of his book is called "The General Strike."
How the Civil War meant "emancipation,"
and how the black worker won the war by a general strike
which transferred his labor from the Confederate planter
to the northern invader in whose Army lines
workers began to be organized as a new labor force.
So he says that the withdrawal
and the bestowal of labor by the slaves on the Union Army
was what actually won the war.
This army of striking labor eventually produced
the 200,000 soldiers whose evident ability to fight
decided the war.
Now, let's say a few words about the film, "Lincoln."
I was wondering, what's going to happen when we experience
the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment in 1865
-- in 2015?
Will there be another film?
Who knows?
But if you've seen the film "Lincoln"
you know that it is about his successful attempts
to guarantee the passage of the 13th Amendment.
But we don't see the back story in the film.
We don't recognize in the film that actually Lincoln
had been in favor of transporting
all of the black people who were freed to another country,
to another place, to Africa.
He was an advocate of colonization.
And he persisted until he realized that the majority
of black people were not going to support him.
Yet, at the same time, Lincoln was an amazing figure.
And as someone who has studied a great deal of feminist theory,
I've learned how to feel very comfortable
in a place of contradiction.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So I can be very critical -- thank you --
so I can be very critical of Abraham Lincoln,
and at the same time I can praise him,
and I might even say the same thing about our President.
(Laughter)
We can ask ourselves what did the 13th Amendment achieve,
and what did it not achieve?
Anyone who believes that the institution of slavery
could be abolished simply by an amendment
to the Constitution is inhabiting a fictional world.
How could a few lines appended to the Constitution
get rid of a long history of racism and oppression?
Get rid of an institution that had penetrated
the very warp and woof of the fabric of American society?
But at the same time, it was important.
It was extremely important.
And it occurs to me that this university was
founded in the year between the Emancipation Proclamation,
and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
And I am wondering how you have reflected
on that historical conjuncture.
And, again, as someone who has studied feminist theory,
I believe that we should think together
things that are often kept apart.
(Applause)
And so as Elena Ruiz in her very eloquent introduction
pointed to the importance of pursuing discussions
on intersectionality here on this campus,
I will only say that I second the motion.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Thank you.
but let us fast-forward to the 20th century,
to the mid-20th century.
And let us recognize that the mid-20th century
movement for justice, for freedom were necessary
only because slavery
was not comprehensibly abolished.
We tend to think of these historical moments
as discrete and separate and isolated.
Slavery was abolished,
and then there was a civil rights struggle.
But the struggle for civil rights
would have been entirely unnecessary
had slavery been fully abolished.
(Applause)
And so what we should probably say is
that during the movement of the mid-1900's,
the mid-20th century, we were continuing
to struggle against slavery.
It was a 20th century abolitionist movement.
And I have to say that I happened to turn
on the television in my hotel room last night,
here at the Kellogg Center, and there was an amazing documentary
on the freedom riders which meant I didn't go to sleep
until 2:00 this morning.
(Laughter)
And in many ways, that world was so different
from the world that we inhabit today.
And we should be proud of that.
But at the same time, it's not so different.
It's not so different.
And here, again, is the contradiction
we should be riding.
Let's go back to the 1860's, from the 1960's to the 1860's.
The latter 1860's, up to 1877.
That was the most radical era in the history
of this country.
And it's the era most people in this country
know absolutely nothing about.
If we understood what happened during that very short period
before the overturning of radical reconstruction,
if we understood that former slaves
were so passionately involved in the struggle
for education that in the South,
and I know that we are in Washington, D.C.,
which is the South --
(Laughter)
in the South public education was brought to all children.
White children, poor white children in the South
would have never had access to public education
had it not been for the struggle of former slaves.
And, of course, numerous black people
became elected officials.
New laws including progressive laws for women,
progressive divorce laws,
laws that allowed women to own property,
all of this came out of the era
of radical reconstruction.
But, of course, in 1877 it came to a close,
and you had the rule of Jim Crow,
the rule of segregation, the rule of the Ku Klux ***.
The emergence of a punishment system
that foreshadowed the prison industrial complex
in the late 20th Century, the development
of massive prison plantations,
the development of the convict lease system.
I'm looking at my timer.
Because I want to save time for questions and answers,
and I'm not moving forward as much
as I should be in my notes.
So my next section is on the indivisibility
of justice, race, and sexuality.
And, of course, we've been talking a great deal
about marriage equality recently.
And marriage equality is important
as a civil rights' issue.
But, again, I want us to have a broader framework,
and to go further than simply arguing
that LGBT communities need to have access
to the hetero-normative institution of marriage.
(Applause)
Because, let me say, first of all, that the women's movement
and the gay rights movement were inspired
by the struggles for freedom that black people
waged for so many decades.
(Applause)
And what was so exciting about the gay rights movement
during its feminist phase was its critique of marriage,
especially because this institution
was a capitalist institution designed to promote
the preservation and distribution of property,
and also because this institution
had been used oppressively against black people.
Slaves were not allowed to marry.
Interracial marriage was illegal
until Loving V Virginia.
And, of course, Bush.
You remember George W. Bush?
Bush argued that all of the problems of poverty
in the black community could be solved
if only they got married.
But it had to be heterosexual marriage, right?
So I would like us to complicate these issues of justice,
the indivisibility of justice
implies that we cannot separate different posits,
different struggles.
It is counter-productive and contradictory to choose
whether to support justice for people of color,
for black people, Latinos, Native Americans,
Asian Americans, or justice for LGBT communities.
It is also wrong... (Applause)
It is also wrong to call for justice
on the basis of ableism.
It is wrong to exclude deaf communities
and disabled people from the circle of justice,
but this cannot be (Applause)
But this cannot be corrected simply
on the basis of inclusion and social justice movements
associated with hearing people should take leadership
from the deaf community.
In this age of neo-liberalism when individualism
has reached impressive and unprecedented heights.
Everybody is individualistic these days.
The individual on the capitalist market.
Hearing social justice advocates have so much
to learn about the collective and community-based approaches
of the deaf community.
The indivisibility of justice, immigration rights.
We have to defend the rights of immigrants.
If the concept of civil rights is to have any meaning
during the 21st century,
then we all have to stand up for the rights of immigrants.
(Applause)
And it is not only about the Dream Act,
and a path toward citizenship.
It is about that, but it is also about welcoming the people
who do so much of the labor that fuels the economy,
agricultural labor, service labor.
And this is an issue that black people
in particular should take note.
Because immigrants are people who perform the labor
that black people used to perform.
(Applause)
We need to incorporate strategies to minimize
Islamophobia, and xenophobia.
The indivisibility of justice requires us to defend Muslims
who are seriously under attack
because of ideological efforts to equate Islam and terrorism.
Even people who have little to do with Islam
are under attack because of this ideological association.
Sikhs who have been killed
because their turbans are misread as Muslim.
And in this context, let me say that we should reveal
the so-called war on terror
to be a strategy for U.S. military dominance,
U.S. imperialist and militarist dominance.
Guantanamo should have been shut down four years ago.
But it is certainly time to say shut down Guantanamo now.
Right now.
The indivisibility of justice, the prison industrial complex.
Do you understand that in light of the rise
of global capitalism, especially during the 1980's,
it didn't end in the 1960's.
In the 1980's, we saw the disestablishment
of the welfare state.
The disestablishment of human services.
The transfer of capital to profitable sectors
of the economy, and the decision to forget about everything else,
that is to say, to privatize everything else.
Privatize education.
Privatize healthcare.
Even privatize punishment.
And so using the racially-charged issue,
using the racially-charged issue of drugs,
the so-called "war on drugs,"
deeply affected communities of color.
It established the framework and basis
for what we call the prison industrial complex.
And the background is the same as that
which led to the emergence of the Ku Klux ***
after the Civil War,
and the emergence of the convict lease system,
and the plantation prison system to which I referred.
The context was the need to manage in the 1800's
freed black bodies.
the context at the end of the 20th Century
is the need to manage unemployed bodies of color,
poor white bodies, female bodies that no longer
have access to welfare which has been disestablished.
Deaf bodies denied the services necessary
to produce democracy and equality.
And so now 1 out of every 100 adults is behind bars.
1 out of every 37 adults in the United States of America
is under the control of a criminal justice agency.
Even though the U.S. consists of 5% of the global population,
here in this country we have 25% of the incarcerated population.
We are a prison nation.
We are a prison nation.
Justice is indivisible.
Justice for the more than 2.5 million people
who are at this moment in jails and prisons, military prisons,
and Indian jails, and federal prisons.
And, finally, in my talk of the indivisibility of justice,
I want to briefly talk about the internationalization
of justice.
How do we expand our vision?
How do we develop a more capacious sense of justice
for the planet?
Recently I have been doing a great deal of work
on Palestine,
having visited the occupied territories last year.
And I learned more not only about the need
to support Palestinian people
who are simply struggling against oppression.
They're struggling against some of the same measures
of segregation that we as black people encountered
in the 1960's.
But they are also thinking deeply about issues
of intersectionality, and I had the opportunity
to meet with a group of very young people
who were called *** for BDS.
And BDS is Boycott Divestment Sanctions.
And they are trying to challenge
the pink-washing strategies of Israel.
How many of you have heard of pink washing?
Oh, I only see three hands, four hands, maybe five.
Not that many.
Google "pink washing."
Find out what it is.
Let me say that just very briefly that Israel
represents itself as a place where women enjoy equality,
and where LGBT communities enjoy equality.
And *** for BDS argue that justice is indivisible.
Equality is indivisible.
It makes no sense to argue that the state of Israel
is a haven for gay people if Palestinians experience
their lives as if they were in the largest
open-air prison in the world.
The critique of pink washing reveals the shallowness,
and the contemptuous character of the democracy
that Israel purports to represent.
And I would suggest that we can use that approach
to develop critiques of the kind of democracy
that prevails in this country, the exclusion,
the continued exclusion of Native Americans.
You know, why is it that given the fact
that this country was founded on practices of colonization,
Native Americans continue to be subject
to forms of genocide, even dispersive genocide.
And I would like to speak more.
I have a lot more to say.
But there is not enough time.
So let me thank you very much for your attention.
(Applause)
And tell you -- (Cheers and applause).
And let me tell you what an honor it has been
to spend this time with you.
(Cheers and applause).
Thank you!
(Cheers and applause).
Thank you!
Now, I understand that there are --
We will begin the question-and-answer period
of this afternoon's program soon.
But first I would like to acknowledge Dr. Angela Davis,
and give her a special recognition of thanks
and ask that Jeremy Adams, Dr. Lily Ransom,
and Professor Amy Stevens, please join us on stage.
I am Jeremy Adams.
I'm up here today because I want to give special thanks
to a special person.
She really means a lot to my identity and I know
that she mean as lot to other people's identity as well.
I had the honor of meeting her yesterday,
and I almost forgot my name actually.
(Laughter)
I was hi, my name is --
she couldn't tell, though,
but I was really nervous to meet her.
I remember her telling a story yesterday
about how she met James Baldwin, and how she was kind of
in the same position that I was, no name,
nobody really knew who she was,
but she kind of introduced herself
and became very close to him.
And I hope that I have the same opportunity.
Second, I want to thank the Office of Diversity.
They really on short notice,
it was a Monday when I contacted them.
(Cheers and applause).
I asked if they could allow me to present to her,
and they were very helpful in --
and they really played a big part in me
having this opportunity today.
So I really want to thank them as well.
I would like to thank these two people next to me,
Dr. Lily Ransom and Dr. Amy Stevens.
Dr. Ransom was my gender identity teacher.
And she taught me a lot about feminist theory,
and it really connected to what Dr. Davis speaks on,
and a lot of her very profound ideas.
I would also like to thank Professor Amy Stevens
who is my GSR 240 teacher.
She taught the civil rights' course,
so her class really connected
to Dr. Davis' profound ideas as well.
I'm up here today
because I want to present Dr. Davis with a book.
It's called
"Liberation: Reflections of a 21st Century Black Man."
I wrote the book in about a month's span,
two months' span.
It's a book of poetry and social commentary.
I wrote it because I really wanted
to give something to Dr. Davis, because she has given
so much to me.
So I want to present this to you.
(Applause)
Lastly, I just wanted to say
that I will be publishing this book in maybe a week or so,
and I have a mailing list if anybody would like to --
(Laughter)
Lastly, I really just want to say thank you
for Dr. Davis to come to Gallaudet.
I think that I speak for a lot of people
when I say it means a lot to the deaf community
and as well as the black community here on campus
that she came to share with us
and I just want to thank her really.
(Applause)
Thank you so much for that special moment of recognition.
We would now like to open the floor for any questions
you that may have for Dr. Angela Davis.
If you do have a question, we have stairwells
on either side of the stage.
Who is the first brave soul that would like to come forth?
Use either the left or right-hand side of the stage.
Shall I turn this on?
I am not actually a student here.
I am a student from the George Washington University,
but I really wanted to ask you something
that's been troubling me for a really long time
is the use of drone warfare especially
by President Obama against communities of color.
And so I wondered if you could speak to that,
and maybe how we integrate that more fully
into the political discourse because I feel like
especially in the last election, it tended
to be ignored by liberals who didn't want to bring it up,
and then conservatives
didn't really have a problem with it.
So it wasn't something that was addressed.
ANGELA DAVIS: Thank you so much for the question.
I totally agree with you.
I suppose I would respond by saying that it's our job
to prevent those drones from being used.
Why haven't we organized and mobilized?
I thought that, during the elections in this last period,
we should have said that.
The first time when we elected Obama,
we were engaging in this world historical experience
of electing the first African-American President,
or the first African-American President
who identified with the black tradition of struggle.
And we all tended to project our desires
and aspirations on him as an individual.
And as soon as the election was over,
and we celebrated, there was planetary euphoria, right?
We went home and we said we did our jobs.
And we left it up to him.
To carry on.
Of course, he didn't carry on in the way that --
he did some really good things.
I mean, I don't want to discount the fact
that the last four years were fundamentally different
from the previous four years.
(Applause)
Because we can't forget what it was like
to live during the Bush administration.
I was telling the students last night,
I think, that in 2000, I went to sleep,
and Al Gore was the President of the United States.
And then I woke up the next morning
to an eight-year nightmare.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
But getting back to your question,
I wonder why we have not had a massive demonstration?
We need to develop an agenda.
I spoke at one of the inaugural balls,
the Peace Inaugural Ball,
and one of the things I said was that we can no longer
confine our own aspirations to presidential agendas.
We have to figure out what we want,
and we have to demand an end to the drones,
demand that the war in Guantanamo Bay cease.
And that war never should have taken place.
So I totally agree with you.
All of the various aspects of the militarist,
imperialist United States of America need to be contested.
For a long time I thought that we should have a demand
that goes something like this,
"padlock the Pentagon," you know.
Thank you for your question.
Audience member: Dr. Davis, it's an honor to you have here.
Thank you so much for accepting the invitation,
and gracing our university with your presence.
Given that we are all studies of intersectionality,
each of us, me, for example,
as an African-American lesbian ally to the deaf community,
interpreter, ordained minister,
and the list goes on and on.
And each of us has all of those identities,
and even though we're not focused on the individual,
how do we begin to have these conversations
and come together, not setting aside the intersections
that we are, but at the same time finding a way
to have common ground?
How do we even begin that conversation?
We're in the middle right now at this University
of a conversation that's not being had.
(Applause)
(Cheers and applause)
It's not being had!
And many, many of us are suffering.
And as you created the analogy
of the civil rights movement being a continuation
of the abolitionist movement, the protest of 2006
was a continuation of the protest of 1988.
And the events of October of 2012
when our Chief Diversity Officer was put on administrative leave
was a continuation of unended conversations.
Where do we begin those conversations?
(Cheers and applause)
ANGELA DAVIS: Well, thank you so much for the question.
And I failed to thank Dr. Angela McCaskill
for inviting me to spend time with you.
I met her this time last year at the University of Maryland.
(applause)
And I know that there have been a number of issues
on this campus.
From the outside, I assumed
that there was an enormous amount of discussion going on.
(Laughter)
That's the way it appears.
And if we want to use the term "intersectionality"
which is a feminist term, a term that's actually developed
as a result of women of color activism,
women of color who in the 1970's said,
"We don't want to have to choose who we are.
We don't want to have to choose between being women,
being anti-racist, being anti-capitalist,
or anti-imperialists."
As a matter of fact, the Third World Women's Alliance
had a newspaper that was called "Triple Jeopardy,"
and on the masthead was sexism, racism, and imperialism.
And so the academic term "intersectionality"
which addresses issues of sexuality,
issues of the environment, and not only identity issues,
but issues such as food justice.
It developed in an attempt to encourage us
to explore connection, and relations, not to separate
the various aspects of justice that we uncover.
And it seems to me that when you have people
who insist that you can myopically focus on one issue
and forget all of the rest,
they're engaging in the same kind of process
that those during the early periods of the history
of this country engaged in when they thought
that they could have democracy
with just one small minority group of white men.
So the answer to your question is not simple.
And I had a wonderful, very long conversation
with a group of students last night.
And I kept saying,
"There's no theoretical answer to the question.
The answer develops in the course of practice."
(Applause)
And I think that those of us who spend time
at institutions of higher learning, such as this,
we often assume that all significant knowledge comes
from those who professionally produce knowledge, right?
And we forget about that knowledge gets produced
in many different venues.
And so how do we learn from the struggles of people
who have had to address this intersectionality in practice?
And I would encourage you to initiate conversations.
We have to learn how to talk to each other.
And we have to learn how not to fight back at each other.
(Applause)
When we do this, we are internalizing
the strategies of violence that the state uses.
As a person who is a prison abolitionist,
and who has been calling for the abolition of imprisonment
as the dominant mode of punishment,
I always make the point that we have to reflect
on how we incorporate the impulse of the state.
If justice, if criminal justice is retributive
and based on vengeance,
then we also often have that reaction,
if someone does something bad to us
we immediately think of how to get back at them.
How to attack them.
And so the process of abolition means
that we have to examine ourselves and recognize
that all of these institutional processes would never work
if it weren't for the fact that we were reproducing them
in our daily lives and in our relations with one another.
Thank you for the question.
(Applause)
Audience member: It's an honor to hear you speak.
I was wondering in light of all of the finally
and belated press that homicides in Chicago are getting
with the veritable genocide of people of color
and people in poverty, if you see any potential to talk
about this issue in a way
that doesn't simply fall back on the prison?
Because I am finding it hard to have discourses
with people in which you can take a strong stance
against this violence that's happening, with guns usually,
without just merely reifying the prison.
ANGELA DAVIS: Again, it's a similar question to the one
I was trying to consider during my last answer.
And this is, again, the benefit of feminism, or womanism.
That we recognize connections,
that gun violence does not exist in an isolated place.
We often assume that the problem is
with the individual perpetrator.
But that violence gets reproduced
at many different levels.
I totally believe
that we should have stronger gun control laws.
We have to get rid of all of the guns in this society.
(Applause)
There are 300 million guns in this country.
That's amazing!
300 million guns!
And you talk to people in other countries, and they say,
"I thought that the U.S. was supposed to be a democracy?
Why does everyone have guns?"
And then when you consider the guns that the police have,
and the military, see, my position,
I have a radical position.
I think that we need to get rid of all of the guns,
including the guns of the police!
(Applause)
And we should also recognize that this youth violence,
and you're absolutely right,
you know, young black and Latino men
lose their lives to gun violence.
I mean, it's shameful.
But where did they learn that from?
We live in a violence saturated society.
Violence is used for everything.
It should actually not be surprising
that there is so much violence among youths.
In schools, they experience punitive strategies by teachers.
And in many ways, the teachers are teaching them
to be violent toward one another.
There's police violence.
There's military violence.
And I think that it's important for us to bring
into this framework, and, again, this is a feminist move,
the fact that women are
the most consistent targets of violence all over the world.
And why is it that when we talk about violence
we always forget about women, unless a young woman
like the young woman in Chicago happens to be shot,
which was horrendous and tragic.
But the majority of women suffer violence
in intimate relations, domestic violence.
And we don't want to consider the relationship
between domestic violence and institutional violence.
You know, where do men, and there are sometimes women
in same-sex relationships
who engage in the same kind of violence,
but where do they learn that it's okay
to treat women in that way?
It's a complicated question, but let me just say
that I think the persistence of the prison
prevents us from asking those questions
because whenever we encounter such a situation,
we immediately go to the perpetrator,
to the individual who is the perpetrator,
and we immediately think,
"Oh, that person needs to go to jail."
"That person needs to be punished."
Well, over the last three decades
with the criminalization of violence against women,
there are more and more perpetrators of violence
against women in prison all over the world.
But at the same time, the incidence of violence
against women is still the same.
It has not made a difference.
And that ought to tell us
that we need to do something very different.
We need to begin to try to grapple with the problem
of violence, with the problem of racism.
And it may take a long, long time.
There is no instant solution to that.
But here in this country, we like instant solutions,
we like immediate solutions.
We are not patient.
We're not willing to wait for 10 years, 20 years,
or a whole generation, or three generations,
or five generations, or maybe 10 generations,
and oftentimes people say,
well, if it takes that long, I will be dead.
Yeah.
You'll be dead.
We'll all be dead!
But the fact that we'll all be dead,
does that prevent us from wanting to engage
in a process that will transform the nature of human relations
in our country and on the planet?
Think about the historical figures that we talk about.
They didn't say, "Well, I'll be dead by the time
slavery is really abolished,
so I am not going to do anything to end it."
So let's expand and make more capacious
our vision of what it means to achieve justice.
(Applause)
Last question?
Audience member: Hello, my name is Lindsay Dunn,
and I teach in the ASL and Deaf Studies department
here at Gallaudet University.
I was born and raised during a time of segregation,
and in Apartheid.
You made a comment that I would like to raise
especially in terms of the culture here on campus.
I would like to ask you, while you were here,
while we were in front of the Gallaudet University
Board of Trustees, what would you envision
this University, how we can handle so many complex issues
within the 21st Century,
how can we do that in a positive way?
Can you maybe impart advice on the Gallaudet Board of Trustees,
the staff, students, and our community members of color
who are struggling in an environment
that's very challenging?
Do you have an answer?
(Cheers and applause)
ANGELA DAVIS: Well, thank you so much for the question.
And, of course, I don't have all of the answers.
But I can say that yesterday evening
one of the students with whom I was in conversation
asked me about lessons that might be learned
from other places in the world.
And it is about, again, expanding our vision
and recognizing that just
because we live in the United States of America,
we don't have the answers to everything.
As a matter of fact, we have very few answers.
(Laughter)
And so I told them about an experience
I had recently had in Brazil.
Where I visited Brazil about five years ago,
and in Bahia, which is the section of Brazil
that has the largest African-descended population,
they were talking about affirmative action.
And about the fact that black Brazilians
had a very small possibility of ever getting an education.
A higher education.
That was five years ago.
Within five years, they have created a university system
where there were no universities,
in Bahia, the main campus is in Cruz das Almas,
there is a campus in Cachoeira
and many other cities in that area.
Three other cities, I think.
There are five campuses.
80% of the students on those campuses are black.
And this has happened in five years!
And so I think maybe some of the administrators
and Board of Trustees should travel to those Cruz das Almas,
and ask, "How did do you this so quickly?"
(Applause)
And I am serious about that.
I am really serious.
I was so impressed I couldn't believe it.
But they had the will to do it, and they knew
that they needed to respond to all of the calls
for racial equality that have been developing
since people recognized
that Brazil is not a racial democracy.
For a long time it was assumed to be a racial democracy
because of the interracial *** relations
that have been going on for a long time.
But we know about that here in this country, too, don't we?
(Laughter)
It doesn't seem to help unless you make explicit
the need to create institutions
that are designed to minimize racism.
And so I think that here on this campus,
you have a wonderful opportunity,
because you deal with all of these issues.
You deal with issues of race, class, gender, sexuality.
You deal with issues of ableism.
And you have to deal with issues of the environment, right?
And you should be dealing with issues of food production.
Because that is the next arena of major struggle.
We never seem to think about where our food comes from.
We just eat it.
You know, we go to McDonalds and we eat it.
And it makes us sick!
You know that the health of U.S. people
has been continuously declining
over the last years precisely because
of the capitalist industrial production of food.
And I could go on, but I am asking you to think
within that intersectional frame.
And share the consequences of your conversation
with all of us because I think that you can truly
give leadership to social justice struggles,
especially on campuses all over the country.
(Applause)
Thank you.
That would be a first for Gallaudet.
I want to thank Dr. Angela Davis so much
for an outstanding and an inspiring talk today.
Thank you so much!
Elena Ruiz, thank you so much for moderating.
We're very, very proud of you.
A beautiful job.
So we are now out of time.
But before you leave, please do fill out
an evaluation form.
Give us some feedback.
That's very important, so that we can continue to improve
our Diversity Lecture Series.
And immediately after, please head over to the SLCC
for a reception, and book signing
with Dr. Angela Davis, and you will have the opportunity
to talk more with her there.
So, again, thank you so much!