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Davis, Angela Y Freedom Is a Constant Struggle Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement Angela Y~ Davis Edited by Frank Barat (!) Haymarket Books Chicago, Illinois 90 ANGELA Y. DAVIS to grasp the global reach of our struggles. Palestinian-Americans' involvement in the Ferguson protests was complemented by ex­ pressions of solidarity with Ferguson from Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza. The Ferguson struggle has taught us that local issues have global ramifications. The militarization of the Fer­ guson police and the advice tweeted by Palestinian activists helped EIGHT to recognize our political kinship with the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and with the larger struggle for justice in Palestine. Moreover, we have come to understand the central role Feminism and Abolition: Islamophobia has played in the emergence of new forms of racism Theories and Practices in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Deep understandings of racist violence arm us against decep­ for the Twenty-First Century tive solutions. When we are told that we simply need better police and better prisons, we counter with what we really need. We need to reimagine security, which will involve the abolition of policing Speech delivered as the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture Annual Public Lecture, in collaboration with the Center for the Study of and imprisonment as we know them. We will say demilitarize the Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago (May 4, 2013) police, disarm the police, abolish the institution of the police as we know it, and abolish imprisonment as the dominant mode of Let me say, this is the first time in many years that I have spent an punishment. But we will have only just begun to tell the truth about extended period of time in Chicago, that is to say, four days-four violence in America. whole days. And, if yesterday and today felt like the Chicago I've always known, Tuesday and Wednesday were the most beautiful days in the city I've ever experienced! [Laughter] And I started to think, "I can live in Chicago!" until the wind and the cold returned yesterday. But I still like Chicago. And it is wonderful to be here no matter what the season might be. This amazing city has such a history of struggle. It's the city of the Haymarket Martyrs, the city of radical labor unions, the city of resistance to the police assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. It's the city of Puerto Rican activism against colonialism. It's 91 92 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Freedom Is a Constant Struggle 93 the city of immigrant rights activists. And of course it is the city of ceremoniously, congratulating the FBI for catching me and in the the Chicago Teachers Union. process labeling me a terrorist as well. So I know the dangerous Now, a few years ago Chicago was the city that developed are­ consequences that can follow from this ideological labeling process. vived national movement to supportAssata Shakur, and I remember That this is happening forty years after Assata's original arrest Lisa Brock and Derrick Cooper, Tracye Matthews, Beth E. Richie, should give us cause to reflect. First of all, it reminds us that there Cathy Cohen, and others called for a renewed campaign to defend is much work left over from the twentieth century. Especially for the rights and the life of Assata Shakur. Yesterday, May 2, 2013, forty those of us who identify as advocates for peace; for racial, gender, years after Assata was shot by New Jersey State Police, and falsely sexual justice; for a world that is no longer mutilated by the ravages accused of the murder of state trooper Werner Foerster, she be­ of capitalism. came the first woman ever to be placed on the FBI's Most Wanted We are four decades removed from the era of the 1960s, which terrorists list. is universally remembered as an era for radical and revolutionary Why, we should ask, was it necessary to put a woman's face on activism. Being at a historical distance, however, does not extricate terrorism, especially in the aftermath of the tragic bombing of _the us from the responsibility of defending and indeed liberating those Boston Marathon? Why was it necessary to put a Black face on ter­ who were and still are willing to give their lives so that we might rorism, especially after initial news about the Boston bombing that build a world that is free of racism, and imperialist war, and sexism, the perpetrator was a Black man, or if not a Black man at least a and homophobia, and capitalist exploitation. dark-skinned man in a hoodie-the ghost ofTrayvon Martin? So I'd like to point out that individual memories are not nearly Assata is not a threat in the way she has been represented by the as long as the memories of institutions, and especially repres­ FBI, as someone who is waiting to commit an act like the Boston sive institutions. The FBI is still haunted by the ghost of]. Edgar Marathon bombing. Assata is certainly not a terrorist. But if she Hoover. And the CIA and ICE are institutions that have active and would not and is in no position to commit acts of violence against vivid memories of the mass organized struggles to end racism, to the US government, the fact that the FBI decided to announce with end war, to overthrow capitalism. great fanfare that she is now the only woman on the Most Wanted But Leonard Peltier is still behind bars. And Mondo we Langa terrorists list should cause us to wonder what the underlying agenda and Ed Poindexter have been in prison for some forty years. Sundi­ might be. ata Acoli, Assata's comrade, is in prison. Herman Bell, and Veronza And I should say that I especially empathize withAssata, because Bow~rs, and Romaine Fitzgerald are still behind bars and my code­ it was forty-three years ago that I was placed on the FBI's Ten Most fendant Ruchell Magee has been in prison for about fifty years, an Wanted list, and, some of you may have seen the new documen­ entire half-century. Two of the Angola Three, Herman Wallace and tary on my trial, which shows President Richard Nixon, openly and Albert Woodfox, are still in prison, in solitary confinement. And 94 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Freedom Is a Constant Struggle 95 of course, Mumia Abu-Jamal, although he was released from death You should be very suspicious because as more youth are ren­ row (and that was a people's victory), is still behind bars. dered disposable, as more youth become a part of surplus popula­ And even as the US government-and this is ironic-singles tions that can only be managed through imprisonment, the schools out Assata as a terrorist, and issues an open invitation to anyone that could begin to solve the problems of disposability are being to capture her and bring her back to the US, and there are so shut down. According to Karen Lewis, who is one of the most many mercenaries, trained by Blackwater and other private se­ amazing leaders of our time, some sixty-one schools in this city curity firms, who probably will want to take up that bid for $2 face closure. million. The US government holds in prison within this country And this is a good way to stage our discussion of feminism and five Cubans who attempted to prevent terrorist attacks on Cuba. abolition, which I consider to be essential theories and practices for They were investigating terrorism and in turn were charged with the twenty-first century. Assata Shakur, exemplifies within feminist terrorism. I'm referring to the Cuban Five-Free the Cuban Five! struggles and theories, the way Black women's representations and Now, the attack onAssata incorporates the logic of the very ter­ their involvement in revolutionary struggles militated against pre­ rorism with which they have falsely charged her. What might they vailing ideological assumptions about women. expect to accomplish, other than causing new generations of activ­ In fact, during the latter twentieth century, there were numer­ ists to recoil in fear? The FBI is attempting to persuade people, it ous debates about how to define the category "woman." There were seems to me, who are the grandchildren of Assata's generation­ numerous struggles over who got included and who was excluded and mine as well-to turn. away from struggles to end police vio­ from that category. And these struggles, I think, are key to under­ lence, to dismantle the prison-industrial complex, struggles to end standing why there was some measure of resistance from women violence against women, struggles to end the occupation of Pales­ of color, and also poor and working-class white women, to identify tine, struggles to defend the rights of immigrants here and abroad. with the emergent feminist movement. Many of us considered that And I think you here in Chicago should be especially suspi­ movement at that time to be too white and especially too middle cious of the representations of Assata as a cop killer. Her hands class, too bourgeois. were in the air when she was shot in the back, which temporarily And in some senses the struggle for women's rights was ideo­ paralyzed the arm she would have had to have used to pick up a logically defined as a struggle for white middle-class women's gun. You should be suspicious, because, according to the Chicago rights, pushing out working-class and poor women, pushing out Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, sixty-three peo­ Black women, Latinas, and other women of color from the discur­ ple have been killed by the Chicago Police Department in the last sive field covered by the category "woman." The many contestations four years.
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