Posted on 04/19/2007 3:17:20 PM PDT by llevrok
American socialist organizer and philosopher Angela Davis talks in front of the Stafford Creek Corrections Center Wednesday. Davis spoke at the prison, and then at Grays Harbor College.
Called upon to introduce famed radical activist Angela Davis to offenders at Stafford Creek Correctional Facility Wednesday, Gary Murrell paraphrased Eugene V. Debs, the legendary labor leader who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1918 for giving an anti-war speech.
“ ‘So long as there are prisoners in the U.S., I am among them,’ ” the Grays Harbor College history instructor recalled Debs saying. “If anyone exemplifies that kind of statement today, it is the wonderful Angela Davis.”
Davis, a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a former Black Panther, was in Aberdeen to speak at Grays Harbor College as part of series sponsored by the Grays Harbor Institute.
She’s been particularly outspoken about problems with the country’s prison system and spent a couple of hours at Stafford Creek in the afternoon, greeted by a room of 250 offenders.
She once spent 16 months in solitary confinement, accused of capital crimes she was eventually acquitted of.
It isn’t often that the prison gets speakers, said Dawn Taylor, a coordinator with the prison’s community partnership, and none as famous — or infamous, some would say — as Angela Davis.
Black History theme
Davis’ appearance even brought out a smattering of prison staffers. Doug Thaut, a hearings officer at the prison, said he wanted to see Davis because he grew up in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and remembered when Davis was jailed while awaiting trial for conspiracy, kidnapping and homicide.
“I didn’t want to see Tom Cruise, but I wanted to see Angela Davis,” Thaut said.
About 20 of the offenders on hand for the address were part of a Black History class offered by the prison and taught by Murrell. Several are reading her book “Women, Race and Class,” for their class and brought copies for her to sign.
Anthony Taylor, a black student in the class, said before the lecture that Davis’ book had opened his eyes to the striving women have undergone for equality.
“I have a lot more respect for women because of the struggles they’ve gone through,” Taylor said.
Patrick De Ryke, a white student in the class, said that in his nearly 40 years of incarceration, he has witnessed a lot of the changes Davis writes about.
“I remember when we had recovery and rehabilitation,” De Ryke said. “I’ve seen a lot of changes and I’m sure I’ll see a lot more.”
Gerald Hankerson, another offender in Murrell’s class, said he had grown up in a home with a big picture of Angela Davis posing with guns and ammo slung over her shoulder. He said growing up in the South, he learned about “the Harriet Tubmans,” but not the Nat Turners.
“I regret that school didn’t teach more,” Hankerson said.
Nat Turner was a slave who led a rebellion in Virginia in 1831.
Ex-Black Panther
Davis told the crowd about her reasons for supporting prison reform. As a Black Panther, she was committed to helping the “Soledad Brothers,” three Black prisoners accused of causing a prison uprising in which six people were killed. Before that, she said, she had been part of the effort to free accused Soviet spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Her mother, she said, worked to free the Scottsboro Nine, nine Black youths in Alabama convicted unfairly of rape.
“It’s something I’ve been doing since before I was born,” Davis said.
Davis said the weapons she had when she was arrested were in reaction to death threats she had received due to her fighting to retain her job at the University of California at Los Angeles.
“I was hired because they wanted someone to teach Marxism, and they tried to fire me because I was a Marxist,” Davis said, shaking her head. At that point, she explained, she was a member of the Communist Party, and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and the school’s Board of Regents dismissed her for it. She was rehired by a court injunction.
The incident propelled Davis into the national limelight.
“I thought, if these people are defending my right to teach, I have to stand up for (the Soledad Brothers’) right to live,” Davis said.
In the years since, Davis has visited prisons and jails across the country and in Europe and Latin America.
A small “c”
In her speech at GHC last night she referred to the prison system as the “prison industrial complex” and contended that an economy has grown up around it in the same way as the “military industrial complex” has, perpetuating itself.
Davis, who ran for vice president on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984 with Gus Hall, said last night that she now considers herself a “communist with a small c.”
In a wide-ranging speech and question-and-answer session, Davis said citizens should realize that the economic system of capitalism needn’t be synonymous with the government system of democracy. Too often profit is valued at the expense of what is good for people, she said.
She challenged her evening audience to acknowledge the existence of the prison at the edge of town and asked how many had been there. Not many hands went up. She pointed out that here, as in many communities, they’re in out-of-the-way places that can’t be seen from the highway.
She asked how many black people live on Grays Harbor and when she was told that not many do, she pointed out that five minutes down the road at the prison, there were many black people and they should be counted and recognized, too.
In the U.S. on any given day, 2.2 million people are incarcerated somewhere, she told the prisoners she spoke to. Each year, 13.5 million people will have experienced being behind bars.
“That’s a lot of people,” Davis said. “I think it’s really about not dealing with the social problems that affect so many of our communities in this free world.”
“Prisons don’t rehabilitate people,” Davis said. “I think people in prisons rehabilitate themselves.”
Davis said poverty, an educational system that often fails to inspire a love of knowledge and a health care system that treats wellness as a commodity instead of a right are some of the problems. The social ills of racism, sexism, drug abuse and the rampant acceptance of violence are others.
The flip side
Much of Davis’ talk was made up of responses to prisoners. And while she remains sympathetic to their plight, she was not above tweaking their expectations.
In response to a leading question about the effect of the widespread incarceration of black men on black families, Davis turned the question around.
“We can talk about the overall conditions that make it extremely difficult for people who have not had the opportunity to get an education, are not able to get jobs to raise their families, and that’s simple,” Davis said. “But we can talk about ‘The Black Family’ and we don’t really know what we’re talking about.”
Asked about the way black women are referred to in many types of media (“You mean Don Imus?” Davis divined), Davis said people should not be shocked when racism rears its ugly head — it’s part of society.
“I always get angry when I see young black people being held responsible for their misogyny — I do not excuse them — but they’re not the ones who invented it,” Davis said. “Why does everyone always focus on Hip Hop and Hollywood and not governments?”
Davis also urged the offenders to become feminists. (Taylor and Hankerson, after the presentation, said they were “already there.”)
“Men who embrace feminism become all the stronger from it, they become powerful supporters of their communities, representatives of the struggle for justice,” Davis said. “Because we want justice for everyone, don’t we?”
Anthony Taylor said he was “uplifted” by the talk.
“We need more women, more people, to come in for talks, to inspire us and to lift us up,” he said. In prison, the only environment an offender has under his control is the one in his mind, and, just like Taylor’s Black History class opened his mind, so had hearing a talk about ideas.
“I liked to hear what she said instead of just interpreting what I read,” Hankerson said. “This is something I can tell my children and grandchildren about.”
Does this imply he is not now? (sarc/)
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Too bad Davis isn't actually among them. One can dream.
I can’t describe my dream for her. I’d get booted from FR.
Not at all.
I'm sure he got all the best out of her that there was to get. She was decent looking babe back in the day. I wonder if he sang "Brown Sugar" for her after they had revolutionary sex?
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Oy vey. Major barf alert here.
Not sure if Brown Sugar is about here. I bet his line about black girls in the song Some Girls is though.
I have it on excellent authority that she does tip well in restaurants, so she is not without at least one redeaming quality.
her idea of feminism was being a groupie whore for the rolling stones.
No kidding? :(
accused Soviet spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
How about convicted and executed Soviet spies? How about guilty Soviet spies, guilt reinforced years later by papers released after the fall of the Soviet Union?
You live in Santa Cruz ? What are you, some sort of masochist ? Sheesh !
WA State Ping (hi kids!!)
As opposed to... I mean when you cut through the BS wasn't that the highest asperation of most 60s feminists?
Heckuva fro there, sis.
Oh well. The back up singer is a heck of a lot more intriguing than a cube of drug laced sugar.....
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