Freedom Is a Constant Struggle : Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

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Adding "Selected Works" to the title might have helped, signifying that more reading (or background) on the subjects may be necessary.

This felt a lot like having coffee with a friend who's letting you ask them all the questions about something they're an expert in. This book is slim, partially composed of a written interview exchange between Davis and the editor, and finished up with transcriptions of recent speeches Davis has given.Over the last two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the fault lines of inequality that run deep throughout the world. Or, in other words, talking about "the Zionist's media's tentacles" plays into a classic antisemitic troupe of Jews controlling the world, of Jews doing evil and getting away with it because they're so powerful. It's refreshing to read something that moves so far beyond the individual, in fact rejecting the ideology of neoliberal capitalism completely, and focusing instead on how we can only move forward as a species when we recognize the intersectionality of our causes. Thus, the Convention states, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” is genocide as well as “killing members of the group. I appreciated how straight forward she is throughout: the audience/listeners/readers are assumed to have sufficient knowledge and be sufficiently engaged in the struggle to need no coddling.

Angela Davis once again offers us an incisive, urgent, and comprehensive understanding of systematic racism, the grounds for intersectional analysis and solidarity, and the importance of working together as equals to unmask and depose systems of injustice. I might have imagined that it would be a book BASED on those speeches that was edited to avoid repetition and to allow Angela to go a little deeper into the topics she discusses. We cannot assume that the worst is over just because white people are no longer burning crosses or screaming the n-word. In fact, the book shows that everything we experience as individuals always has political implications.

I felt like I was missing the voice of someone fundamental to the movements and progressive ideals that I support, so I sought to rectify that. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality and prison abolitionism for today’s struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles. He was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and is now the president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. Feminists have, for decades now, seen the value of “rejecting the notion of looking at gender in isolation from race, from class, from sexuality, from nationality, from ability. and in 1951, a petition was made to the UN for relief from the genocide black people were experiencing in the US.

This book of interviews and essays clearly distills many complex current issues, highlighting how local struggles are also global ones. I finally heard Davis's name in Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and decided to read more. This includes recognizing the legacy of intergenerational harm extending back to chattel slavery, whose primary institutional locus in the United States today is a prison-industrial complex that houses well over two million people—25 percent of all the world’s prisoners, the majority black and brown. And this idea that the militarization of American police came from Israel is laughable because Israeli police aren't militarized. She focuses on the importance of Black Lives Matter and Black feminism, while emphasizing the importance of connecting white supremacy within the United States to other forms of state violence and oppression throughout the world.Of particular relevance to the readership of this journal, Davis points to connections drawn by activists around the exercise of militarized police power in Palestine, and in places like Ferguson, where protests against the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014 achieved sustained intensity, right down to the fact that the same brand of tear gas canister is being used against protesters in each place. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. It's fascinating- racism and oppression exist on some scale or another in most countries (and heck, in every Middle Eastern country) but there's this focus on Israel. If the capitalist class's sole purpose is to dominate the globe, then our understanding of equality and liberation should also reflect the large-scale influence that capitalism has over our lives – we cannot be confined to our mere geographical positions or lines on a map.

I think that, as far as content, the ideas and concepts and arguments and connections she presented on the various topics in these talks, it was brilliant. S. police, that the United States subsidizes Israeli military power to the tune of billions of dollars per annum, and that the same transnational security interests, including enormous, Western-based, multinational corporations like G4S are now invested in building walls and cages for our respective peoples, from the West Bank to the Rio Grande. She also says that feminism must involve a consciousness of capitalism, post-coloniolism, racism and a much broader understanding of gender and sexuality. He tracks the mobilization of black activists by the NAACP, the creation of Freedom Summer, efforts to galvanize black voters, the momentous desegregation of public schools and the rise of all-white private academies, and struggles over the economic development of black communities.Is she talking about the military occupation in the West Bank or is she talking about the entirety of Israel, as some Palestinians claim? As I was listening to this, I took a bunch of notes and jotted down quotes and thoughts that I had in reaction to her talks. Understanding what it takes to really be free, to have no fear, is the first and most important step one has to make before undertaking this journey. In this era of Trump, I have realized (and this book affirmed) I need to look beyond the members of my family (whom I love, but cannot always converse with) to the system at large.