With the line snaking all the way to the PO boxes, some Oles had been waiting since 1pm to attend the spring PAC event. And by the time 5:30pm came around, the mood inside Boe Chapel was bursting with excitement and enthusiasm. A civil rights activist, writer and scholar, Angela Davis is one of the most respected and powerful voices in social justice movements around the world. And on March 2nd, we were lucky enough have the opportunity to hear her speak on a wide scope of topics including prison industrial complex, the dangerous power of capitalism and privatization, racism, feminism, and the need for political awareness.
In the early 1970s, Davis spent 18 months in jail and on trial, and was placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” It is from this experience that she became interested in the complex, web-like structure of the US prison system. During the lecture, she brought up the term “prison industrial complex.” For Davis, the prison industrial complex refers to the systems and industries that profit from the punishment of human beings. This includes private organizations such as Core Civic/CCA and G4S that gain a profit from imprisoning people. According to Davis, the driving factor of this complex is the rise of global capitalism. The privatization of the prison system is not an issue by itself, but within the context of capitalism it is. For, when capital flows into sectors that produce the most profit, they leave those sectors that do no generate profit. And often, those non-profit generating sectors include sectors such as education and healthcare.
To solve the issue of prisons in the US, Davis believes that we need to educate ourselves. “The problem is that we don’t want to stop and ask ourselves what is this all about, how could a human being commit such an act?” she argued. The solution is not to imprison and forget. But instead, we need to solve the problem at the root. We need to look at the issues, such as lack of education, that often make people vulnerable to ending up in jail.
Another topic Davis touched upon was the changing demographics of the global work force. Today, many still assume that when we talk about the working class, we are referring to white men. However, Davis argues that we need to change this definition to fit the world of today. For, today, women represent a majority of the working class. This changing definition of the working class applies not only to the way we describe the working class, but can also extend to the way we see America’s democracy.
Citing President Donald Trumps campaign slogan, Davis gave her own spin on the phrase from “Make America Great Again,” to “Make America White Male Supremacist Again.” Davis then goes on to criticize former President Barack Obama’s ideas of American exceptionalism. Citing American history, she argues that the democracy the Founding Fathers envisioned was a “gendered and racial democracy, a democracy that discriminated against poor people.” And even though we often think of ourselves as the modern world’s leader in democracy, it was actually Haiti that established the first non racial democracy.
During her speech, Davis also touched upon the complex world of feminism. Carceral Feminism, a line of feminism that believes the we need to increase policing, prosecution, and imprisonment to break the cycles of violence against women. However, for Davis, this variant of feminism will be unable to stop this violence. In its place, we need Abolition Feminism. We need a feminism that is anti-racist and anti-capitalist. We also need intersectional feminism, a branch of feminism that includes women of all backgrounds, including trans and cis women.
Davis concludes her speech by calling for us to become more political aware. In a world where a president cites “alternative facts,” becoming politically aware is essential. Davis declares that we must “formulate critical questions about government, political relationships, relationships between the communities we inhabit and government on all levels.” We shouldn’t leave the questioning up to journalists. It is our job as responsible citizens to engage in our government, to ask questions.
One event Davis highlighted in her speech is the A Day Without a Woman, a march dedicated towards the fight for “equality, justice and the human rights of women and all gender-oppressed people.” The march will be on March 8th, International Women’s Day. On this day, women are urged to take the day off, avoid shopping, and wear red in solidarity.
If we want to stop corporations from profiting off the suffering of prisoners, if we want to create a world free of racism and sexism, then we need structural transformation. And to achieve this transformation, we must become active and aware of the world around us. As Davis stated, we need to “engage in the practice of helping to produce a better world for human beings of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, all genders, all religious affiliations. As humans, we cannot dissociate ourselves from other sentient beings on this planet and from all living things. And so, we want a world where we can all live and thrive together.”
Here’s the link if you were unable to make it.