In honor of her birthday today, I wanted to re-post this image from last year and reflect on the day I met Angela Davis at NYU: Achievement unlocked: Sat in the fourth row of an open discussion with ANGELA DAVIS and filmmaker Shola Lynch (pronounced Shallah). Warning, this is going to be a long post. So anybody that aint got time fo dat, keep it moving. The discussion was preceded by a screening of Ms. Lynchs documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners which focused on the politically charged events leading up to her 1972 trial and eventual release. Just posting here because Im trying to unpack some of the stuff I got out of last night, which was highly emotional. 1.) Modern American history and indeed WORLD history is hostaged by corporate interests. Corporate media holds the rights to visual footage for just about every major event that has happened in the past 70-ish years. CBS, ABC, and NBC (and now to a larger extent CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc.) do NOT make their records easy or accessible to the average person. Access is fiscally and legally prohibitive. Therefore, the existence of this documentary is nothing short of a miracle (8 years in the making). 2.) There is a strong need for black and brown faces in the field of Library Science. Seriously, if you have kids or work with kids who are at ALL interested in history, get in on this. People in the dominant culture cannot be trusted to curate the stories of people of color. Not because people in dominant society are inherently bad or racist. Unfortunately, we just live in a society that is structured toward a certain aesthetic by default. The making of this film (among many others) illustrates the fact that POC stories are often not considered relevant to the narrative of our society. So we have to become a part of the process ourselves in order to preserve the historical accuracy and diversity of American heritage. 3.) Speciesism is REAL. Sustained industrialized cruelty against animals is as real and prevalent as any type of aggression against any group of people on the planet, and we do an enormous disservice to any social justice movement by ignoring it. Ms. Davis is a strong animal advocate and a longtime vegan. But people are not comfortable with their own complicity of the oppression of animals because weve normalized their commodification. It was very telling how few people applauded when she raised that point versus how many people applauded when she spoke about feminism, Palestine, and the prison industrial complex. 4.) Despite being one of the most prevalent activists of the 20th century, few white people know who Angela Davis is. This is probably the most depressing and shocking takeaway from last night, and its the hardest to talk about on my wall today. Its hard to talk about because I dont want my expression of surprise to come across as accusatory. Its just emotionally painful to be reminded so harshly that black and brown faces in American history ARE less important. If youre a person who has always had civil rights, then frankly you dont need to know who Angela Davis is...or bell hooks...or Audre Lorde...or any number of black and female voices who have fought endlessly for equality. The scope of black people in modern American history goes Martin Luther King, Jr...Malcolm X...and (on a good day) Rosa Parks. And I dont know what to do with that emotion yet. Ill figure out out. Bottom line, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE buy this film. Its available on iTunes and Amazon. Not only is it a riveting political thriller, but it will fund Ms. Lynchs next project on Harriet Tubman. Also, this is literally the Angela Davis film I have always wanted. Its an extremely well-done documentary. And it is one of the few times I have seen Davis presented as a COMPLETE person--an intellectual, a girl, a scholar, a professor, a prisoner, a pioneer, a FRIEND, and a human.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 03:14:28 +0000
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