BLACK HISTORY MONTH: ANGELA DAVIS ON THE 2008 CAMPAIGN

 Angela Davis speaking at the Myer Horowitz Theater of the University of Alberta, on march 28, 2006.

Boston Common demonstration for Angela, Boston, 1970.

 

 

Cuban poster saying:  “Freedom for Angela Davis”, 1971.

Educator, author and activist Angela Davis, 64, recently spoke in Denver, Colorado as part of the 25^th Black World Conference held at Metropolitan State College. After her address, the former Black Panther Party member was questioned about her views on the presidential campaign and said she has never been a registered member of the two major parties but at one time was a registered Communist. She was even a Vice Presidential candidate for that party in 1980 and 1984. No longer a Communist, this year she voted in the California primary and cast for Cynthia McKinney, a Green Party Candidate. Below are Davis’ comments concerning other aspects of the election year campaign:

 

“It’s very interesting that the media had a complete block out of the independent parties, the parties that are not either Republican or Democrat. About the elections, I think it’s absolutely amazing that there’s so much interest, it’s really an exciting moment in this country particularly for young people who have been described as apathetic. We had generations of apathetic voters, so they tell us, but come to find out that people were apathetic because there was no one interesting to vote for.

 

I’m always very cautious when it comes to electoral politics and I think that here in this country we have a tendency to invest our full collective power in individuals, like we have what I sometimes call the Messiah complex. This is why, when we think of the civil rights movement, we think of Martin Luther King but can’t imagine that that movement could have been created by huge numbers of people [we] do not even know or talk about.

 

The Montgomery Bus Boycott would not have been possible were it not for Black women domestic workers, women who refused to ride a bus. Those are the Black people who were riding the bus but we can’t imagine that they were the agents of history that gave us this amazing civil rights movement.

 

All of this is to say that this incredible enthusiasm that has been generated over the last year that has been called a movement – [Barack] Obama specifically has referred to what’s happening around his campaign as a movement – if it is to be a movement, it has to demand much more than the election of a single individual.In a sense, Obama is a canvas on which many of us are painting our desires, our dreams, and our hopes. That could be okay if we understand that’s what we’re doing, if we understand it’s not enough to do that, and if we understand that, even if he is elected, or if Hillary [Clinton] is elected, we have to keep up the pressure.”

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A hattip and thanks to Adeeba Folami of Black House News:  http://bhonline.org/blog/