In her nearly 77 years, during which she has faced the death penalty, been placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and published seminal texts on prison abolition, Angela Davis said she has never experienced a more exciting moment than the push for racial justice sweeping the United States in 2020.
That was one of the messages that Davis, the monumental political activist, organizer, academic and author, shared with a Middlebury College audience in a Zoom forum Wednesday evening.
The talk was hosted by Middlebury’s Black Student Union and Distinguished Men of Color. It drew a virtual audience of more than 500 students and professors, student organizers said.
Davis answered student-prepared questions in a Q&A with computer science professor Jason Grant and student representatives from the BSU and Distinguished Men of Color. She spoke about themes central to the push for racial justice sweeping the country since June: How to seek justice for Black victims of police violence, how young people can productively engage in activism and limits of the two-party system, among others.
She also wove in recollections of seminal moments from a 50-year career, like the time she was fired from a UCLA professorship for holding “radical” views in a move urged by then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan.
Of the historical moments she’s played a role in, the mass push towards racial justice ignited this May by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, has been among the most inspiring, she said.
“I’ll be 77 in January, and in all of these years, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such an exciting moment,” she said.
In answering an early question from Grant about next week’s election, Davis first spoke about how the two-party system limits representation of Black, Indigenous and other people of color.
Davis has long been a supporter of independent-party politics because of those limitations, she said, pointing to her stints as a member of the Communist Party that in part motivated her firing from UCLA.
“I have been a critic of the two-party system in this country forever,” she said. “I still don’t think that the two-party system will allow us to give expression to the needs to radically transform the institutions of our society.”
But regardless of the limitations that Biden and Harris’ platform pose for achieving systemic change, she said, there’s no option but to vote next Tuesday with the purpose of “cleaning out the White House.”
Without removing Donald Trump from office, “the terrain of activism” upon which systemic change can be realized will only continue to shrink, she said.
“I always point out that yes, I’m going to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Davis said. “But I’m not really voting for them. I’m voting for us.”
Davis later spoke about efforts to achieve justice for Black victims of police shootings, like Breonna Taylor. A Kentucky jury’s decision to bring only minor charges against the Louisville officers who shot Taylor earlier in the fall prompted a large protest in the town of Middlebury.
Maya David, a BSU representative, Middlebury sophomore and one of the student moderators of the talk, asked Davis what she sees as a productive method of achieving that justice, considering that a goal of the national anti-racism movement is also to uproot the very justice system tasked with punishing Taylor’s killers.
While the officers who shot Taylor must certainly face justice, Davis said, punishing them — and others in their position — through the justice system won’t prevent police shootings from happening in the future.
“I don’t want any more Breonna Taylors to happen,” Davis said. “I don’t want to be confronted with the question of how do we demand justice for another Black woman who has been killed.”
One of the most poignant moments of the talk centered around a student question about how young people can most effectively organize and engage in activism, during a time when young Americans are embracing activism in huge numbers.
Davis’ answer was that there is no set template to creating social change. Young people should seek out ways to effect change and become activists within their fields of interest, she said.
“I think the question one must ask is, ‘What can I do that allows me to best express my own talents and training while contributing to the goal of furthering movements against racism or hetero-patriarchy?’” Davis said.
“What I’ve learned over the years is that, wherever we are, we can create a terrain of struggle,” she said.
Grant, the professor and moderator, said he found that to be one of the talk’s most memorable moments.
“So if you are a musician, poet, or writer, let those artistic expressions be a form of activism. It reminded me of a gospel song by J. Moss, “We Must Praise,” he said.
Wednesday’s virtual “visit” was not Davis’ first to a Vermont college. She has visited UVM twice in the past — once in 2010, according to a report in the Vermont Cynic, and later in 2013 to host the university’s inaugural Women’s Summit.
Her excitement about what 2020 can bring, Davis said, is due in large part to the efforts of young Black people who have been at the forefront of protest movements in American cities all over the country.
In every major protest movement in recent American history, she told students listening on Wednesday, young people have been at the fore. This year has been no different, and Davis has made an effort to turn her ear to what they’re bringing to the table.
“I’m looking toward you,” she told the students. “I’m taking my leadership from young people. What I’ve learned over the last period has largely been from young intellectuals and activists.”
“This is a period when to be Black, to be Black women, to be Black and queer, to be Black and whatever else one wants to be, it’s a time when we have developed the capacity to see ourselves as the future,” she said. “And that’s largely because of young people. Because you’re leading the work.”