Detroit Welcomes Angela Davis

By Karen Hudson Samuels/Tell Us Detroit

DETROIT (Tell Us Det) - Professor, activist and scholar Angela Davis returned to Detroit on the 40th anniversary of her 1972 acquittal on false charges of kidnapping, conspiracy and murder, after serving eighteen months behind bars.

An enthusiastic crowd of over 1,000 gathered at Fellowship Chapel on the city’s west side Wednesday night to hear Davis rally voters in the upcoming Presidential election.

Davis spoke of the excitement in 2008 at the prospect of electing the first black President and then offered a lesson to explain the public’s failure in their expectations of change.

“For those who were simply waiting for Obama to emerge as the new FDR have a very warped view of history.”

In rhetorical fashion Davis asked the audience if it was FDR’s own initiative and accord that gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance.

“No it was not!” she said to rousing applause, “It was masses of people in the streets”. It was marches and demonstrations by thousands during the 1930’s depression era that galvanized Roosevelt to action.

Imagine, Davis said if people who celebrated Obama’s election took to the streets and pressured him to account for pledges, like the closing Guantanamo Bay prison. “We should have been demanding the immediate closure of Guantanamo.”

The people, Davis says must demand the change. She made the point by quoting poet June Jordan who wrote “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” -- Davis reminded the crowd that Obama cited the same passage during his campaign.

Davis went on speak of the Occupy Movement saying, we cannot forget that for months they engaged the country in a movement that “If nothing else it created an arena for us to speak openly about capitalism”.

Issues that must be placed on the people’s agenda according to Davis include union busting, undocumented workers and the prison industrial complex.

Globally Davis, spoke of Palestinian Apartheid, a concern she said of Jews in Israel and a term used by the United Nations.

When she visited Palestinian recently Davis said she was devastated by the conditions she saw and signs that read ‘Authorized Vehicles’ and ‘Authorized Persons’ that were reminiscent of what she witnessed growing up in the south. “There are segregated highways in Palestine” that only Jews and settlers can travel she said.

Davis made mention of what is happening to Palestinians she said because it’s time to stand up and recognize that “justice is indivisible” and to recognize as Dr. King said ‘An injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

Today Angela Davis is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class (1980) and Are Prisons.