- As we close out
this conference,
we want to think
as much about those
who are not in the
room with us today
as a person whose life's
work has brought us together.
So I stand here now to represent
the Pathways Collective,
a gathering of feminist
scholar activists
who meet inside a
maximum security state
prison for women.
We first convened in
the summer of 2019
to read the work of Angela
Davis and view selections
from her papers here at
the Schlesinger Library
before the archives
opened to the public.
Moments from now, Angela
Davis herself will be onstage.
And I wanted to take
this opportunity
to share with you a poem we
wrote collectively during one
of our last meetings on
the meaning of Angela Davis
and the implications of
her life struggle to us.
Angela Davis is a
hero, a giant, a voice
for women in and
outside of prison,
a vision of what progress
can do to each mind
and heart, of what we
can achieve collectively
once we overcome the
obstacles that prevent us
from realizing ourselves.
We will rise like plants shoot
through cracks in concrete.
We will soar like eagles over
the highest mountains floating
through the clouds, hoping
for a new vantage point.
Angela Yvonne Davis is
a freedom fighter who
left her impact on the world.
Her visions changed
with the times.
And we have yet to realize them.
Her vision is so
healing, it terrifies us.
The foresight of a
future determined
to prevail, the
ability to aspire,
to dream, and to imagine
another reality for yourself
through transforming the self
can influence more than one--
a community.
That poem could not have
been written-- indeed,
our group could not
have functioned--
without the work of Abbie
Cohen, Community Partnerships
lead at Radcliffe, and
Elsa Hardy, PhD candidate
in the Department of African
and African-American studies
here at Harvard, who
spent hours traveling
to the prison in heavy
traffic for weeks on end,
helped to gather and
distribute materials,
and facilitated discussions.
And it is with great
pleasure that I bring them
up to this stage,
followed by Kaia Stern
to share with you more
about our work and the women
in our group.
[APPLAUSE]
- Thank you so much for
your gracious introduction,
Professor Hinton, and for
inviting us to join you
on stage this afternoon.
We are here today,
like all of you,
to honor the life and
legacy of Angela Davis.
Whether addressing state
repression of black power,
black radical feminism,
justice for Palestine,
or the meanings and
possibilities of prison
abolition, throughout
her long career
as an activist
and scholar, Davis
has implored us to consider
what justice and freedom can
look and feel like.
Perhaps what stands out most
in all of this seminal work
is Davis's insistence
on the importance
of transcending
prison walls, which
serve to keep incarcerated
people separate and invisible.
In her autobiography
she writes, "I
became convinced
that if we did not
begin to build a support
movement for our sisters
and brothers in prison, we were
no revolutionaries at all."
- In that spirit,
we, in collaboration
with Elizabeth Hinton
and Kaia Stern,
spent the summer
reading, thinking,
and learning with a group
of incarcerated students
at a maximum security
women's prison, who,
in one student's words,
live what justice is not.
We would like to note that
students have requested
that we have not used
their names out of concern
that their comments might be
met with further repression
inside of the prison.
Guided by Davis's
texts, our conversations
made room for
students to discuss
how they conceive of injustice
and justice, the myriad ways
they resist, and how they
imagine an abolitionist future.
As one student described,
where we are right now,
this cannot possibly
be the answer.
What could a future look
like, our group wondered,
that emphasized communities of
care rather than punishment?
Students were also granted
special archival status
by Angela Davis and the
Schlesinger Library,
and were thus among
the first researchers
to engage with and analyze
the papers in the Angela Davis
collection, just recently
made available to the public.
We called ourselves the
Pathways Collective,
an ode to an enduring
theme in our work together.
Pathways to justice, pathways
that transcend prison walls,
and pathways to each other.
- Every day, we are subjected
to injustice in here,
one student explained.
But we can strive for
justice within our spirit,
to embody it in our own selves.
Students describe the
communities of care
they have formed
inside, the immense
love they develop
for one another
in response to the often
cruel and dehumanizing reality
of life in prison.
You don't expect community to
come out of here, and it does,
another student noted.
Love and community
were important aspects
of the everyday resistance
students described,
as were their experiences in
the prison's college program.
Education is my resistance,
a student remarked.
And yet, students were
also aware of the gaps
in their training.
We've read so many feminist
texts, one student lamented.
Why hadn't we been assigned
Angela Davis until now?
Davis's work proved every bit
as resonant and illuminating
in our workshop as it was when
it was originally published.
Students describe, for example,
consulting Davis's text
this summer when a friend--
a black woman-- was torn
about whether to wear her hair
natural before the parole board.
Though Davis resists
individualizing her experience,
one of the most remarkable
contributions she has made
is her insistence that the lives
of individual people in prison,
too often lost in grand
historical narratives, matter.
If, in one student's words,
prison silences you and renders
you invisible, Angela
Davis has worked
to give voice and visibility
to the millions of people
living in cages in this
country and beyond.
During one of our last
meetings in late September,
one student pointed
out that even
as those of us on the outside
have become more critically
aware of the ravages of the
criminal punishment system
in the last decade, the pendulum
has swung further and further
toward repression for
those on the inside.
This is likely
not a coincidence.
The more we learn about this
complex, deeply rooted, fully
functioning system,
the tighter it
coils around itself
and the people within.
There is still so much
unraveling to be done.
This work will require, as
Angela Davis reminds us,
listening carefully to our
sisters and brothers in prison.
But importantly, it
will involve all of us.
After all, the fastest
way to give up your power,
another student reminds us,
loosely quoting Alice Walker,
is to believe that
you don't have any.
- We are honored now to
introduce Kaia Stern, someone
whose career has, in many
ways, been inspired by the life
and legacy of Angela Davis.
It may not surprise
many of you to learn
that she has taught Angela Davis
every semester for over two
decades.
Kaia wears many hats.
She is a professor at
the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, Radcliffe's
first-ever practitioner
in residence in the law,
justice, and education focus
area, the co-founder and
director of the prison studies
project, the executive director
of the Concord prison outreach,
an ordained interfaith
minister, a mother,
and the author of Voices
from American Prisons.
Drawing on a background in
ethics and community building,
her work focuses on
transformative justice.
Kaia, who has taught in
prisons throughout the country
for the past 25 years,
embodies the commitment
to bearing witness to
what happens inside
and lifting up the voices
of those rendered silent.
Please join us in welcoming
Kaia Stern to the stage.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
- Good afternoon.
- Good afternoon.
- To the members
of our collective
who are not able
to be in the room,
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, Radcliffe
and Dean Brown-Nagin
for recognizing the importance
of sharing Angela Y. Davis's
unpublished work inside
a prison before it
is even available to
the general public.
And thank you, Angela Davis,
for inspiring and guiding
generations yet to be born.
We are all so grateful to you.
Words feel feeble.
Before I continue, please join
me in a moment of silence--
to be still and quiet together.
Please put away your screens.
And if you're willing,
close your eyes.
Let us again honor the
keepers, the indigenous
keepers of this
land, the workers.
And with your eyes still
closed, if you're comfortable,
consider the people
who are locked
behind walls, on
borders, and inside cells
at this very moment.
Mothers and sons, sisters
and daughters, fathers
and brothers.
Not only hold them in mind,
do as scripture urges.
Remember them as if you
were imprisoned too.
And remember they're suffering
as if you, yourself, were
suffering.
Let us invite the
spirits of our ancestors
into this beautiful space
on this autumn afternoon.
We are going to need all
the wisdom we can possibly
hold in our labor for justice.
Thank you.
In an effort to honor
your life and work,
we are, as you know,
in conversation
with women who are incarcerated
in a maximum security
prison in another state.
Before I introduce their voices,
I offer some local context.
In a similar prison, less
than 22 miles from this room,
suicides exceed
national averages.
Most condemned women are
people of color, single mothers
with children under
the age of 18.
And 99.9%, according to
state records, are victims--
survivors of domestic violence.
Trauma and psychotropic drugs
are the overwhelming norm.
There is an apparatus
of domination
in prisons across the
country that rends women's
bodies and souls--
forced sterilization,
isolation, humiliation.
Women of color are
the most vulnerable.
We know this.
Together, our
collective working group
has been reflecting on the
topics of this conference.
Revolution, feminisms,
and abolition.
Reading Angela Davis's books,
letters, and manuscripts
with Toni Morrison's
handwritten edits,
we focused on
justice as a thread
to weave these three themes.
In our conversations in that
maximum security prison,
we Harvard visitors were
told, the state of our lives
is not reflected in all the
talk about prison, reform,
and abolition.
As Kathy Boudin and
Ruthie Gilmore remind us,
a student who has been
incarcerated for 23 years
was clear, quote, "punishment
is increasingly repressive,
and the people around me are
not getting what they need."
Another student replied, people
know what happens in prisons.
They expect it.
And they are
comfortable with it.
We talked about the essence
of justice and its perversion.
Several students communicated
the indescribable
hurt of bearing
witness to injustice.
If an officer harms
the woman next to you,
you are rendered powerless
to object because you
are subject to state force.
You don't do anything.
And you have to live with that.
And then there was the
question none of us answered.
Why do they hate us?
Why do they hate us?
If we are awake, this
question may haunt us.
In her autobiography,
Angela Davis writes, quote,
"I never forget the
self-righteous condemnation
of that tribunal.
They were convinced they had
a right to play god, master,
and mother.
Since we refused to
accept their way of life,
we were moral criminals.
And they wanted to see
us punished," end quote.
In her groundbreaking book,
Are Prisons Obsolete?,
she writes that prison is a fate
reserved for the evil doers.
And it functions
ideologically as, quote,
"an abstract site into which
undesirables are deposited,"
end quote.
Religious ideology
has long exalted
violence against the
so-called "evil doers."
And it is no wonder
undesirables feel hated.
Even though injury in
the name of public policy
is not limited to one
sphere, Angela Davis's
naming routine cavity searches
as state-sanctioned sexual
assault is momentous.
Routinized violence
punctuates every day existence
inside jail and prison.
Farah Griffin invoked the
ravages of racial capitalism.
I offer a note on the
keeper and the kept.
The punishment sector
includes a massive workforce
in jails and prisons
across our nation.
They come from the same
socioeconomic communities,
if not the same families as
the people who are locked up.
In a jail or prison near a
city, the overwhelming majority
of officers are black and brown.
They are not the power elite.
They are trying to
put food on the table.
Ask an officer how
they are doing,
and they may look at
their watch and say, well,
four years, seven months, three
days, one hour, and 23 minutes
until I retire.
They, too, are acquainted
with punishment
as intimate disconnect--
punishment that
dehumanizes everyone,
including those who are
tasked with guarding
in the name of justice.
Our current catastrophe
of mass criminalization,
which includes
mass incarceration
and mass deportation,
reveals profound alienation
at every level--
alienation from
ourselves, which often
creates pathways of
addiction and violence;
alienation from
community, evidenced
an abiding fear of
the so-called "other,"
the terrorist, people who
are elders, poor, queer,
brown-skinned, mentally
ill, not saved, not chosen,
not citizens; and
spiritual alienation.
It is as if justice
itself is imprisoned.
And it is fighting for its
life in prison classrooms.
There is a secret, though.
Human connection is
contraband in jail and prison.
We don't say that out loud.
It's not written
in our policies.
But anyone who has spent time
in a jail or prison knows this.
Sharing is punished
as extortion.
Officers get fired
for smiling too much.
Prisons operate as if the people
in custody are state property.
It is written
across their backs.
It is in the 13th Amendment
to the US Constitution.
Forbidden and undeniable,
human connection
threatens the logic
of punishment.
Call it treachery
or sacred space,
human connection in prison
is somehow a smuggled good.
Yet education in prison is
transformative precisely
because it is about
human connection
to history, science,
art, and people.
Thus, entering a
prison classroom
is like crossing a border
into another territory
of being in relationship.
Davis writes that our most
difficult and urgent challenge
is to creatively
explore what she calls
"new terrains of justice."
And she reminds us that we
need an array of alternatives
that will require
radical transformation
of many aspects of our society.
As we gather to commemorate
history and celebrate
the life of Angela Y. Davis,
we, with immense privilege
and social capital in such
a vibrant and well-resourced
community, must ask
ourselves, what is our charge?
What are we willing to
do to realize justice?
What is our internal
work to support
a revolution of consciousness?
How do we grieve and heal in
relationship to each other?
How do we change imaginaries,
practices, and structures
that cause harm?
We can once again turn to
Angela Davis for inspiration.
Quote, "Each day, it was
becoming clearer to me,"
she writes, "that my ability
to accomplish anything
was directly dependent
on my ability
to contribute something
concrete to the struggle."
As we pause to celebrate the
mother of the movement, Dorothy
Burnham, we were
reminded yesterday
that those who go before
us make us who we are.
In closing, I recall
what Fania Davis
shared about her and Angela's
mother, Sallye Davis--
how she taught you
that, quote, "the world
can be a better place,
and you can make it so."
Together, we members of
the Harvard community
have staggering amounts
of social capital,
and therefore immense
responsibility
to model a new kind of ethics
in this wounding world.
Two years ago, 171 faculty
signed the Harvard Crimson
op-ed, "We Are Educators,
Not Prosecutors,"
to urge Harvard
University to respond
to people in prison and
people with criminal records
in meaningful ways.
One clear responsibility
is to do our part
to invest in prison education.
To you 171 Harvard
faculty, thank you.
Please check your email
inbox tomorrow morning.
[INDISTINCT SHOUTING]
Justice is a verb.
Now, please join me in a warm
welcome for Neferti XM Tadiar,
and, of course,
the woman we honor,
who embodies justice with
force and grace, generosity
and love--
Angela Yvonne Davis.
[APPLAUSE]
But before-- before
we welcome them--
[LAUGHS] before we
welcome them to the stage,
I am so grateful to also call
up Terri Lyne Carrington,
Imani Uzuri, and
Esperanza Spalding--
many of you heard
of them last night--
who will offer a
special musical tribute.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CYMBALS CRASHING]
- [VOCALIZING]
[PANTING RHYTHMICALLY]
[GASPING RHYTHMICALLY]
[VOCALIZING]
(SINGING) Gonna
trouble the water.
Gonna trouble the water.
Gonna trouble the water.
Gonna trouble-- gonna
trouble the water.
Come on and wade.
Come on and wade.
[VOCALIZING]
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
- Thank you.
- You sounded beautiful.
[APPLAUSE CONTINUES]
- Wow.
- Yeah, so there's
nothing left to say.
[LAUGHTER]
- It seems appropriate that
that was all nearly wordless.
Hello, everybody.
My name's Neferti Tadiar.
And I think you will appreciate
the position I'm in and--
[CLEARS THROAT]
[LAUGHTER]
--the keenness with which I feel
that the statement "humbled,"
by not only my friend,
comrade, Angela Davis,
who I've known for
almost 25 years,
but by all of the
people who spoke today,
who spoke of all of
the movements, all
of the inspiration, all of
the historical importance
that Angela has brought.
And so I won't repeat
any of it today.
I am here to facilitate
you hearing from Angela.
So it seems appropriate to
start with the topic of music
and the role of
culture, I think,
that we want to start
out talking about.
It's been mentioned many times
during the day and yesterday,
how important music, culture
production, art has been.
And I think we would like
to hear from Angela herself
what importance
she gives and what
the role of music and culture
is in political movements,
to her own
development, et cetera.
- Well, like I said
before, I'm speechless.
But this has been such
an amazing gathering.
And I want to take
a couple of moments
to thank Terri Lyne Carrington
and Esperanza and Uzuri.
[APPLAUSE]
And since we're on the
topic of art and culture,
Terri Lyne Carrington
has a new album
that will be dropping
on November 8
with her band Social Science.
[LAUGHS] And the title of the
album is The Waiting Game.
I've heard it.
It's like nothing you've
ever heard before.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
The older I get, the more
I recognize how important
art and music are.
And as I was listening to them
and thinking about all of you
who've been here for the last--
how many days has it been?
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, it's been so rich,
it feels like we've been here
for a long time, doesn't it?
And listening to that
music together creates
a sense of community
that goes beyond what
is possible when one simply
says, hello, my name is.
And I think that we forget how
much we need music, how much we
need art and literature.
And I'm also thinking about
my friend Toni Morrison,
who would have been here had the
illness not claimed her life.
And somehow, those
of us who write often
think that we have the answer.
But the most we can
really hope for is
to be able to formulate
the right questions
or to formulate questions
that lead us in a direction
that only artists and cultural
workers can illuminate,
can show us the way.
I don't know.
You work with literature.
And so I've learned
a lot from your work,
also, about how to think about
the relationship between art
and politics,
aesthetics and politics.
Well, maybe we should talk about
how we know each other first?
- Oh, OK.
[LAUGHS]
Yes.
You're wondering why
we're here together.
I think you should.
- OK.
- It was your--
- All right.
[LAUGHTER]
- I might embarrass you, but--
- You decided.
- OK.
Well, we were colleagues
for a very long time
at UC, Santa Cruz,
in the History
of Consciousness Department.
And I can remember
when Neferti was
hired, because I was the
chair of the search committee.
[LAUGHTER]
- I like to say
that you hired me.
[LAUGHTER]
- But I'll never forget,
after reading through--
I don't know--
150 applications--
there were countless
numbers of applications--
when I saw yours,
I said to myself--
I didn't say it to anyone.
I didn't try to influence the
rest of the search committee.
But I said, she's the one.
I knew instantly that you
were the person we needed.
And she came.
We worked together on
quite a number of projects.
And we've been
friends ever since.
- When you called, I was at
my parents-in-law's house.
And the phone rang.
And my father-in-law
said, Angela Davis
wants to talk to you?
[LAUGHTER]
But yes, that was the beginning
of our friendship, certainly
the beginning of a different
political education
that I got in
California with Angela
and this particular
scene of politics.
And I think we'll talk
a little bit about it--
about women of color,
feminism in California.
This was in the '90s,
in the mid '90s.
OK, so that's one of
the reasons, I think--
that's how we know each other.
- We also co-edited
a book together.
- Yes.
Oh, I should have gotten it.
- Did you bring it?
- Can you give me the book?
It's in my-- yes.
[LAUGHTER]
We did, as part of our work
together at UC, Santa Cruz.
And I think it says
something-- thank you so much.
This was the book
Beyond the Frame--
Women of Color and
Visual Representation,
which we co-edited.
But really, it was the work of
a fantastic group, a fantastic
cohort of women of color--
at the time,
students, who later on
became assistant professors and
now probably full professors
somewhere.
But this was part of a
project of the Research
for the Study of Women of Color
in Collaboration and Conflict.
- I think you need
to say that again.
- Yes.
It was a very striking title.
- (LAUGHING) Yes.
The Research Cluster
for the Study
of Women in Collaboration--
- Women of Color.
- --of Women of Color in
Collaboration and Conflict.
- And Conflict, yeah.
- And Conflict.
- Yes.
And it took us a long
time to come up with that.
Very awkward, but we
needed it, because we
needed the collaboration.
We needed the conflict.
We needed the women of color.
And we also needed--
well, we were a funded
research cluster.
- Well, you received
a presidential--
- Chair.
- --chair to be the faculty
sponsor of this research
cluster.
This is already in
the mid-'90s, I think.
- Well, actually, I decided--
the Presidential Chair--
Bettina Aptheker has
the presidential chair
now at UC, Santa Cruz.
There she is.
And so when I found
out that I had received
the presidential chair,
it was a weird situation
because some people
thought that I
was the president of the
University of California.
[LAUGHTER]
And actually, the then president
of the University of California
told me that he had
gotten calls saying,
why did you name Angela Davis as
the president of the University
of California?
[LAUGHTER]
And he said, well,
she's not our president.
But we do have a campus
named after her, "UC, Davis."
[LAUGHTER]
But I think it came with--
I don't know--
Bettina, how much money is it?
Like about $100,000 or
something like that?
And so I used that
money to fund the work
for many years of
the Research Cluster
for the Study of Women of Color
in Collaboration and Conflict.
- Yes.
I mean, I think we
jumped ahead because we
were going to talk a little
bit about music and art.
And you asked me the question
of what, in my own work,
art and literature
is in relationship
to political
movements, which I've
studied in the context
of the Philippines.
And traditionally, art
and music were there
to mobilize, to
create community,
to help to produce
feelings of solidarity.
But it was always
in a secondary role.
Or you studied them, and
then you wrote about them.
But I think one of the things
that we had talked about
was also the way that art is
a way of knowing the world,
a way of reorienting.
It's epistemological as well as
it was a structure of feeling
that could give you a
knowledge of the world,
a way of thinking and orienting
yourself to the world.
- Yeah.
And of course, if one looks
at the history of aesthetics,
there is a reluctance
to consider
art as productive of knowledge.
We don't want to talk about Kant
and all of those other people.
[LAUGHTER]
But of course, if you look
at the third Critique--
[LAUGHTER]
--The Critique of Judgment,
we're talking about--
well, Kant was talking about
judging art and beauty,
reflecting on it,
thinking about it.
but it was a judgment
rather than knowledge.
And I think that we
recognize increasingly
that art can produce
a kind of knowledge,
that it has an epistemological
effect that nothing else can
approximate.
In many ways,
artists can show us
where we want to go
before we even learn how
to articulate that in words.
And so I'm just
really, really thankful
that I've lived long enough
to have the opportunity
to not only think
about these issues,
but to better learn how to
listen and how to enjoy.
And I think my friend
Terri Lyne Carrington,
whom I met 30 years ago sitting
in makeup for The Arsenio Hall
Show, I think.
[LAUGHTER]
Because she was the
drummer in the band there.
And we said to each other
as we were being made up,
we said, oh, we
should get together.
And I said, yeah, we
really should get together.
But we didn't
exchange information.
And then a couple of
days later in Berkeley,
she walks into a restaurant
where I'm having dinner.
So I said, this friendship was--
but I really thank
her for teaching me
how to better listen.
And that is a quality I think we
need in our movements, as well.
- I think it also does
another kind of work.
Well, it's related
to ways of knowing,
but ways of understanding
differently.
Maybe sometimes paradigms or
the conditions of the world
that we think that we
know so well because we've
formed a politics about it.
We have a political theory.
And movements
sometimes can get very
attached to their own
political objects.
And I have heard you
caution movements
from getting too attached
to their political objects
and cautioning academics
from getting to attached
to their objects of analysis.
And I think this is a
question about the way
that music and
art, perhaps, also
lead you to ways of seeing the
world in a way that questions
some of the existing categories
that we've been attached to.
Or how do they move people,
or move you in particular,
into another orientation
to the world which
is connected to the way that
you see yourself involved
in so many other
people's struggles?
Well, it's always hard
to constantly question
the categories
you use to attempt
to understand something.
I mean, we aren't encouraged
to question the tools--
the conceptual tools,
the categories.
We are urged to understand
the object, whatever it is.
And we take all that
is necessary in order
to use those tools for granted.
We don't question
that which we assume
to be the normal set of
theories and methods.
We question the object.
But if we are to
be truly critical,
we have to learn how to
question ourselves and question
the tools that we are using.
I mean, I've talked a
lot over the recent years
about the trans movement.
And I think it's so important,
not because of the fact that we
need to acknowledge the
pain and the suffering
and the extent to
which trans people--
trans women of
color, for example--
bear the brunt of all of
the different violences
that we're talking about.
But what is even
more important--
I don't want to set it up
in terms of a hierarchy--
but it is also important
that we realize
what we are doing when
we challenge the existing
binary structure of gender.
We are challenging
something that
has become so normal that
it has been beyond question.
And by doing that, we
recognize the possibility
of challenging all of
the other categories
that we take for granted, the
categories that we work with.
And I think art
helps us to do that.
Because if we attempt
to simply engage
in a process of
self-critique, it
becomes very difficult
after a while, when
you have to second
guess yourself,
every single thing you do,
every single thing you say.
But with art, we
can experience it.
We can feel it.
We can feel ourselves going
beyond the categories.
We can feel our
relations undergoing
a transformation, if only
for a short period of time.
Like, I really love
the improvisations here
and sort of the calling
to the ancestors.
And I mean, we heard all
kinds of things in the music.
And that helps to create
community among us.
This is actually something
I got from Kant, Skip, so.
[LAUGHTER]
- Well, actually, the title of
the book for the women of color
was Beyond the Frame.
I mean, in many ways
I think that was
one of the objectives of the
project, which started out
with a conference, with
a writing workshop.
Gina was there and Saidiya
Hartman and, I think,
Deborah Wright and
workshopping the papers.
But I think what was
coming out of this--
and maybe I'd like to ask
you to say a little bit more
about this feminist method, this
critical feminist method, that
was and is?
Or where are we now with
women-of-color feminism
as a different method
that was, in some ways,
busting up the categories,
as you put it one time?
That you are questioning
the categories,
but you can also have a
political identification
such as woman of color,
that provides you
with a methodology that allows
you to see outside the frames
that we're given.
- And I was thinking,
it's interesting,
isn't it, that the cluster
focused a great deal
on visuality, on
visual art, because we
sponsored, for many
years, a film festival.
And I'm just
remembering this now.
When Julie Dash came
to the campus during,
I think it may have been
the first of the second.
That was before you
arrived, I think.
Or was it?
Or were you there?
Well.
- It was a long time.
- Yeah, I know.
[LAUGHS]
- You memory's better than mine.
- And we were focusing on
visuality, not because we
thought we could become
experts, not because we thought
we needed the particular
tools and categories that
are used in visual studies,
but because we thought
it was important to
learn how to read--
read images.
And it was actually quite
a remarkable experience.
And we haven't talked about the
"women of color" part of it,
though.
I think it's important
because the conference has
been pretty much black
and white, am I right?
And we want to go--
[THUD]
--beyond the frame.
[LAUGHTER]
[CHEERING]
[LAUGHING] The black/white
frame is what we
have learned in this country.
But we also know that,
as much as racism
is rooted in slavery and the
particular trajectory of people
of African descent here,
there's also colonization
and indigenous people.
They're Mexicans and
Chicanos and Asian Americans.
Remember, at the same time, I
was a faculty advisor for the--
- Pacific Island.
- --Pacific Island
Student Association.
[LAUGHS] As a matter
of fact, there's
a wonderful image
and a mural of me
with a lei on my head from Fiji.
It was because there were
no Pacific Island faculty.
And the students asked me if I
would be their faculty advisor.
And you worked with--
- I did work also with a
lot of Pacific Islander
and native studies.
- Right, right.
- But Beyond the Frame, I
think we both understand that
as not adding so many other
categories in the spectrum,
but really thinking
about, when you
think about
intersectionality, we're
also thinking about
the intersectionality
of our histories.
And this is related to
your internationalism,
but it's also related to the
way that the women of color,
not just in this cluster, but
in the methodology of thinking
about the histories that brought
them to create the object that
is in front of you, are very
much intertwined, right.
So I think when we're thinking
about questioning categories,
we have the binary gender.
But I think you've
also questioned
the category of black.
And I think that
the work of Robin
and Cedric Robinson
in his last--
I think Ruthie had mentioned
it at the conference--
about the capaciousness
of "black" and what
would that mean.
And your travels in Brazil,
and your travels in Australia.
And I think it was Trevor
who also said the first day
about, against all the
ethnolinguistic forced
separations of
communities that you
learn to see yourself
as black, right,
and how important that was.
So I don't know if you wanted
to say a little something
about that, in your travels and
in your political involvements,
the way that that category
is also moving, changing,
connecting--
connecting, perhaps.
I can say a little bit
about how in the struggles
that I feel like I'm involved
in, how I would connect--
not occupy, but connect.
- Well, it's always been very
difficult to talk about race.
Stuart Hall makes that point.
Because we talk
about race as if it
were a biological phenomenon.
But at the same
time, we're arguing
that it's socially produced.
And so how can one escape
always falling back
on that biological essentialism?
I think that political
definitions of blackness
work a lot better.
And I really appreciate it,
what Du Bois said so long ago,
in the conversations
about pan-Africanism that
were unfolding.
And he pointed out that
what was at the core
of the kind of pan-Africanism
that he could embrace
was an anti-imperialist impulse.
For me, it makes--
[CLEARS THROAT] excuse me.
I'm losing my voice.
For me it makes no sense
to talk about being
black for the sake
of being black.
I mean, for me it
makes no sense to talk
about a notion of blackness
that encompasses everybody
who looks a certain way, some of
whom are on the Supreme Court.
[LAUGHTER]
But if we think
about the importance
of black people
in this region, it
has to do with the
struggle for freedom.
I mean, for 500 years, who can
imagine keeping that impulse
to fight for freedom alive,
generation after generation
after generation, handing it
down in the United States,
in South America,
in the Caribbean?
To me, that is the blackness
with which I identify.
[CHEERS]
[APPLAUSE]
And that blackness is about
the struggle for freedom.
[APPLAUSE CONTINUES]
And so therefore,
it means that we
embrace those who are
involved in the same struggle.
And particularly if we want
to use anti-imperialism
as a framework, we
recognize how important
it is to stand with those
who were the first targets
of colonization.
And Harvard needs to develop a--
what is it called?--
land acknowledgment--
[MURMURS OF AGREEMENT]
An official land acknowledgment.
[APPLAUSE]
So that whenever events
like this take place,
there is an
acknowledgment of the fact
that we are convening
on colonized land.
[CHEERING]
[APPLAUSE]
And that the struggles
of indigenous people
deserve the kind
of attention that
has not been accorded to them.
There's been a kind of
discursive invisibility
to which indigenous people
have been relegated.
So yeah.
And I was going to say
something else, Neferti,
that I think I told
you before, that when
the trial took place
and Bettina and Fania
and Margaret and others--
and Dorothy.
Hi, Dorothy.
I forgot.
I was going to say--
oh my God.
Dorothy Burnham.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
She and my mother
were best friends.
And so when I look at
Dorothy, I also see my mother.
But during the trial, when the
trial was moved to San Jose,
there were no black people
in San Jose at that time.
There was just a
sprinkling of black people.
And so where did the
primary community organizing
take place?
It took place in the
Chicano community.
There weren't any black
people on the jury.
But there was one
Chicano man who
played a really important role.
I think Bettina writes about
it in her book on the trial.
So I personally am
thankful for that.
But it's strange that
we have to be encouraged
to think in narrow terms.
I think I'm always
very optimistic.
People accuse me of being
an inveterate optimist.
But I think people are
capable of more capacious
understandings of the world
and of their relations
to each other.
- Yeah.
I think that in your case--
and maybe this is
something we can
say a little bit more about--
which is, it comes from
Barbara Ransby's remark
about being a black,
left feminist,
about seeing what the structures
are in capitalism, for example,
that might actually bring
people into relationship
with each other.
And that forms the
way in which they
start to feel that their
struggles are either related
or the same or why, right.
And this goes to our own
involvements in Palestine.
Robin and I were on the
delegation the year after you.
And that was also the beginning
of the boycott resolution
at the American
Studies Association.
So there is this building--
your delegation the year
before, and then us,
organized by Magid Shihade,
Sunaina Maira, and Rana Barakat
And the delegation
that Robin and I
were on with Kehaulani Kauanui,
Bill Mullen, and Nikhil Singh--
also, none of us
were Palestinian.
But we were all involved
in social struggles
that we saw were
connected to and we
tried to think with
Palestinians about our own
and the way that we could see
things and share and dialogue.
And I'll just say
this one thing,
that one of the first
things I read of yours
was the essay that was mentioned
so many times already here.
What is it?
"The Role of"--
- "Black Women in the
Community of Slaves."
"The Role of Black Women."
- "The Role of Black Women
in the Community of Slaves."
Because there were
several things
that were mentioned there.
And that became an important
essay for me, as well,
to understand two things.
One was the role of
violence in domestic work.
The Philippines is one of
the major global exporters
of domestic work in the world.
It is a class of servitude.
I think that service
labor and servitude labor,
that I think we haven't
really talked about so much,
but is very related to the
absolutely expendable lives
of people incarcerated, but
also in the Philippines--
now 27,000 extrajudicially
killed by the war on drugs--
very related to the
war of drugs here
and criminalization, right.
It is a position of
blackness, if you will,
for those people in the slums.
But the importance
of your essay, what
you were talking about,
about the context of slavery,
but there were two things that
it allowed me to think about,
which was the importance
of racializing,
sexualizing violence in
capitalist conditions
in the present day, the
importance of punishment
in the making of
conditions of servitude
and the conditions of
reproductive labor,
that is effectively
forced labor.
But the other thing that I
think that was really important
is the way that you had
transformed the notion of rape
into a form of terrorist
counter-insurgency, which
meant that there was some
insurgent potential, as well,
right, in those relations
of the domestic household
in black women.
And so it was very dialectical.
[LAUGHS] But, anyway.
So it's the question
of how it is
that we, as a black
left feminist,
and your analysis
of capitalism leads
you to see the connections
among struggles.
And that leads to
your own involvements
in internationalism--
radical internationalism.
- Well, thank you, Neferti,
because you've evoked so much--
reproductive labor and
the new scholarship
that takes seriously
reproductive labor and that
considers reproductive
labor as an integral element
of capitalism,
where as those of us
who trained as
Marxists in the past
have been led to
separate productive labor
from reproductive labor.
[FAINT MUSIC PLAYS]
But that would take us
a very long, long time.
- Yeah, that's the timer.
- We only have 38 seconds left?
[LAUGHTER]
- Apparently.
[LAUGHTER]
- Well.
- Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
- Shoot.
Yeah, we had planned
to talk about so much.
[AUDIENCE SHOUTING]
[APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHS]
Yeah, your question is
so rich because it also
points to the
feminization of labor
under conditions of
global capitalism.
And, as you pointed out, the
use of Filipino domestic labor,
literally all over
the world, is a topic
that we should also
think about in relation
to the role of domestic
workers here in this country--
the role of domestic
workers in France.
I think about that amazing
film that Ousmane Sembene did
that was called La Noire De
about this Senegalese woman
who was a servant
for a French family
and taken to the South of
France, Antibes, I think.
And she ended up
committing suicide.
Sembene said he actually read
an article in the newspaper
about a black maid, a
Senegalese maid, who
had committed suicide.
And he then created the first
feature length film in Africa
south of the Sahara that was
released, I think, in 1969.
Am I right?
Yeah.
So I think that we cannot
even begin to exhaust
the possibilities of thinking
in new ways about reproductive
labor, about domestic work,
and recognizing a tremulous,
amazing book that
was evoked before,
the part that domestic workers
played in creating what
eventually came to be known
as the civil rights movement.
And I guess what
I'd like to say,
I know I'm kind of stream
of consciousness, all
over the place, because
all of the ideas from all
of the panels are swirling
around in my brain.
And I kept thinking.
But you didn't
learn that from me.
I learned that from you!
[LAUGHTER]
Over and over and over again.
And I wasn't the first
person who said that.
I was simply trying to
capture the ideas that
were circulating at the time.
And I think we can
have our conversation
on interdisciplinarity
in that context.
We wanted to talk about
interdisciplinarity
in a really serious way.
Not just bringing the
disciplines together or not
someone who does
interdisciplinary work,
takes a little bit from
history, takes a little bit from
sociology, a little
bit from this,
but what it means to formulate
questions that cannot be
answered within the
context of one discipline,
that require us to
travel elsewhere,
including outside
of the academy.
Because I don't think we value
enough the knowledge that gets
produced in the workplace,
in the context of struggle.
And one of the reasons I thought
you were the person who really
needed to come to
HisCon at that point
was your interdisciplinary
work and the fact
that you were
trained in Marxism--
Marxist political
economy and literature.
And so, yeah.
So why don't you talk
about that a little bit.
[LAUGHS]
- Oh, I think this
is not about me.
- No, but it's about
interdisciplinarity.
- About
interdisciplinarity, I think
this is in keeping with
your own thinking, which
is what I think
we had in common,
which is that when you
think of the problems
that you are trying to
illuminate or answer,
you can't be defined
by the objects that
define disciplines.
Most of our disciplines
are defined by objects.
Literature here, history
there, science here.
Like for example, today,
if we were going to link--
it was mentioned
by Kathy Boudin,
the migrant detention centers,
the way in which the US state
is thinking about migrants
and the intensification
of the policing, patrolling,
and the producing of deathscapes
for Mexican and other Latin
American migrants across
the US-Mexico border--
how to link that
to domestic work
or how to link that
to mass incarceration,
which is different from
the detention centers.
In fact, you and
Gina wrote a piece
called "Prisons as a
Border," in which you
tried to think about prisons
as borders and borders
as also functioning
very much like prisons.
And in that way, you
were defining a problem
that couldn't
necessarily be approached
by a single discipline
or a single method.
It would have to be dictated by
the forms of knowing that we're
required to solve the problem.
- And this is the issue
that we're referring to--
being too attached to objects.
For a long time, we talked about
whether critical prison studies
should actually be
institutionalized.
On the one hand, you say, yes.
These fields of study
should be institutionalized.
How also they're
going to develop?
But on the other
hand, if you say yes,
they're subject to
all of the pressures
of institutionalization
and often lose
their transformative capacity.
And so we were thinking about
critical prison studies.
What does an academic do who
embraces abolition, but studies
the prison?
And you know how scholars become
attached to that which they--
so there's a contradiction
there, right?
And the only way to
do this ethically
is to imagine the object
of your study disappearing.
And not only to imagine
it disappearing,
but to work so that
it no longer exists.
And that's pretty hard.
But I think that we're
at the beginning.
I always kind of think we're
at the beginning of something
really interesting.
It feels like that, doesn't it?
- To you, I think.
[LAUGHS]
- Well.
I don't know.
[LAUGHTER]
- No, I mean this
very, very seriously.
Because we're kind of over time.
But so I did want to
get to the last question
because we have students who
are going to ask you questions.
But this is about what many
already have remarked about
on in the last day
and a half, which
is your capacity
to generate hope
in the midst of
what a lot of people
would consider a very
melancholy, nihilistic
situation.
And there's a lot of depression
about the world today.
And therefore, when you
say, we're at the beginning,
I feel like you're already
formulating a way for us
to generate hope.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
I think historical
perspectives are important.
And it may very well be the
case that, what's his name?
- Donald Trump.
- 45.
- Oh, don't say his name.
- 45.
- OK.
[LAUGHTER]
- 45.
- "The occupant."
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah.
And you have an occupant
(LAUGHING) in the Philippines.
- The occupants are
friendly with each other.
- Yeah.
- All spaces.
- Gina and I just
came back from Brazil.
- And there's Modi.
And there's Israel.
- Oh, yeah.
In Brazil, they call him--
- Coiso.
- --a "coiso," which means
"the thing" in Portuguese.
[LAUGHTER]
So we had a lot of fun.
But given the horrendous
conditions in Brazil,
the assassination
of Marielle Franco.
And by the way, we have
we met with her mother
and father and
sister and daughter,
and they were so excited.
And they really
believe that it is
possible to create
another world,
despite the person
who will not be named.
And sometimes we are
too short-sighted.
We assume that what
is happening right now
is what will forever be.
And this is the lesson
I think my sister said
we learned from our mother,
who always talked about--
and Dorothy, who always talked
about other possibilities.
And of course, it was
Walter Benjamin who said,
hope given to us for the sake
of those who are hopeless.
And so that is one of the
primary goals of our movement.
Now we have to generate hope.
And how do we generate hope?
Well, I've had the habit
for a very long time--
I don't even remember
when I acquired it--
of trying to think seriously
about people engaged
in struggles and other places
where I don't necessarily
know people.
I can remember becoming
introduced to the Algerian
struggle when I was
very, very young.
And I always say I went to
France because I thought
I was going to find freedom--
the land of liberté,
égalité, fraternité.
But then I was told that I might
be mistaken as an Algerian.
[LAUGHTER]
And so that was my introduction
to the Algerian revolution
and reading Fanon.
But right now, we've talked
about Palestine and how
generative of hope Palestine
has been for us who
are struggling in this country.
It's not simply about offering
a kind of a one-way solidarity.
And unfortunately,
sometimes the assumption
that we are doing better
than our friends in wherever,
and so out of the
goodness of our heart,
we're going to offer
them solidarity.
That's not the way it works.
That tends to reinscribe
the very conditions
of superiority/inferiority,
even as we
think we are challenging them.
I know we were
having to end now.
But I want to talk
about, or at least
evoke what's happening
in northern Syria.
[MURMURING]
And I want us to
think very seriously
about those who have not only
been struggling against ISIS.
And by the way, there
are huge numbers
of women among those troops--
among the Kurdish troops.
- Yes.
- And I've been following
the Kurdish women's movement
for a long time.
As a matter of fact,
when we were organizing
around critical resistance
back in 1997, 1998,
there was a death fast
that was happening
in Turkey that had been
undertaken by Kurdish women
prisoners.
They were protesting the
institution of US prisons--
US-style prisons.
They call them F-type
prisons in Turkey.
And so now, we
see that they have
been involved in this amazing
experiment in democracy.
If you want to know why What's
His Name, He Who Will Not
Be Named, withdrew troops
from northern Syria,
it has to do with this amazing
socialist democratic feminist
experiment that
has been happening
in that part of Kurdistan.
And I'll just say
one final thing.
Beth was talking
about gender violence.
And I was saying
that what we see
there, in this beautiful
experiment that
has been disrupted, is
that domestic violence,
intimate violence,
that we've fought
against for so long doing
really important things,
but we haven't really
been able to figure out
how to curb gender violence.
And they've begun to do it.
Because the men and the
women alike, who are armed--
I guess if a woman is armed.
[LAUGHTER]
But I don't think
it's only about that.
I think it's about an
ideological struggle
that they have been
consistently engaged in,
to the point that
women's liberation is
at the heart of their notion
of Kurdish liberation.
And we need to know about that.
We need to
provincialize ourselves.
We need to recognize
how provincial we are
and that people in the US do not
have the answer in the way it
is always assumed.
And so for me, that's
a sign of hope.
- That's a good point to stop.
[APPLAUSE]
I think now we are
running over time.
But you did promise to take some
questions from some students.
There are five questions I
think that were prepared.
I think they're
going to ask them.
They're right here.
And so if we could have
the first three questions.
And then the last two.
So please go ahead.
- Hi.
My name is Bradley Fue.
I'm a senior here at Harvard.
And first, just thank you
so much for being here.
It's been an amazing
honor and privilege
to hear you speak today.
And I am taking Professor
Higginbotham's class
this semester, The Northern Side
of the Civil Rights Movement.
And one of the things
that we've consistently
been debating in class
is the definitions
of rather unstable concepts
of success and failure
in the context of the
various case studies
that we've been
reading and looking at.
And so my question for
you is, what does success
look like for the social
movements of today?
For example, what would success
look like for Black Lives
Matter in your opinion?
- Hi.
My name is Myla Calendar.
And I'm a sophomore at Cambridge
Rindge and Latin High School.
And my question is that James
Baldwin wrote in "An Open
Letter to My Sister, Miss
Angela Davis," "If we know,
then we must fight for
your life as though it
were our own, which
it is, and render
impassible with our bodies the
corridor to the gas chamber.
For if they take
you in the morning,
they will be coming
for us that night."
With that said, how would you
describe your relationship
with male civil rights
leaders and activists?
And was Baldwin's support for
you the exception or the rule?
[LAUGHTER]
[CHEERING]
[APPLAUSE]
- Hi.
I'm asking this question on
behalf of Desirelli Lara, who
had to step out unfortunately.
She was a student, a part of
Summer of Hope this summer
here at Radcliffe and is a
Boston public school sophomore.
Her question for you
is, your entire life's
work, from the past
until now, I imagine
has come with moments
where you were exhausted--
mentally, physically,
spiritually.
And maybe you even
wanted to give up.
I wonder how you kept going.
What advice would you
give to someone like me
who tries to fight the
good fight for justice,
but sometimes feels so
tired I want to give up?
- So I just do these three?
- Yes.
- OK.
What does success look like?
I wish we had a lot longer
to explore that question.
Because it's is a very
complicated question.
But for me, success
consists of figuring out
how to ask the right questions
at a particular moment.
And those questions may not
be eternally the questions
that need to be asked.
And the thing about how one
moves forward, how one acquires
more knowledge,
to me it is not so
much about avoiding mistakes.
It's about learning
how to make mistakes
and learning from
those mistakes.
I think we learn much
more from our mistakes
than we do from what we
do completely correctly.
And so success is
also not having
to make the same old
mistakes over and over again.
I always think that what
we, as older generations,
have to pass on to
younger generations
is the capacity to
make new mistakes.
And we share our knowledge--
that sometimes is called
our "wisdom"-- and
sometimes it's wisdom,
sometimes it's not--
in order to allow you to
make your own mistakes.
And I don't think there isn't
an ultimate point where one
can say that, this is freedom.
We're there.
I mean, what did Nelson
Mandela say, Trevor?
He said the long
walk to freedom,
each time one
thinks that one has
reached the top of the mountain,
there is another ahead.
And I've said this
many times-- what
I find really exciting and
energizing about our struggles
is that we increasingly
recognize what we did not know.
And if someone had asked me to
define freedom 50 years ago,
I would have said, we have
to free the black man.
That would have been my answer.
And now it's so much more
complicated, precisely
as a result of the wonderful
activism and scholarship.
Male civil rights-- yeah.
I mean.
[SIGHS]
[LAUGHTER]
Do you want me to
name [LAUGHS] all
of my wonderful male comrades?
Well, many years ago, when I
was involved in an organization
called LA SNCC.
It was right after I had been
in the Black Panther Party,
I think, Ericka.
And SNCC didn't
last a long time.
But it did amazing work.
But the problem was,
there were those
who thought that the women--
and there were problems like
that in the Black Panther
Party, as well--
that the women shouldn't
take leadership.
And I was working with
a group of amazing women
who were great organizers.
And I mean, there were some guys
who were good organizers too.
But it's usually the
women who do that work.
You know?
In every community,
it's usually the women
who do the work that
isn't recognized.
And so the guys would
show up whenever
there was a press
conference or a rally
so that they could take credit.
But the point that I
want to make to you
is that it really was
not a gender war, per se.
It wasn't the women
versus the men.
Because there were women who
believed that women should play
a secondary role, that
the women should be doing
the education and the cooking.
And there were also men who
believed in gender equality.
So I characterize that as
a struggle around gender--
not between or among
the genders, but around
the role of gender.
And I don't think that we should
make the mistake of making
assumptions.
Even when I say "cisgender
heterosexual white men,"
I know that there are white
men in the audience who
know that I'm not
talking about them.
Well, anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
(LAUGHING) It's late.
And I wish we could continue,
but the last question
is about exhaustion.
[LAUGHTER]
(LAUGHING) I think I am
totally exhausted now.
But it's a beautiful exhaustion.
And yeah, I get tired.
Everybody gets tired.
You can't keep doing the
same thing all the time
without getting tired.
So take some time off.
- Yeah!
- You know?
[LAUGHTER]
And I think we have
emphasized community so much.
And what was it?
Was it Robin?
Or I don't know--
one of the Robins--
[LAUGHTER]
--I don't know which one--
said something about
cultivating a sense of community
so then when you
need to step back,
you know that there's someone
who will step forward for you.
You know that if you
need some rest, if you
need some time off,
you're not going
to be leaving the struggle
without leadership.
I mean, we should have
realized that a long time ago.
And I don't think we did.
But I think what's
good about the younger
generation is that they
insist on incorporating
a sense of the need to
take care of everyone
and that they recognize the
difficulties and the traumas
so that we learned
how to meditate.
And thank you, Ericka.
Ericka was talking about
me practicing yoga.
But Ericka was the person--
people thought she was crazy--
but who insisted that
we try meditation.
Remember, you were trying to
convince Hughie to meditate.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I mean, I
say this seriously.
Because I think things might
have ended differently for him,
you know.
He did try.
He did try.
Yeah, and all we can do is try.
Yeah, all we can do is try.
But yeah, so just
take some time off.
Have fun.
We're not going to move
in a forwards direction
unless we can feel pleasure
in the course of engaging
in the struggle.
If it's all sacrifice, if
it's all bad, then, no.
But we have to learn
how to generate
joy and pleasure in the process
of doing our organizing.
And I think that's
what has allowed
me to remain in this movement,
because there's never
been a point where it has even
occurred to me that I would
leave the struggle.
I wouldn't know what to do.
Really, I wouldn't know
what to do with myself.
- We just have two
more questions.
- Hi, Professor Davis.
First of all, thank you so
much for being here and taking
the time to answer
our questions today.
My name is Nicole Fintell.
And I'm a freshman here
at Harvard College.
So when reading your book,
Are Prisons Obsolete?,
I was struck by the
following quotation.
"An attempt to create a
new conceptual terrain
for imagining alternatives
to imprisonment
involves the ideological work of
questioning why criminals have
been constituted as a class and,
indeed, a class of human beings
undeserving of the
civil and human rights
according to others."
So with nearly everyone
in our society breaking
at least minor laws
on a regular basis,
including like traffic
laws, jaywalking,
or underage drinking,
we all technically fall
under the category
of "criminal."
Yet only a small number of us
are deemed less intrinsically
moral or less worthy of full
human dignity as a result
of these criminal actions.
How did this distinct class
of criminal come into being?
And why do we deem
only some people
who break laws to
be "real criminals"?
- Whoa.
- One more-- the last question.
- Hi, my name is
Selma Abdurahman.
I'm a senior at the
college studying
African-American studies.
And I'm also an organizer with
the Harvard Prison Divestment
Campaign, which is a repertory
justice initiative that
seeks to sever Harvard's
financial ties to the prison
industrial complex, not
just private prisons.
We are a group of committed
students and community leaders
who, following the guidance
of formerly incarcerated
and presently
incarcerated organizers,
seeks the abolition of
prisons in the carceral state.
First of all, thank you for your
theories, strategies, tactics,
and vision for providing our
campaign and me, personally,
with a guiding light
and a way to live.
Our movement wants to know,
what do you conceptualize
the role of the university
to be in dismantling
the carceral state?
And will you take a stance in
support of the Harvard Prison
Divestment Campaign to
divest from the prison
industrial complex and reinvest
in affected communities?
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
- (WHISPERING) It's a
Harvard grad student.
- (WHISPERING) Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the first person
who asked the question,
I think you know
the answer to that.
I think you know it has
something to do with racism.
I think you know it has
something to do with the class
structure of our society.
Am I right?
You already knew
that, didn't you?
[LAUGHTER]
But the question
you raise has to do
with how this notion
of criminality
gets ideologically
constructed to the extent
that people see a young black
man with kind of baggy pants
walking down the street
and make assumptions
that he's a criminal.
And I'm not only talking
about white people.
I'm talking about
people of color.
I'm talking about black
people also succumbing
to the that ideological effect.
I mean, this is why critical
thinking is so important.
I know those of you
who are students,
you've taken all of your
critical thinking classes.
But use what you've learned.
Be critical about these issues.
And of course I would
support your efforts
to persuade the university
to divest from the prison
industrial complex.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
And I also want to say
that Robin Kelley spoke
about the graduate student
organizing on campus.
[CHEERING]
And I really want to offer
support and solidarity
to those of you--
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
--who are doing the union
organizing and developing
ways to minimize sexual
harassment and gender violence.
And I guess I should end
by thanking everybody.
I know there's so
many people to thank.
There's Skip.
There's Jane.
There's Tamiko.
There's everybody.
[LAUGHTER]
Elizabeth, who did an
amazing job organizing, yeah.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
And I mean, I know almost
everybody in the audience,
it seems.
[LAUGHTER]
So this has been a
remarkable experience.
I have to tell you that when
I saved all that material,
I had no way of imagining that
it might culminate in something
like this.
I just knew that I
shouldn't throw it away.
And my sister--
I don't know where she is.
But I asked her
about her papers,
and she said, oh, I throw
things away all the time.
And so it was quite amazing
to look at the exhibition.
Because I didn't even know
I had all of that stuff.
[LAUGHTER]
It's been packed away
for years and years.
And all I can hope
is that not only
people who visit the
archive, but people
who learn about these
struggles in other ways, who
learn about the valuable
work we did to organize
critical resistance.
And I want to thank
Cassandra Shela, who's here,
who was one of the organizers.
Gina, Ruthie.
Is anybody else here from
the organizing committee?
Because when we
started, we said,
we are going to change the way
people think about the prison
in this country.
It was just a
little group of us.
And I don't think
we really believed
(LAUGHING) we could do it.
[LAUGHTER]
But we decided to use the term
"prison industrial complex"
precisely because it might
shift the way people think
about prisons--
that they would think about
prison in a different way.
And it's just so beautiful
to see all of the work--
the scholarly work,
the activist work--
that has emerged.
And to me, that's
a major victory.
We may not be there yet.
And we may never get there.
But we will definitely
be on our way.
And I think it's the "on
our way," it's the voyage,
it's the journey
that is so beautiful
and revelatory of
human potential.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
- Angela Davis is so beloved
that even our insect creatures
just cannot keep away from her.
[APPLAUSE CONTINUES]
I don't think there is
anything that I could possibly
add at this point, except to
express my deepest gratitude
once again to our participants.
And to quote Ericka Huggins,
who said in our first session
today, Angela Davis,
thank you for being born.
[LAUGHTER]
[CHEERING]
And thank you for producing the
archives that have yet to come.
Thank you.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
