“As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.”
– Angela Davis
Angela Davis, activist, educator, and scholar, was born on January 26, 1944, in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama. The area received that name because so many African American homes in this middle class neighborhood had been bombed over the years by the Ku Klux Klan.
Her father, Frank Davis, was a service station owner and her mother, Sallye Davis, was an elementary school teacher. Davis’s mother was also active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), when it was dangerous to be openly associated with the organization because of its civil rights activities.
As a teenager Davis moved to New York City with her mother, who was pursuing a master’s degree at New York University.
In 1961 Davis enrolled in Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. While at Brandeis, Davis also studied abroad for a year in France and returned to the U.S. to complete her studies, joining Phi Beta Kappa and earning her B.A. (magna cum laude) in 1965. Even before her graduation, Davis, so moved by the deaths of the four girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in her hometown in 1963, that she decided to join the civil rights movement.
By 1967, however, Davis was influenced by Black Power advocates and joined the SNCC and then the Black Panther Party. She also continued her education, earning an M.A. from the University of California at San Diego in 1968. Davis moved further to the left in the same year when she became a member of the American Communist Party.
In 1969, Angela Davis was hired by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as an assistant professor of philosophy, but her involvement in the Communist Party led to her dismissal. During the early 1970s, she also became active in the movement to improve prison conditions for inmates. That work led to her campaign to release the “Soledad (Prison) Brothers.” The Soledad Brothers were two African American prisoners and Black Panther Party members, George Jackson and W. L. Nolen, who were incarcerated in the late 1960s.
On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of George Jackson, attempted to free prisoners who were on trial in the Marin County Courthouse. During this failed attempt, Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and three others, including Jonathan Jackson, were killed. Although Davis did not participate in the actual break-out attempt, she became a suspect when it was discovered that the guns used by Jackson were registered in her name. Davis fled to avoid arrest and was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list. Law enforcement captured her several months later in New York. During her high profile trial in 1972, Davis was acquitted on all charges.
Angela Davis has been an activist and writer promoting women’s rights and racial justice while pursuing her career as a philosopher and teacher at the University of Santa Cruz and San Francisco University. She achieved tenure at the University of California at Santa Cruz despite the fact that former Governor Ronald Reagan swore she would never teach again in the University of California system.
An author of eight books, a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.
“I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.”
– Angela Davis
Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:
The State and Revolution :flag-su:
:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:
Remember, sort by new you :LIB:
Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:
Follow the ChapoChat twitter account :comrade-birdie:
THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:
COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:
Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:
!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:
!agitprop@hexbear.net :allende-rhetoric:
!paganism@hexbear.net :anarchist-occult:
!neurodiverse@hexbear.net :Care-Comrade:
:hammer-sickle: Question of the Day :huey-wut:
Who is your Favorite African-American Socialist?
(we really are lacking emotes about African-American socialists)
Please remember to :vote: in this important Announcement
So, the Atlantic Council (top imperialist think tank) released this document, The Longer Telegram, a couple weeks ago.
It outlines the US/NATO perspective on the China Question. Only a few pages in, so far:
- NATO/US has failed to seriously consider the rise of China, and there is no rational imperialst strategy towards China.
- Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party is rapidly moving towards traditional Marxism-Leninism.
- The imperialist intelligentsia needs to draft a materially-grounded strategy for first containing then destroying, China.
The piece is inspired by the imperialist strategist, George Kennan, whose Long Telegram outlined the US/NATO strategy towards the USSR. It was written in 1946, and it lays out the exact strategy the US used until 1991.
I highly recommend reading The Longer Telegram. It will likely describe imperialist strategy moving forward.
The United States and its allies need a consistent, comprehensive, operationalized strategy for dealing with the greatest challenge of this age, rather than a series of disjointed and often unintelligible tweets. Apart from anything else, it makes the United States the object of mockery around the world, in a bit-by-bit erosion of the nation’s hard-earned political capital.
lol
The absence of any battlefield experience on the part of China’s armed forces over the last seventy years contrasts with the United States’ extensive experience.
the US is clearly the good guys, you can tell because of all the bad guys they fight!
“the US has lost every large conflict war since WWII, but this time they’re gonna win so hard!!!”
-the neoliberals writing this
there’s so much orientalism in there, ‘bad emperor problem’, ‘confucian countries’ imagine the west being referred to as platonic countries
Is it fucked up that I want a Chapo Chat Con at a hotel in the USA? (Name could def be changed.)
No vendors room for slinging merch. Instead we’ll have more room for panels like simplifying theory, leftist cosplay contests, prepping tips, LGBTQIA issues, mental health, silly competitions that determine who the only leftist in the room is along with whose a fed, and yeah I guess we’d have a gaming room too. Instead of inviting media celebrities we could invite 70 year old random ass communists and anarchists who could tell us what being a long term leftist is like. For those unable to come in person, the convention would be streamed online for free.
At night the unofficial events can begin: hotel room drinking parties, driving out into the middle of nowhere and burning various flags in a bonfire, hiring a presidential impersonator only to relentlessly bully them for war crimes, and… ah jeez, some of you are inevitably going to set up at least one orgy. They’ll probably be a few raves too, if any of you make music.
In the morning we’ll all slog out of our rooms hungover for the included hotel breakfast buffet line. Some will wear cosplay, but most others still wearing their pajamas as they attempt to wake up long enough to slither some cheap hotel coffee down their throats. By lunch time we’ll all be ready to have a blast all over again.
Maybe after covid we could make it a reality. Give us something to look forward to in hell world, feds and chuds sneaking in be damned. :comfy:
Live struggle session. Everyone gets into the school gymnasium and argues at once.
The live struggle sessions would be how we determine the One True Leftist competition.
And whoever succeeds the most in dividing people and pissing them off gets called a fed. :RIchard-D-Wolff:
My partner is mad that I leave the tv on for the cat when we’re not home.
It’s like birds and wildlife videos. He likes it. I know he does :lenin-cat:
There’s YouTube accounts dedicated to cats—they have like birds and shit. But the ones my cat likes are the wilderness ones where there’s big cats and and wild shit. The account is called “relaxation channel.” ___
My cat really likes Paul Dinning on Youtube. Actually was recommended to me by someone else on here.
Biden responding to that woman in his town hall who asked him about how his administration is going to forgive student loan debt with “I will not” pretty much sums up what we can expect for the next four years.
You would think that the Dems would at least be trying to recapture that spirit of “Hope”, “Change”, and “Yes we can” from the Obama era, but nope. Ever since the primary it’s just been “We’re not going to make anything better, but you’re still a bad person if you don’t vote for us”.
