Political activist Angela Davis to speak at California State University, San Bernardino
Political activist, philosopher, academic, and author Angela Davis will speak Monday at California State University, San Bernardino.
The 79-year-old woman is best known for her activism and scholarship that has spanned many decades. She has also been involved in movements for social justice around the world.
Davis will speak at noon in the Santos Manuel Student Union North Conference Center, 5500 University Parkway in San Bernardino.
The moderators for the session will include Angie Otiniano Verissimo, CSUSB associate professor of health science and human ecology, and Alexandra Thambi, a biology major and chair of the SMSU Board of Directors. A virtual option is also available.
A book signing with Davis will follow from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the SMSU South Fourplex.
To attend the event and for a chance to receive a book, register at the “A Conversation with Dr. Angela Davis” registration webpage.
This will be Davis’ second visit to CSUSB. She last spoke on campus in February 2010 at an event hosted by the Women’s Resource Center. More than 700 students and guests attended that 2010 event.
Educating the future
Davis’ work as an educator —both at the university level and in the larger public sphere —has focused on building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice.
Her teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. Davis also has taught at UCLA, Vassar, Syracuse University, Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University.
Most recently, she spent 15 years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness — an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program —and of Feminist Studies.
Davis is the author of 10 books and has lectured throughout the U.S. and Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America.
In recent years, she's focused on social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of communities most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.
Most Wanted List
Davis draws upon her experiences in the early 1970s as a person who spent 18 months in jail after being sought by the FBI.
In January 1970, George Jackson, an inmate at Soledad Prison in California, and two other prisoners were charged with killing a prison guard. During the trial, Jackson’s 17-year-old brother Jonathan Jackson took over a Marin County courtroom where he armed the black defendants and took the judge, prosecutor, and three female jurors hostage, according to the National Archives.
By the end of the ordeal, the judge, Jonathan Jackson, and the armed defendants were killed, while the prosecutor and one of the jurors were injured. Davis was later accused of purchasing the guns used in the commission of the crimes and charged with aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder.
Davis fled prosecution.
Four days after the initial warrant was issued, J. Edgar Hoover placed Davis on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. She was on the run for two months before being arrested in New York. Thousands of international activists organized in her defense and demanded her release.
Davis was eventually found not guilty by an all-white jury.
Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st-century abolitionist movement.
Daily Press reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at 760-951-6227 or RDeLaCruz@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Political activist Angela Davis to speak at Cal State San Bernardino
