 "Photo: Sean Black | Chronicle Photo")
Angela Davis doesn’t care if she is famous, but she does want to be a radical. She thinks that change is only achievable if there is hope, imagination and struggle.
Davis, an icon of the 1960s radical movement, inspired her audience Thursday, Feb. 25 at CSUSB with her lecture on education, freedom and change.
More than 300 students, alumni and community members packed into the Santos Manuel Student Union Events Center to hear the controversial author, activist and educator.
“I saw an article that said I was a 'famous radical',” Davis said jokingly. “I don’t really care about the famous part. But what I really hope is that I continue to be radical.”
Davis is undeniably a radical.
She was a member of the Black Panther Party in the 60s and was placed on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list in the 1970s for her connection to the abduction and murder of a judge, which she was later tried and acquitted for. However Davis didn’t lecture about her past, instead she lectured about future and change.
“To change the world we need hope, we need to imagine and we need to recognize that change is indeed possible. The most significant change is accomplished through community struggle and is not in just one person,” said Davis. “Oftentimes we think that the Civil rights movement was just Martin Luther King and maybe Rosa Parks but, in all seriousness, we don’t realize that the boycott that allowed Dr. King to emerge as a major spokesperson was organized by women.”
According to Davis, the people who are most responsible for change are community members involved in some sort of struggle.
“We don’t even know their names, most of us don’t even recognize their contribution, but their activism is something that is not to be forgotten,” Davis said.
Davis also lectured about education.
According to Davis, California used to have the best education in the country, by now she questions who gets to go to university and who gets to go to prison.
According the Davis there is no freedom without education and no education without freedom. However she has worked extensively in the prison system and many prisoners are some of the hardest-working people she has ever taught.
“[Prisoners] are some of the best students I have ever had. Of course they have more time,” Davis said with a laugh. “But many of them realize that if they do not focus on learning, their reading, on their writing, on their knowledge there is no life for them to lead,” David added.
Davis finished her lecture off with ideas of freedom. According to Davis freedom is a never-ending process.
“When we first see freedom we see it with a narrow conception, and then it grows and continues to grow. I believe it will always grow. I don’t believe we will ever reach the point where we will all have freedom. There is always another mountain to scale, there is always another issue,” said Davis.
According to Davis she wishes we were able to harness the collective energy generated around the Obama’s campaign last year to build a movement that would overcome some of our petty problems.
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