Imagination, Collective Struggle, and the Inclusion of Artists and Ordinary People: Angela Davis Speaks at RISD in Providence

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(PROVIDENCE, RI) – Imagination, collective struggle, and the inclusion of ordinary and disenfranchised people.  These were among the themes and lessons shared on Monday, January 23, 2012, when famed scholar, activist, and former prisoner (acquitted of charges including murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy), Dr. Angela Davis, spoke at RI School of Design. Part of a week of service dedicated to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Davis’ keynote address covered the topic of “Building Communities of Activism.”

Her talk included a discussion of King’s belief in collective action despite the memorializing of him as the face of the Civil Rights Movement; an examination of the New Deal from the perspective of the protests and direct actions that prompted the policies that emerged after the 1930′s era Depression; and an analysis of the “prison abolition movement” as an important part of the worldwide struggle for social justice, workers rights, and economic equality.

Davis also talked about and periodically referenced the Occupy (Wall Street) Movement throughout her talk, including the site here in Providence.  At times, she was thoughtfully critical about what many have documented as the movement’s absence or sparsity of space for discussions about race, class, and the “intersectionality” of these and other issues in the Occupy encampments, as well as concerns associating the US occupy movements with traditional American occupation narratives of Native lands, Puerto Rico, Iraq, and other sites associated with the rise (and ills) of “global capitalism.”  Davis displayed this same kind of caring admonition in reference to the exclusion of prison labor union issues in spaces created by the “free union movement,” expressing pride in the advancements but honesty in the historical tendency to leave certain groups out (ie. women, people of color, and prisoners).

Overall, though, Davis expressed an unbridled show of support and enthusiasm for Occupy activities (and the labor movement), citing Occupy as the main reason why a climate exists again in this country for discussions on economic inequalities and the failures of capitalism.  Notably, she also inserted occupy in her speech, reframing the syntax and lexicons usually used in historical texts about Civil Rights and Worker movements, where terms and phrases like “sit-ins” and “street demonstrations” became sites or examples of people who “occupied” spaces.

Conscious of her audience and the origins of the invitation – RISD, an art school – and in response to a question from a student, Davis encouraged artists to continue making their art.  Harkening back to the ordinary people who joined because of their collective abilities to imagine a world without segregation, racism, jails, etc. Davis says that artists are in the practice of imagining the impossible, and that alone is a gift to the world – and contribution to the movement.