Happy Birthday

Angela Davis is 65 years old today, she is only the third woman in history to appear on the FBI's wanted list. This was for a short time in the 70's, for her presumed involvement with George Jackson. They are stories about a gun he had, which was registered to her, and varaiance of the story but there was a gun, I have to ask her, her version of this next time I see her, she was acquitted of all charges. So it was only fitting that on Covered and Bound today I played "The Birthday Song" by Stevie Wonder. and do some special programming around her current work, prison abolitionist play some of her speech from the tenth anniversary conference of the Critical Resistance movement and talk about her life, she is my mentor. She is always associated with the Black Panther and the civil rights movement she is a lifelong activist and writer forver promoting women rights and racial justice

"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. "
--Dr. Angela Y. Davis

At 26, Angela Davis was the third woman in history to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list for a short time in 1970’s, while evading arrest. A gun found on George Jackson was thought to have been registered in her name. She joined the Communist party in 1968, after the assassination of MLK and ran for U.S. Vice President on the communist Party ticket in 1980.

"When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he's referring to.' _ Dr. Anela Y. Davis

Davis began working as a lecturer of philosophy at the University of California in Los Angeles until the FBI in 1970, informed her employer that she was a member of the American Communist Party, then they terminated her contract. She continued her militant activities so much so that Ronald Reaqan, the Governor of California said that she should not be allowed to teach in any of the state supported universities.

"I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively." -Dr. Angela Y. Davis

Now she teaches in the Hitory of Consciousness program at the University of California, and she is still acitively involved in prison-related campaigns. Her last book, "Are Prisons Obsolete," continues her personal fight for equal rights and justice to all humans, in it she stresses her beliefs that prisons are not the solution to deeper societal problems, that need "radical alternatives--education insteadof incarceration, free drug programs instead of the criminalization of drug use--and we are especially concerned about the degree to which prisons have become a source of profits Instead of calling our movement a prison reform movement, we are calling it movement against the prison industrial complex. 10 yers of Critical Resistance was celebrated last September 26-28 in Oakland, California. There Dr. Davis continues to stress the movements fight to eliminate the PIC (Prison Insustrial Complex) while facing tremendous challenges. Meanwhile the levels of imprisonment in the US and around the world continues to increase along with the repression and criminalization of migrants and immigrants, people of colour, young people, and queer communities.

"Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other. " --Dr. Angela Y. Davis

Cool, eloquent and brilliant Angela Davis is my mentor, a woman whose life I truely admire it is her conviction to the human race, that selfless activism.

David, Angela. Prison Industrial Complex. Spoken Word CD.

Davis, Angela. If They Come in the Morning. 1971.

Davis, Angela. Women, Culture and Politics. 1990.

Davis, Angela The Angela Davis Reader

Davis, Angela Are Prison's Obsolete?

Davis, Angela Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday

Davis, Angela (foreword by) Imaging Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theatre for Incarcerated Women

Davis, Angela (foreword by) Methodology of the Oppressed