ANGELA DAVIS IN EUGENE
ESSN ACTIVISTS HELP AT EVENT
By Nathan Moore and Kate Downing
On Saturday, January 20th ESSN (Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network) and IWW members had the honor and opportunity to assist the students of the Multicultural Center and other community groups in welcoming Professor Angela Davis to the University of Oregon. Currently a professor of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Davis is a prominent activist for social justice and has been for more than 40 years. Among other achievements, Angela Davis worked with the Black Panthers, ran for vice president in 1980 and 1984, has written a number of influential books such as “Women, Race, and Class,” and currently works on prison abolition with “Critical Resistance,” a group she helped to found. Professor Davis’ speech was centered on the issue of Community Mobilization, and despite the sunny Saturday afternoon weather, the building was packed to the gills. Thanks to the foresight of the event’s planners a large amount of listeners who would otherwise not have been able to hear the Professor speak were accommodated in an overflow room with a closed-circuit television feed.
While Professor Davis covered a diverse range of specific topics during her speech, she eloquently connected the dots by pointing out the overarching connections between issues of class, race, and gender and the ways in which unbridled corporate exploitation breeds massive inequality and poverty on a global level. Whether discussing the disproportionate number of poor minorities incarcerated in the growing prison industrial complex, the growing assault on affirmative action, or the Iraq war and the Bush administration, she stressed the need for proactive organizing, instead of simply protesting after the fact. As members of ESSN, this reaffirmed and strengthened our belief in the importance of continuously building broad-based coalitions in order to struggle for social justice, both in the Eugene-Springfield area and in the wider world.
One of the most memorable points of Davis’ speech was her claim to Hemispheric Citizenship. Davis pointed out that the word “American” doesn’t just apply to the people in the United States, but to all of those who reside in the Americas. Hence, we must look at the progressive movements in South America as a victory for all the citizens of the Americas. As members of a coalition organization in Lane County, this can be an enlightening outlook on community-making—we are connected not only to those within arm’s reach, but to our fellow workers to the south and north as well. In a time where our government is building walls—literally— to keep us apart, it’s important to maintain solidarity and remember that as workers in the U.S. our actions affect our neighbors, hopefully for the good.
Towards the end of her speech, Davis left the audience with a positive piece of advice on how to begin creating coalitions within the community: she said, “Start by doing what you love.” She wondered how long an organization full of individuals forcing themselves to do something they weren’t passionate about would last. She said in Santa Monica people like to surf, and when asked what people in Lane County like to do the audience responded, “Organic Gardening!” Davis went on to tell the story of a woman with a passion for Organic Gardening who brought her skills to the local prison and taught women there how to grow food. Many of these women, upon their release, went on gardening and growing their own vegetables. While this is just one specific example that Professor Davis brought up during her talk, as community-builders we can take this example to heart. Bringing what you love to a cause, whether it is the labor movement, or the peace movement, can only enrich the community and further its goals.