
          Angela Davis: 'Rekindle the Flame'
          By Davenport, ElaineElaine Davenport
          Vol. 12, No. 1, 1990, pp. 10-11
          
          Angela Davis, one of America's best known activists of the 1960s
and 1970s, encouraged an overflow crowd in Austin, Texas, on Martin
Luther King Day to renew a commitment to activism in the 1990s--to
"rekindle the flame."
          In 1972 Davis was acquitted of charges of murder and conspiracy
stemming from a shootout involving Black Panther prisoners at a
courthouse in San Rafael California. She emerged as a symbol of the
American left and became a popular speaker at rallies and a lobbyist
for change. "I'm asked what it was like then," said
Davis. "I tell them we worked hard, that it didn't just
happen. It's called organization and continuity from one event to the
next." She said that today's goals can be achieved only through an
activist struggle: "Our activist efforts must unfold on all fronts
...We must be aware of how the issues interconnect. You must join and
be on call to be seen and heard."
               "We must fight for free, universally available, quality
child care for all," Davis told her Austin audience. Women can't
afford to work when they earn 510,000 a year and the cost of child
care is 53,000 a year per child."Violence against women in the home and against children
has to stop." The portrayal of women in today's rap
music--"this idea that women are to be trampled upon and treated as
sexual objects"--has to change, she said, suggesting that people
write to their local radio stations.Blacks must tackle problems in their own communities, she
said, including AIDS. "We have not done whet we ought to have done
to help those with AIDS." Since blacks make up the overwhelming
majority of AIDS victims, why is it that black churches in East
Oakland can't find buddies to spend time with black people who have
AIDS? "This upsets me more than almost any other issue that we
currently face.""The reproductive rights movement is still too white."
The federal government will pay for sterilization, but is rolling back
the right to abortions. "It's this simple: it is a woman's right to
determine what happens to her body."A higher minimum wage is possible by saying "no to the
corporate system that gives us no economic hope." We may have
rights, she said, but if we're too poor to exercise those rights, we
might as well not have the rights."We must begin to fight for mandatory courses on African-
American history and Latino history on U.S. campuses," she
said. This brought a large number of people to their feet, based
perhaps on the longstanding conflict at the University of Texas over
upgrading the African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center
into a bonafide department.
          The crowd of more than 3,000 overflowed the Performing Arts Center
at the University of Texas. The PAC is often filled with
with mostly white audiences attending the symphony, ballet
or opera. But the atmosphere on this occasion resembled that of a
community gathering, as the racially mixed audience heard songs by the
Webb Elementary School Choir, a welcome by the president of the
University of Texas, who was heckled because of the university's South
African policy, and a dramatic interpretation by Miss Black
Austin. The group also participated in singing "Lift Every Voice and
Sing."
          Davis, a polished orator, spoke slowly and rhythmically, often
repeating her last few words or last phrase as members of the audience
began to shorthand clap.
          Her list of crises facing blacks and other Americans
	       was long:
"Drugs, prison and violence are a murderous cycle for our
young black people," she said. "We're talking about a genocidal
situation in this country." With homicide the leading cause of
death for black men and women ages fifteen to thirty-four, blacks
making up 44 percent of the murder victims in the country, with the
majority of those 

with AIDS black, and with large numbers of black men
permanently unemployed, "is it hard to understand why they drift to
drugs?""The U.S. government is solidly on the side of
apartheid," she said. If the United States had asked for total
economic sanctions against South Africa ten years ago, apartheid would
no longer exist.
          Davis reminded the audience that by circulating petitions, marching
and writing to elected representatives, they had achieved a national
holiday honoring Martin Luther King. "This national holiday is a
living example of the possibility of our activism. We are living in
history. Yesterday informs today." Martin Luther King was not
'the' movement. He emerged from the movement and others will emerge
from the movement, too, she said. She reminded the crowd that it was a
group of women in Montgomery, including Jo Ann Robinson, who provided
the organizational structure to successfully mount the Montgomery bus
boycott. "What the sisters did in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, we
can do in 1990. The issue then was desegregation, but Martin Luther
King soon realized it had economic roots. In 1990, the
interconnectedness of all the issues is much more pronounced than
before. It is no longer possible to separate all the struggles. We're
all in this together."
          One tactic she suggested was to occupy Washington, D.C. "Prepare
to stay there and force the government to negotiate with us."
There is a revolutionary spirit all around the world, she said. "If
they can rise up in Eastern Europe, then so can we."
          
            Elaine Davenport is a Southern Changes contributing
editor. She lives in Austin, Texas. Angela Davis currently teaches
courses in philosophy, aesthetics and women's studies at San Francisco
State University and the San Francisco Art Institute. Angela Davis: An
Autobiography from Random House was a 1974 best-seller. SO has also
written Women, Race and Class (Random House, 1982); her latest book is
Women, Culture and Politics (Random House,
1989).
          
        