Imagining a better world

Former FBI most wanted ANGELA DAVIS explains why she's battling today's 'prison-industrial complex.'

LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR
Monday March 17, 2008
The Morning Star

ALTHOUGH Angela Davis left the Communist Party of the USA in the early 1990s, she still describes herself as a communist, albeit "with a small c."

Davis shot to international fame when her name appeared on the FBI 10 most wanted list in August 1970 after a gun which was registered under her name was used in a fatal shoot-out to free Black Panther prisoners George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette.

"The charges were in connection with my involvement with the Black Panther movement and the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers," she says.

This was Davis's second brush with the authorities. In 1969, she was sacked from her job as assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, for her membership of the Communist Party. The Supreme Court later overturned the decision.

"When the CIA and the FBI were hunting me, it was part of a campaign to terrorise women, particularly black women, who were getting increasingly involved in the civil rights movement at the time," she explains.

Charged with three capital crimes of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, the young Davis went underground until the FBI caught up with her in January 1971. An international campaign to free her led to her eventual acquittal a year and a half later.

"I can remember the enormous support in Britain," Davis recalls, smiling, "from black communities, from communists and the trade union movement.

"Had it not been for that transnational grass-roots struggle, I would probably still be in jail and people would have forgotten my name."

Even her trademark afro hairdo, which has become iconic in its own right, was worn by "thousands of others" long before she was famous, she observes.

Davis rejects the "hyper-individualism" promoted by capitalism in favour of what she refers to as the "collective community in struggle," which was reflected in her warm interaction with an obviously adoring audience of mostly black British working-class women at the International Women's Day event in London earlier this month.

"We have to be able to imagine communities in struggle, we have to be able to recognise that the most important figures of revolutionary movements were people whose deeds we have to imagine because they rarely have a place in recorded history," she stresses.

"We must remember that International Woman's Day recalls the struggle of courageous women at the beginning of last century, who were militant strikers against the garment industry but whose names are forever lost."

It is through these epic struggles for social, political and economic rights, Davis argues, that communities are forged.

"A community is based on history, not biology or a neighbourhood," she says.

"Our political commitment and activism is what creates the community, which can be transnational in scope."

Just as the word community is meaningless without that political and historic cement, Davis believes that "diversity" as a concept has become over-rated, an empty cliche.

"The Bush administration is the most diverse government the US has ever seen," she says with a raised brow.

"We have to ask ourselves what kind of diversity? Those in power are looking for the kind that will not bring political change."

She welcomes the political enthusiasm that the current US presidential elections have generated, particularly among young people, but she regrets the prevailing assumption that the prospect of electing a woman or a black man will, by itself, bring about progressive change.

"We have a black woman secretary of state, that's not what we want," she says, adding that Britain's experience of the first woman prime minister did not bode any better.

"Many people emphasise the symbolic values that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are guarding, perhaps more than they actually represent and more than what they are actually willing to fight for.

"It is not so much about electing a white woman or a black man, but about how they stand on important issues such as the need to challenge US unilateralism and ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There is great resistance to the war in Iraq and that is very important. But there is an inability to imagine the Iraqi people as a member of our community as they are objectified as the 'others.' We must reach out to those people and create a community of struggle that transcends borders."

Davis warns that the war on terror is now being used against those who fought in the liberation movements of the 1970s but escaped the clutches of the FBI.

Western governments often accuse Cuba, China and other developing countries of holding political prisoners. Davis points to "a whole number" of political prisoners languishing in US prisons, many from the era when she had her run-in with the law.

"There are over 100 people whose names we can very easily count," she sighs.

"Former Black Panther activist Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison in 1986 and now lives in Cuba, has recently been identified as a wanted terrorist and the FBI has put a $1 million bounty on her head.

"She lives in constant fear of being kidnapped and taken back to the US."

Most of the political activists of the 1970s and '80s were either killed by the FBI or got life imprisonment on trumped-up charges of murder, robbery and other crime.

Civil rights activist Sekou Cinque TM Kambui (William J Turk) has been in prison for more than 30 years, falsely charged with two murders and former Black Panther and community activist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for decades, framed for the murder of a police officer.

Davis, who now earns her living teaching at the University of California in Santa Cruz, has been campaigning against what she calls the "prison-industrial complex" since her Soledad Brothers days.

She is a founding member of abolitionist group Critical Resistance, which aims to build an international movement to challenge the "normalisation of prison as a solution to social, political and economic problems.

"My obsession right now is with the issue of prison abolition," she says.

"We need to abolish prisons as the dominant form of punishment. The institution depends upon the oppressive systems of racism, classism, sexism and homophobia. It promotes violence and therefore reproduces itself."

Davis observes that the "era of global political economy" is driven by privatisation of all human services, transforming them into "profit-generating commodifying activities of corporate enterprises."

Prison privatisation is a "major danger," she warns. "It is no longer just about the prison being there for those who have committed a crime, but the prison has become a source of profits, so you now have these private corporations which have a stake in people's continued incarceration."

Davis mentions the Corrections Corporation of America, which is the largest private operator of US prisons. On its website, the company boasts about rising profits due to a "notable increase" in prison populations.

"With 2.3 million prisoners, the US incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world.

"One in every 100 adults is behind bars, one in every nine young black men is behind bars," she reports, adding: "This is the nature of democracy that George Bush wants to introduce to Iraq."

The privatisation of services in Britain seems to be a carbon copy of the US model, where every social service is either completely privatised or littered with outsourced contracts.

The Thatcher era paved the way and new Labour made sure that it continued. Now, nearly all public services are up for grabs, from schools and hospital beds to electronic tagging devices, asylum detentions and prisons.

Often the company that runs the prison also holds contracts in health and education. British-based Serco, which has made headlines in the past for its appalling treatment of asylum detainees in the notorious Yarl's Wood centre, is one such example.

Serco operates all over the world, including in Iraq. It runs four prisons and two asylum detention centres in Britain, as well as holding contracts in defence, the NHS and local education authorities.

No wonder, then, that its pre-tax profits jumped 17 per cent to £123.2 million last year.

"To reap profits from the process of incarceration seems so absurd," Davis says, but she sees it as an inevitable part of global capitalism where "the market is the model for everything.

"This drive for privatisation makes it necessary to look at a whole range of issues. Free and inspiring education, universal health care, employment and housing are some of those issues that, if addressed, would keep many off the track that leads directly to prison."

An abolitionist, Davis argues, would also take a fresh look at the justice system.

"Can justice be something more than revenge?" she asks.

"Can we imagine a justice that does not assume that one mistake should ruin an entire lifetime? Can we imagine a justice that strives for a society free of racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia? Can we imagine a justice that focus on decarceration rather than incarceration?"

Davis says that the prison system bears all the hallmarks of slavery and exhorts progressives everywhere to "become 21st century abolitionists."