Professor Angela Davis of the University of California, Santa Cruz blasted U.S. welfare, immigration and crime policies in a speech Saturday night delivered to a packed audience in Webster Hall.
Straying away from her anticipated topic of "Examining Laws of Oppressions: Rethinking the U.S. Criminal Justice System," Davis, a professor in the History of Consciousness program at U.C. Santa Cruz, spoke heavily about the outcomes of last Tuesday's elections.
She blamed the Republican triumph on the lack of activist vigilantism, which resulted in an overwhelming "hard-core reactionary with a fascist edge" constituency coming to power.
Davis talked about the myth of welfare and the "single black mother."
Her advocacy of eliminating welfare and "replacing it with a jobs program to which is attached a guaranteed annual income ... and providing fully funded education from kindergarten to post graduate levels" drew spirited applause from the audience.
Davis then talked about Proposition 187, the anti-immigration measure approved by California voters, which will deny medical, educational and other social services to undocumented immigrants.
"[Proposition 187] represents the depth to which issues of race are able to control us," Davis said.
Finally moving toward her intended topic on the criminal justice system, Davis said "prisons produce and manufacture crime."
She spoke of her incarceration as a political prisoner after her placement on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List in 1970.
"If I could practice carrying things out of stores between my legs with fellow prisoners, imagine what happens in maximum security prisons," Davis said.
According to Davis, the criminalization process "works so well because there is a hidden logic of racism in it."
"The fear of black people is gravitating toward fear of crime," Davis said. "So we can fear crime and not recognize the racist logic there."
She concluded her speech by attacking capitalism and asking public policy to rethink socialism.
"I'm suggesting we look at the broader view. It is going to be extremely important for us to reinvigorate our theory and practice for the sake of our sisters and brothers who will otherwise be thrown into the dungeons, deported across the borders, thrown into the streets and indeed for the sake of us all," Davis said.
The speech was part of the Student Assembly symposium "Women, Leadership and Activism."
