Angela Davis: Freedom Is a Constant Struggle — From Ferguson to Palestine
Angela Y. Davis, Scholar, activist, and author; Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz
Solidarity with Palestine must likewise be taken up by organizations and movements involved in progressive causes all over the world.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Haymarket Books, 2016), edited by Frank Barat with a foreword by Cornel West, collects essays, interviews, and speeches in which Angela Y. Davis connects the Black freedom struggle in the United States to struggles against state violence worldwide. A central chapter, “On Palestine, G4S, and the Prison-Industrial Complex,” examines the security company G4S’s role in both the American prison system and Israel’s prisons and checkpoints, and presents Palestinian political prisoners as a core abolitionist concern. Davis, who traveled to Palestine in June 2011 with a solidarity delegation and has long endorsed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, argues for an “intersectionality of struggles” rather than of identities alone.
Asked why Palestine should be a global issue on every justice movement’s agenda, she answered:
“Just as the struggle to end South African apartheid was embraced by people all over the world and was incorporated into many social justice agendas, solidarity with Palestine must likewise be taken up by organizations and movements involved in progressive causes all over the world.”
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