Angela Davis on Abolition, Capitalism, and the Politics of Coming Out
Angela Davis isn't taking any credit for. "I don't really consider myself so significant as an individual," she says on this week's episode of the LGBTQ&A podcast."I'm aware of the ways in which, especially in capitalist societies, there's a tendency to focus on the individual at the expense of allowing people to understand that history unfolds, not as a consequence of the actions and the words of great individuals, but rather as a consequence of people coming together, joining hands, and uniting with their differences—not across their differences, but with their differences—in a quest to create more freedom and more happiness in the world."While credit for this new moment can be assigned to the work of many people, including a large number of names that history will never know, it's Angela Davis who's become a symbol for some of the boldest, most essential work of our lifetime: abolition, feminism, anticapitalism, the list goes on.
From the movement that rose up around her arrest in 1970, she has appeared on murals and t-shirts, in songs by The Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
This type of international attention wasn't something she ever desired, not something she's ever become fully comfortable with, but all along, she's used that attention, shrewdly pointing it away from herself and onto her work.Angela Davis joined the LGBTQ&A podcast this week to talk about why her incarceration was crucial in shaping her political journey, why we must challenge the notion that there is only one important revolutionary struggle, and why she supported the LGBTQ+ movement long before she discovered her own queerness.You can listen to the full interview on Apple Podcasts or read excerpts below.Jeffrey Masters: You describe.
