Angela Davis spoke to a standing room only crowd at Laney College last night. She was the keynote speaker at Celebrating Alan Blueford & Resisting Police Brutality, organized by the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition and the Laney College Black Student Union. Ms. Davis’ first statement, after an introduction paying homage to Alan Blueford’s short life, was
“As a Long Time Resident of Oakland I Feel Personally Responsible for Having Allowed The Police of This City to Continue Their Practices of Racist Violence…”
One of the last times Angela Davis spoke in Oakland was a little more than a year ago, November 2nd, 2011, addressing thousands at 14th & Broadway in the early hours of Occupy Oakland’s General Strike. There, she used the Peoples’ Mic to say
We announce to the City of Oakland that we do not consent to police violence!
Seven months ago Alan Blueford became yet another victim of this same police violence. The Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition has taken to heart Angela Davis’ roclamation to the City of Oakland, ambitiously attempting to help build a national movement. They invited her to lend her voice to this cause last night, a cause near to her heart and a cause which has if anything become more, not less, pressing as police across the country continue to gun down young men of color and the mentally ill.
Listen to her entire talk, with introduction by Occupy Oakland’s own Mollie Costello.
Excerpts:
“I love this city… I want to know why we haven’t done more to end the terrible, racist police violence.
“Oakland of course is infamous all over the world for the way the police in this city brutalize the people they are supposed to serve. The name of Oscar Grant continues to resonate all over the country and all over the world and you remember when police attacked Occupy activists last year the eyes of the world were focused on Oakland.
“But Oakland is also known for the way we stand up and resist… The most radical labor movement in the country, as the real Clarence Thomas pointed out…
“I do believe we need gun control in this country, but controlling gun violence will also have to mean taking guns out of the hands of the police… and especially from ICE…
“We know that Black and Latino youth are subject to a vicious process of criminalization… ideological and psychological… Black and Latino youth have been so consistently represented as criminals that the mere sight of young men who are Black or Latino can strike fear into people’s hearts…
“What happened after George Zimmerman was arrested? Everything quieted down… It’s really important to make these people individually accountable for their acts… but racist violence cannot be eliminated simply by only addressing the individual perpetrators…
“If there’s one thing we know, prisons have not solved any problems. If this is the country that has the largest number of guns in the world it’s also the country that has the largest number of people incarerated anywhere in the world.
“We have been dealing with this issue of law enforcement killing for ever and ever… we have to ask ourselves, how are we going to root out the racism from these institutions like the Oakland Police Department that continue to erupt over and over…
“We should acknowledge that women constitute the fastest growing sector of the imprisoned population…
“Palestine is the largest open-air prison in the world…
“What are we doing here? We are resisting. We are standing up. We are fighting back because want a future better than the present… I don’t think we should be afraid to imagine the most radical possible futures… A future without the racist police violence…
“Justice For Alan Blueford!”
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