Long time political and social justice activist Angela Y. Davis, now a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, will speak about the human rights and economic impacts of America's growing prison-industrial complex at a free lecture at 8 p.m. on Monday, April 29 at The Cooperage at Sonoma State University.
Currently a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at UCSC, Davis gained her international reputation in the early 1970s, when she was tried for conspiracy and imprisoned, and later fully acquitted, after being implicated in a shootout in front of a California courthouse.
Davis resumed teaching at San Francisco State University after the fiasco, and has subsequently lectured in all 50 US states, as well as internationally throughout Europe, Africa, the Carribean, Russia and the Pacific.
Currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center, Davis now focuses on exposing racism that is endemic to the US prison system (which she calls the Punishment Industry), and exploring new ways to de-construct oppression and race hatred.
Her revolutionary politics and academic writings provide a link from 1960s groups like the Black Panthers to contemporary social activism.
Davis is seen by supporters as a revitalising force in New Left politics and individual life-affirming cultural studies, particularly blues and hip-hop music.
Her acclaimed books exploring the institutionalisation of racial politics include If They Come In The Morning (1971), Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race & Class (1981), Women, Race and Politics (1989), Blues Legacies & Black Feminism (1999) and The Angela Y Davis Reader (1999).
This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Social Sciences, the American Multicultural Center, the InterCultural Center, and is the first lecture in the Bob Karlsrud Lecture Series.
