By Annette Walker

“How do we construct a radical framework for social justice?"
This was the query posed by longtime civil rights and prison reform activist Angela Davis during a recent public lecture at Regis University.
"We should not assume that old models of struggle will work in our contemporary world," she told the audience of several hundred people.
An engaged scholar with a 40-year legacy combining activism with college teaching and writing, Davis is especially qualified to assess old and new forms of struggle. Hired at age 24 as a philosophy professor at the University of California's Los Angeles campus (UCLA), she was one of the most popular faculty members. Yet, she was soon fired by then-Governor Ronald Reagan and the California Board of Regents for her political activism and membership in the Communist Party U.S.A. She worked on campaigns to free political prisoners, especially those in the Black Panther Party. In 1970, she went underground after the FBI placed her on its Ten Most Wanted List on charges related to a fatal courtroom shooting. She was incarcerated for 16 months awaiting trial, and an international "Free Angela" campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.
A professor in the Department of Consciousness and Philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz for the past 15 years, Davis exudes energy, a positive spirit, an aura of happiness and a love of humanity.
"Unfortunately, for many people the word 'radical' means crazy," she pointed out. "Radical means 'root,’ and we must construct a framework that gets to the root of the problems we're addressing today."
Davis said although she has always been cautious about elected politicians, she finds the current presidential campaign interesting.
"I have been watching the debates and monitoring the campaign," she said.
"There is a major dysfunction between the mass enthusiasm for the campaign and what the candidates are saying," she continued. "The public has a thirst for justice, but the candidates seem fearful to speak out."
"The campaign is interesting, but I am hoping to hear some radical strategies for the problems that we are addressing today. For example, I'd like to hear the Democratic candidates discuss the impact of global capitalism."
Davis pointed out that both Clinton and Obama are caught in contradictory positions regarding strategies to resolve immigration issues.
"Both voted to complete the 700-mile fence along the southern border. What does it tell us when neither candidate will tell us why the southern border must be secured, but not the Canadian border?" she queried. "And now both have switched to the idea of electronic surveillance."
For Davis, this issue is much more complex.
"Neither Clinton nor Obama has spoken out about the human devastation caused by the 'maquiladoras,’” she pointed out. “Maquiladoras are the factories along the U.S.-Mexico border that import materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly or manufacturing, and then re-export the assembled product to the originating country. Thousands of U.S. manufacturers have closed their factories here and relocated across the Mexican border.”
There are over one million Mexicans working in over 3,000 maquiladora assembly plants in northern Mexico. Criticism of this industry abounds, the main contention being the factories constitute sweatshops, which exploit primarily young women workers who labor for as little as 50 cents an hour, for up to 10 hours a day, and sometimes six days a week. Labor unions are not allowed, and workers live in nearby shantytowns that lack electricity and water.
The maquiladora phenomenon has been facilitated by NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Some observers contend that the combination of NAFTA and maquiladoras account for the massive surge in Mexican and Central American immigration into the United States over the past 20 years. Davis believes these issues have received minimal attention in the campaign.
Davis addressed the twin issues of activism and scholarship and said both need radical modes of thought and work.
"Academics should not assume that no-academics cannot think legitimately about serious issues. We have to put the knowledge we acquire to good use to make a difference for our communities and our world,” she said. "Activists should understand that they don't have to drop everything and their attitude should not be that they cannot do anything else in order to be effective.”
She faulted extreme individualism and an overemphasis on money as major challenges in the 21st Century.
"Many people believe that their potential and that of others depends upon making a lot of money. And we see ourselves in individual terms, and do not focus upon how we can work collectively to improve our future,” she said.
Regarding the issue of diversity, Davis cautioned that diversity can result in colonization and discord.
“Diversity must address social justice. Otherwise, we will have African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans who are more conservative than the whites that we claim we're diversifying," she explained.
Davis pondered two questions: Has change occurred, and how do we know that change is possible now? She used her hometown of Birmingham, Ala. as an example of the occurrence of change, but also as one that has serious new challenges for which the political establishment has no solutions.
"In Birmingham and all over the South, there are Black mayors, city councilpersons, state legislators and even congressional representatives. However, there is more poverty in Birmingham now than when I was growing up," she stated. "Why is there more poverty now? During the Civil Rights struggle, we could not imagine the phenomenon of de-industrialization, which has affected many parts of the United States. We thought that desegregating was the answer to all our problems.”
"Did we accomplish something then? Yes, we have to acknowledge it. We can say that things have changed, but there are new problems that we could not envision, such as global poverty and the way it affects us now. During this nation's opposition to the Vietnam War, we could not envision the larger war machine that we have now,” she said.
Davis also said that during that 1960s and 1970s people of this country would never have believed the United States would have the highest incarceration rate in the world. She has spent over 40 years working on issues related to the criminal justice system, and has a powerful critique of the prison industrial complex. She has lectured and written widely about this topic.
According to Davis, the United States has 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Since 1980, over 1,000 new prisons and jails have been constructed, and overcrowding is still a serious issue. Today, there are 12 times as many women prisoners as in 1980, 70 percent of whom are considered nonviolent. Davis is promoting 'decarceration’ – the rehabilitation and return to society for prisoners who are considered nonviolent.
As guest editor of a special 1998 edition of ColorLines, a California-based magazine, Davis wrote the United States spends more on prisons and incarcerates more people than any other industrialized country in the world. More than five million people are in prison, on parole or probation, or incarcerated in INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) detention centers. Between 1971 and 1992, public spending on prisons jumped from $2.3 billion to $31.2 billion. Altogether, corrections spending is growing at a faster rate than Medicaid, higher education and Aid To Families with Dependent Children.
Davis contends the need for more prisons is closely related to the "War on Drugs," which she said has made poor people, people of color, women, youth, and undocumented immigrants the primary targets of the prison industrial complex.
In 1995, 47 percent of state and federal inmates were Black, the largest group behind bars. Latinos are the fastest growing group behind bars. Between 1985 and 1995, Latinos jumped from 10 percent of all state and federal inmates to 18 percent.
In 1995, 45 percent of state prison inmates were unemployed at the time of their arrest. The rest reported an income of less than $10,000. In 1970, 5,600 women were in federal and state prisons. By 1996, there were 75,000 -- 60 percent of whom were Black and Latina.
Returning to the issue of the 2008 presidential campaign, Davis emphasized that the public should not see the election as a race/gender issue. She reminded the audience that the United States has many white women and African Americans who are CEO's, a Black Secretary of State, many white women Cabinet officials, etc.
"What we need now is social justice, here and abroad,” she concluded.

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