El pueblo armado jamas sera aplastado!
________________________________ From: Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sunday, November 6, 2011 11:56 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Angela Davis on violence
This is from a new movie of old tapes from Swedish tv:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/24/the_black_power_mixtape_danny_glover
And certainly, for them to be able to capture this, be able to the Swedes be able to capture it, and looking from the outside in, was a critical part of this. They were able to see this from the outside, and asked very sometimes very innocent questions. That’s certainly that interview that response by Angela to violence was extraordinary.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to that clip.
SWEDISH TV: Yeah, but the question is, how do you get there? Do you get there by confrontation, violence?
ANGELA DAVIS: Oh, was that the question you were asking?
SWEDISH TV: Yeah.
ANGELA DAVIS: You ask me, you know, whether I approve of violence I mean, that just doesn’t make any sense at all whether I approve of guns. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by bombs, bombs that were planted by racists. I remember from the time I was very small, I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street, our house shaking. I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times because of the fact that, at any moment, someone we might expect to be attacked. The man who was at that time in complete control of the city government his name was Bull Connor would often get on the radio and make statements like "N-words have moved into a white neighborhood; we better expect some bloodshed tonight." And sure enough, there would be bloodshed.
After the four young girls who were who lived very one of them lived next door to me. I was very good friends with the sister of another one. My sister was very good friends with all three of them. My mother taught one of them in her class. My mother in fact, when the bombing occurred, one of the mothers of one of the young girls called my mother and said, "Can you take me down to the church to pick up Carole? You know, we heard about the bombing, and I don’t have my car." And they went down, and what did they find? They found limbs and heads strewn all over the place. And then, after that, in my neighborhood, all the men organized themselves into an armed patrol. They had to take their guns and patrol our community every night, because they did not want that to happen again. I mean, that’s why when someone asks me about violence, I just I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has
absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Angela Davis back, oh, 40 years ago in tape that was found in the basement of Swedish public television that has just been made into a remarkable film called Black Power Mixtape. In fact, her face, with her famous afro, is the poster of
DANNY GLOVER: Poster for the film, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Black Power Mixtape. Talk about this point that she has raised, about how you raise the issue of violence, Danny Glover.
DANNY GLOVER: Well, it’s very interesting, because let’s just go back just to step back and think about all these young students the Bob Moseses, you know, the Fannie Lou Hamers, you know, the Diane Nashes and Stokely Carmichaels and all these. All these people had gone through extreme periods of violence in the South, from the integration of lunch counters to the burning and bombing of buses in the Freedom Rides, and even as they organized, had been beaten, jailed. I mean, it was not it’s not uncommon and when we look at the murder of the three civil rights workers, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney they’re all not uncommon to face extraordinary, extreme terrorism and violence, and to be able to kind of now, with that, as young people, assume another kind of position and understand violence in a different kind of way and reflect on that violence in a different kind of way.
AMY GOODMAN: It was terrorism.
DANNY GLOVER: It was terrorist. It was terrorism. I went and talked with Bob Moses, and he said, "When you talk about terrorism, I experienced that. About the people that I work with in the South, trying to register them to vote, they experience terrorism on a daily basis, historic terrorism." So, when we kind of when we think about that violence, that Angela so brilliantly points it out, you know, that those girls who died in that church were friends of hers, friends of her sisters, lived next door to her. Her mother was a teacher, one of their teachers and everything else.
AMY GOODMAN: It is amazing to think Angela Davis, yes, friends of the little girls in a Birmingham church.
DANNY GLOVER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Condoleezza Rice, Denise McNair, one of the four children, she was friends.
DANNY GLOVER: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: Condoleezza Rice and Angela Davis coming from that same environment.
DANNY GLOVER: Yeah, same environment. Then there’s Connie Rice.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
DANNY GLOVER: Connie Rice in L.A. came from that same environment, one of the great civil rights lawyers in the country, too. You know, so, yeah, it’s but that moment, though, how she characterizes violence and understanding violence - and think about that violence now in relationship to what has happened in Tucson. You know, even though we know that this young man is just deranged in some way, there’s the side that drove him to that act, with the kind of vitriol, the kind of nasty, just villainous violence that is happening. The violence that happened even during, you know, town hall meetings in -
AMY GOODMAN: New Hampshire.
DANNY GLOVER: during the healthcare crisis, the healthcare debate and everything, all this kind of violence. Then you take, again, that, the war, the wars King talks about that, how that violence that violence comes home. That violence comes home to haunt us.
AMY GOODMAN: Actor Danny Glover is the co-producer of the film that has premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival called The Black Power Mixtape. We’ll come back to our conversation with him. We also speak with him about Haiti. Stay with us.
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