“As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.”

– Angela Davis

Angela Davis, activist, educator, and scholar, was born on January 26, 1944, in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama. The area received that name because so many African American homes in this middle class neighborhood had been bombed over the years by the Ku Klux Klan.

Her father, Frank Davis, was a service station owner and her mother, Sallye Davis, was an elementary school teacher. Davis’s mother was also active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), when it was dangerous to be openly associated with the organization because of its civil rights activities.

As a teenager Davis moved to New York City with her mother, who was pursuing a master’s degree at New York University.

In 1961 Davis enrolled in Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. While at Brandeis, Davis also studied abroad for a year in France and returned to the U.S. to complete her studies, joining Phi Beta Kappa and earning her B.A. (magna cum laude) in 1965. Even before her graduation, Davis, so moved by the deaths of the four girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in her hometown in 1963, that she decided to join the civil rights movement.

By 1967, however, Davis was influenced by Black Power advocates and joined the SNCC and then the Black Panther Party. She also continued her education, earning an M.A. from the University of California at San Diego in 1968. Davis moved further to the left in the same year when she became a member of the American Communist Party.

In 1969, Angela Davis was hired by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as an assistant professor of philosophy, but her involvement in the Communist Party led to her dismissal. During the early 1970s, she also became active in the movement to improve prison conditions for inmates. That work led to her campaign to release the “Soledad (Prison) Brothers.” The Soledad Brothers were two African American prisoners and Black Panther Party members, George Jackson and W. L. Nolen, who were incarcerated in the late 1960s.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of George Jackson, attempted to free prisoners who were on trial in the Marin County Courthouse. During this failed attempt, Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and three others, including Jonathan Jackson, were killed. Although Davis did not participate in the actual break-out attempt, she became a suspect when it was discovered that the guns used by Jackson were registered in her name. Davis fled to avoid arrest and was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list. Law enforcement captured her several months later in New York. During her high profile trial in 1972, Davis was acquitted on all charges.

Angela Davis has been an activist and writer promoting women's rights and racial justice while pursuing her career as a philosopher and teacher at the University of Santa Cruz and San Francisco University. She achieved tenure at the University of California at Santa Cruz despite the fact that former Governor Ronald Reagan swore she would never teach again in the University of California system.

An author of eight books, a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.

“I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.”

– Angela Davis

Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:

The State and Revolution :flag-su:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

The Conquest of Bread :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the ChapoChat twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:

!agitprop@hexbear.net :allende-rhetoric:

!paganism@hexbear.net :anarchist-occult:

!neurodiverse@hexbear.net :Care-Comrade:

:hammer-sickle: Question of the Day :huey-wut:

Who is your Favorite African-American Socialist?

(we really are lacking emotes about African-American socialists)

Please remember to :vote: in this important Announcement

  • LangdonAlger [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    for posterity

    Though I have an account here, I’m using a throwaway to protect myself, I hope you’ll all be able to respect that.

    I’ve been wrestling with coming forward with my story for a few weeks, afraid of the repercussions I could face in our shared social circle and of the damage I could do to his family. The last thing I want is to be a home wrecker but I feel if I don’t speak my truth, he could do this to other girls.

    I met Beatnik on discord about 2 years ago. We shared some common interests (politics, tech, anime, specialty beers, good steaks and we live in the same state) so we quickly formed a close friendship. We would talk for hours every night about anything and everything. He even sent me a $200 pack of Omaha steaks on my birthday.

    I started out as a democratic socialist but he introduced me to Lenin and Stalin and quickly converted me to communism by sending me a mountain of books to read. He truly opened my eyes to the horrors of imperialism, Sinophobia and rampant American expansionism.

    Almost every weekend we’d pick an anime to watch together on skype after his wife went to sleep. Our relationship was completely platonic for more than a year, without even a hint of sexuality.

    That all changed one Saturday night in November 2020. I was tucked into my bed and he was on his couch. We were about half way through season 1 of How To Not Summon a Demon Lord, and without warning he took out his penis and started playing with it.

    I didn’t notice at first because I was fixated on the anime, but he started moaning and I looked at his cam and saw what he was doing. I kind of just froze. I didn’t know what to say. He ejaculated on himself and awkwardly disappeared off of the camera for about 10 minutes.

    When he came back I had regained my composure and just said “what the fuck? Your wife is asleep upstairs, how could you do that?” He profusely apologized and said he couldn’t help it because I looked so adorable in my pink pjs. I was really upset and told him I needed to go.

    I didn’t talk to him for several weeks after this incident but he kept texting me begging for forgiveness and promising it wouldn’t happen again. I just ghosted him because I was too traumatized to deal with it. He sent me several gifts from Amazon with notes attached, again apologizing for what he did. I avoided going on social media completely because I didn’t want to deal with it.

    I gave him my home address months before so he could send me communism books. I should note I live with my parents and I was 15 at this time (I’m 16 now).

    Well, needless to say, giving him my address was a HUUUGE mistake. He showed up at my door with flowers. I feel like he must have staked the house out in his car for a while, because he knocked on the door right after my parents left to go grocery shopping. I was horrified seeing him standing there in my doorway. I told him to leave but he said he just wanted a few minutes of my time to explain himself and then he’d never bother me again.

    I know it was stupid, but I was so scared he’d cause a scene in front of my parents when they got back from Wholefoods, so I let him in. He said he had been seeing a therapist on betterhelp and the therapist advised him to make amends with me and mend the friendship. He explained that he suspected his wife (who is also a socialist) had been cheating on him and he felt isolated and depressed because of it and had acted improperly with me due to his depression. He said he had just needed to release his sorrow and masturbating in front of a friend was the only way he knew how because he was sexually abused as a child. He cried and told me how unhappy he was in his marriage.

    I felt sorta bad for him and agreed to forgive him if he’d leave before my parents came home. He said he needed me to hug him so he’d know I really forgave him. I agreed to let him hug me… he eventually calmed down and stopped crying but when I tried to break away from the hug, he would hold me tighter and the tears would start again. After a while I was just like “dude, my parents are gonna walk in and freak”. He finally agreed to leave.

    So that night I went back on social media and read all his messages, and then he called me on skype. He joked about Trump’s latest antics and it felt kinda like old times. A few weeks passed and it was like the incident had never happened, we were watching anime and chatting on discord and our friendship was stronger than ever.

    Then I started dating a guy from my school. I made the mistake of telling him about it and he just lost it. He was yelling at me, calling me a dirty whore, saying I betrayed him, etc.

    It took me completely by surprise… After he stopped yelling, I told him very firmly that I couldn’t be his friend any more and asked him not to contact me again. He just said fuck you and ended the call.

    A week later he showed up at my house again. This time my grandmother was home and he told her he’s one of my teachers and needed to talk to me. I was really creeped out but didn’t want my grandmother to worry so I went outside to talk to him. He said he wanted to meet my bf and see if he was really good enough for me. I said no but he kept insisting. I told him if he didn’t leave I’d call the cops. He got angry and called me a reactionary and a cop fucker. I tried to turn around to go back into the house, but he grabbed my arm and tried to make me get into his car. He was hurting me so I screamed and my grandmother came out and I had to tell her he was stalking me. My grandmother called the cops on her cell and my neighbor came out of his house and told him to leave, so he got scared and left in his car.

    That night he again sent me a flood of messages apologizing, so I deleted my social media and blocked him on skype.

    Well, that’s my story. I’m not going to dox him or anything, but I feel like the women on this site should know what happened to me and be cautious around this guy. Yesterday I found out he harassed another girl from the discord by sending her photos of his junk and asking her for nudes in return (she’s 14), and her sharing her story with me made me feel brave enough to tell mine.

    https://hexbear.net/post/86086