CORNEL WEST
Angela Davis is one of the few great long-distance intellectual freedom fighters in the world. From the revolutionary mass movements of the 1960s to the insurgent social motion in our day, Angela Davis has remained steadfast in her focus on the wretched of the Earth. In stark contrast to most leftists in the academy, her structural analysis and courageous praxis have come at a tremendous cost in her life and for her well-being. As a new assistant professor of philosophy, she was demonized by Governor Ronald Reagan in California. The University of California Board of Regents stripped her of her academic position owing to her membership in the Communist Party. She was put at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted list, on the run from the police forces of the US Empire, and incarcerated after her capture. Her grace and dignity during a historic court trial electrified the world. And her determination to remain true to her revolutionary vocation—in the intense international spotlight—has been an inspiration.
After the systematic state execution or incarceration of Black warriors and government incorporation of Black professionals, Angela Davis still stands tall with intellectual power and moral fervor. During the thirty-year ice age of neoliberal rule, Angela Davis remained on fire for the freedom of the poor and working people. Her scholarship on women, workers, and people of color helped keep alive a radical vision, analysis, and praxis during the Reagan and Bush years. Her pioneering intellectual and political work on the boomtown growth of the prison system helped set the foundations for the age of Ferguson. And her ubiquitous lecturing, marvelous teaching, and courageous solidarity in every corner of the globe keep candles of hope burning in the cold and chilling days of neoliberal hegemony. She remains—after more than fifty years of struggle, suffering, and service—the most recognizable face of the left in the US Empire.
In this latest text of her magisterial corpus, Angela Davis puts forward her brilliant analyses and resilient witness here and abroad. In a clear and concise manner, she embodies and enacts “intersectionality”—a structural intellectual and political response to the dynamics of violence, white supremacy, patriarchy, state power, capitalist markets, and imperial policies.
On December 3, 2014, I was blessed to stand alongside my dear sister and comrade Angela Davis at the Oxford Union Debate in memory of the fiftieth anniversary of the great Malcolm X’s presence at the Oxford Union. It was a grand event—with Angela bringing back the spirit of Malcolm in a magnificent way. This same spirit infuses this book and beckons us to partake of its long-standing joys of serving the people!