Actor and activist Yara Shahidi was born in 2000, three decades after Angela Davis started for radical activism exercise their platform as a professor at UCLA. But their generation gap has not prevented to be from friends or join efforts to dismantle white supremacy. The couple Zoom reconvened to discuss, regardless of ideology the global nature of their struggle and the value of the vote. Yara Shahidi: Dr. Davis, I know it’s been almost a year since our last meeting, and so came to light much right now. Many people talk about how unprecedented what they go through, when in fact it has generations of previous set. How important it is to open up the discussion to include many generations? Angela Davis: It seems that this is the time that we are striving to achieve for many decades. It is an exciting time and if boom like this happen, they happen almost accidentally. But if we have to do organizing work over the decades, we can seize the moment. But at the same time, I think we have to formulate questions and problems they face so going to do in the immediate aftermath of slavery. We should have to do what it is today began 150 years ago. Of course, or even the impact of racism on the structures and institutions in our society will require a lot of work will begin to reduce to a minimum to eliminate: intellectual work, trade union activists. The focus was largely people of color. I’m happy. But we must also realize how important it is to understand racism against indigenous peoples, and wonder what you could product the alliance of colonialism and slavery, violence racist state. So that when we look at all the complex ways in which the anti-black racism enters this country should look to express the violence of anti-state and anti-indigenous Latinx. YS: It makes me think back to the occasion in the underground museum [when they meet for the first time], and how impact was as a high school student to me our struggles here in our communities has a globalist perspective on global Connect. In this moment is another moment in the crisis by generations of colonialism and imperialism, we are witnessing a visible world. I wonder when faced with something that seems like a lot of problems as we go to fight all of them? There is a point of view that we can help keep that allows us to simultaneously removal systems of white supremacy that happen globally? AD: Since I was still young, the first period of my activism, I was convinced that our work must be global. This realization came to me when I was in Paris for the first time. I was at school, and I went in search of a place without racism France: I thought I’d find what I found instead the Algerian revolution, freedom, equality, fraternity ‘.. I joined demonstrations against the French government to support their release. In this country, it’s hard to get people to think about what happens in Brazil, or Africa or the Middle East, due to focus to a US-centric was encouraged. But I think this crisis COVID-19 and the fact that almost all our public interactions happening practically allows to realize how easy it is to be connected to what happens in other places before him. I think we can learn to listen to people very involved in other struggles. YS: I’m going back to the words of James Baldwin, when he talked about how one of the largest white supremacist sins, took our comprehensive language and our ability to communicate with each other, making it difficult to remove these common actively evil and racism. I think what you said about the virtual nature is also something that my generation has tried to use the best of their ability. It feels like me and some of my colleagues have great benefits, to be each other on social media in direct connection, no matter where we are. At the same time, social media also has a tendency to allow things to disappear like the pop-up trends and then fade. One thing I’m trying to understand is how we can get consistent contact points and keep talking. AD: Social media is very important. Unlike you, my formative years were not spent with these new technologies. My experience as an organizer includes knocking the doors to people. I’ll never forget when H. Rap Brown was in prison, we have for his bail raised from door to door in Los Angeles goes, especially in the center-south, people asking for money to donate $100,000! That sounds prehistoric here. But it is always important to try to promote this type of contact. For things with my own eyes what is going on in occupied Palestine, after the Palestinians were the first to express solidarity with them, I know how important it was in 2014 again happens Ferguson, for the participation of the Palestinian people move BLM visit. I think it is so important to use this technology for use in contrast with the technology allows us to. As a friend of mine many years ago, said the number of people it properly is not necessarily a guide to the organizational work that you did. YS: I can at every photo you see’ve written and see how many people have shared. It then creates a hierarchy of what we think makes an impact rather than what is actually the case. One question I had tangentially: As part of the world of social media, how to develop a political opinion often. You need to develop a guide for young people now have an opinion on how to develop a non-reactionary politics? AD: As a person involved in training for the vast majority of my life, so it is important not to confuse information with knowledge. In this day and age, we all walk around with these phones that we have access to a wealth of information. But this does not mean that as a consequence we are educated. Education is the ability to learn how to formulate questions-what we call critical thinking. Learn to ask questions not only of the most complicated issues, but about the seemingly simple questions, so important. This is one of the reasons why I have the trans movement is so important. If you learn to do as the validity of the binary concept of the kind at issue, one is to demand something more normal context of life of the people was persistent. The ideology of work happens in these rooms apparently normal. This is also why the campaign abolition police were so important. Prison and received in a police state are with us forever. So we begin questions to ask as we question the discourse damage to replicate without violence: How can we create security for not resort to the same means of violence which is responsible for us are uncertain. YS: “the simplest question to ask,” I like the phrase This summer, I would through a canonical African philosophy, and what is revealed to me this Euro-centered or US-centric standards that have been set. For readers who are steeped in the Western media, there are other texts that we are going to undermine those standards should turn? AD: I have read this book, now that on my desk: Françoise Vergès’ A decolonial feminism. By the way, I know you’re passionate feminism. I am interested in how passion is expressed in the work of social justice have to do recently. YS: First came my interest, “How can I put into question my identity?” I get so long that the primary prism, was seen by most things a person brown and black in the world through her. It ‘was my identity to be in my experience and the layer on the order of an honest ongoing process. How it looks like a strong enough movement to be structured to maintain many of our truth in a while ‘the lack of a capital reduction, the presentation is often linked as a woman still active? How it has affected the traditional heteronormative the rest of our trajectory? While I agree to do the work, what it means to know that the solutions we have presented on the ballot is not perfect? How do I vote engages contact in the course of this larger movement in equity in these rooms? AD: So, how do you do? YS: The conclusion I have reached is that it is not the only means of civic engagement. And ‘active even need continued throughout the year to engage in what way -Possible and months of protests Nuance helped this interview. It can no longer be binary whether to vote or not, is the difference between a just society and not. AD: or hire must be a perfect candidate for us to participate in the electoral process. I was heavily criticized when I suggested during the last election that we needed in the round, even if the candidate was not what we wanted. There was a difference between a candidate who would allow our movements to flourish, which is also when it was elected, office or we are faced with the alternative would include experienced his extremely critical these candidates. I am someone who has not been stimulated in the past about the electoral arena. I was just excited to the extent I realized how important the right to vote to get it was because I was, not being able to record in my home state of Alabama, when I first attempt. I always tend to vote other parties: Communitist party, the Peace and Freedom Party. Well, I hope I have had no less radical in my structure, but I think that you vote for our ability to do the work that will bring changes. Individuals do not change history and create transformative moments. Any major change in this country was the result of a kind of collective imagination. So we must ask, this job allows this kind of an arena or down closed? In a sense, if we want, we vote either for us or against us. YS: I like the concept of imagination. One of the white supremacist strategies is to remove black imaginary potential. We are at a moment in time of ‘universe in which, at the time, a world based not relying on a precedent, or in response to the systems that have been set, but in reality independent, based on these values of equity. So I see this election as an opportunity to reclaim our space for the imagination. We know that the people who vote for will not be perfect, but we are actively criticizing our time and dedicate forward. We know at least that open white supremacy are not sanctioned. Not to say that will not be allowed. It can only accommodate us. Moderate Andrew R. Chow image copyright of Tania Davis-Contrasto / Redux from; Shahidi: Courtesy Yara Shahidi
Angela Davis Talk Yara Shahidi, ‘Let’s now what I should have started 150 years ago’
