Angela Davis, May 5, 2011: The Future of Democracy.

<-- printable flyer!!! make lots!!!

ANGELA DAVIS
COMING TO TEMPE ASU!!!

NEEB HALL

THURSDAY, May 5, 2011

5pm

Activist Angela Davis poses question: Education or incarceration?

ASU News April 18, 2011

Noted scholar, activist and author Angela Y. Davis, who once spent 18 months in jail herself in the early 1970s, will discuss her ideas about incarceration during a free lecture at 5 p.m., May 5, at Neeb Hall, Arizona State University.

Davis’ talk is titled “Education or Incarceration? The Future of Democracy.” It will be followed by a question-answer session moderated by Gregory Sale, whose exhibition "It's not just black and white" is currently on view at the ASU Art Museum. There will be a reception following the lecture at the ASU Art Museum, and Davis will sign copies of her newest book, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”

Davis gained fame – and notoriety – in the late 1960s and early ‘70s when she was involved in the black power politics of that era. She joined the Communist Party when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. She was active with SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the Black Panthers. She was arrested as a suspected conspirator in the abortive attempt to free George Jackson from a courtroom in Marin County, Calif., and was eventually acquitted of all charges.

Since then, Davis has taught at universities such as UCLA, Vassar and Stanford, and is a professor emerita of history of consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, and professor of feminist studies.

Davis also has been involved in the nation’s quest for social justice. She has written eight books, and her most recent theme 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.

She currently works with Justice Now, which provides legal assistance to women in prison, and engages in advocacy for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant strategy for addressing social problems. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, a similar organization based in Queensland, Australia.

"In thinking about the possible obsolescence of the prison," Davis writes, "we should ask how it is that so many people could end up in prison without major debates regarding the efficacy of incarceration."

Davis argues that “the very future of democracy depends on our ability to develop radical theories and practices that make it possible to plan and fight for a world beyond the prison industrial complex.”

The lecture is sponsored by Project Humanities in conjunction with the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Trailer from Quad Productions "Mountains that Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama

Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: Well-behaved women seldom make history.

This is an awesome documentary about legendary prison abolitionists compiled by two dynamic women over the course of a decade. Here is a marvelous review by the SF Bay View. Catch it if you can...

-------------------------------------------------

"Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama--
A Conversation on Life, Struggles and Liberation"

directed and produced by ASU professors Crystal Griffith and Helen Quan.

Wednesday, January 20, 5 p.m.

Sands Classroom Building, Kiva Lecture Hall, ASU West Campus

The FREE screening at 5 p.m. will be preceded by a reception at 4:30.

A question-and-answer session with the filmmakers will follow the screening.

Event contact information:

westevents@asu.edu

http://asu.edu/mlk/

(602) 543-5300

Mountains That Take Wing...

AZ Premiere of the film Mountains That Take Wing: 

Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama -

A Conversation on Life, Struggles, & Liberation.

TONIGHT - Friday, February 26th from 5:30-9PM (refreshments at 5:30 & video at 6. Q&A follows)

ASU Tempe Campus – Neeb Hall (http://www.asu.edu/tour/tempe/neeb.html)

Sponsored by Local to Global Justice (www.localtoglobal.org) and The School of Social Transformation (at ASU)

We will be collecting donations at the event for survivors of the Haiti Earthquake.

-----------------

ABOUT THE MOVIE:

Features conversations that span 13 years between two formidable women whose lives and political work remain at the epicenter of the most important civil rights struggles in the US. Through the intimacy and depth of conversations, we learn about Davis, an internationally renowned scholar-activist and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee's shared experiences as political prisoners and their profound passion for justice. On subjects ranging from the vital but largely erased role of women in social movements of the 20th century, community empowerment, to the prison industrial complex, war and the cultural arts, Davis' and Kochiyama's comments offer critical lessons for understanding our nation's most important social movements and tremendous hope for its youth and the future.

---------

ABOUT THE FILM MAKERS:

H. L. T. Quan (Ph.D. University of California-Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor and an Affiliate Faculty in African/African American Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies a ASU. Her research centers on race, gender and economic and political thought. She is currently writing a book about savage developmentalism and its tendentious propensity to secure order and capitalist expansion. This study investigates foreign policy conducts by Japan in military Brazil, the United States in occupied Iraq, and China in Sudan amidst humanitarian disasters. She is also working on a collaborative project on the historical and political development of Black capitalism in the United States, a 17-city comparison.

Professor Quan is also a co-founder and member of QUAD Productions, a not for profit production company that produces media for progressive community organizations and activists. She and C. A. Griffith (Associate Professor, School of Theatre & Film) are co-directors and co-producers of the "Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama - A Conversation on Life, Struggles & Liberation" and "América's Home" (working title).

-----------

C.A. (Crystal) Griffith
Associate Professor, School of Theater and Film, ASU.
Professor Griffith was raised in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Stanford University (B.A.) and University of California, Santa Barbara (M.F.A). Ms. Griffith's credits include Juice (1992), award-winning PBS and BBC documentaries such as A Litany For Survival: The Life & Work of Audre Lorde (cinematographer), Branford Marsalis: The Music Tells You (camera operator), Depeche Mode 101, Eyes on the Prize I & II , and music videos including Tracy Chapman, Public Enemy, and The Rolling Stones. She was awarded a 2004 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Media Arts, the Panavision/Kodak University Outreach Program Grant and the Vision in Color Award of the New England Film/Video Festival.

Ms. Griffith also received a grant from Digital Media's Avid Feature Film Camp for her film, Del Otro Lado (The Other Side). Shot on location in Mexico City and screened extensively at U.S. and international film festivals, Griffith directed, co-edited and co-produced this Spanish language, independent feature in 1999.

With H.L.T. Quan, she is co-directing "Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama - A Conversation on Life, Struggles & Liberation", a documentary on women of color cultural workers. C.A. Griffith's publications appear in Filming Difference (forthcoming), Black Feminist Cultural Criticism: Classic Readings, Black Women Film and Video Artists , Herotica 4, The Wild Good, the journals Meridians, Signs and Calyx. Ms. Griffith joins Arizona State University 's new Film Program from Columbia College Chicago (2000-06), Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1997-00).

----------------

 Department of Justice: Investigate Mumia's conviction.

www.freemumia.com