Angela Davis lecture podcast now available
A podcast of our Annual Law Lecture with Angela Davis is now available.
On Friday 25 October 2013, we were privileged to host Angela Davis as she delivered the 2013/14 Annual Law Lecture, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities.
The lecture drew an 800-strong audience who came to hear Angela Davis talk about the freedom struggle from the emancipation proclamation 150 years ago, to the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century through to the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Birkbeck School of Law academic Dr des Eddie Bruce-Jones said of the lecture, 'Angela Davis’s law lecture, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities, was deeply humbling and inspiring. With a witty sense of humour and accessible speaking style, she led the audience along the contours of a global ethic of freedom that touched upon the role of women domestic workers in Black resistance to US apartheid, Palestinian struggles, the labour movement, prison abolition and respect for the environment. She emphasised linking not only ‘temporal continuities’ but ‘horizontal continuities’ between and among movements, critiquing closures and insisting on space for global dialogue of interconnected struggle against oppression. She summarised the ten-point programme of the Black Panther Party, correlating its commitment to freedom, full-employment, historical honesty, anti-imprisonment, anti-capitalism, universal health care and anti-imperialism with 19th century abolitionist agendas as well as current political struggles.
'Davis, during her 40-minute Q&A, reflected on anti-racist and anti-imperialist feminist movements and the necessity of intersectional viewpoints when warning that disciplinary dogma and single-issue politics must not be seen to mirror the complexity of social problems. Though she stressed that we will never be able to replicate the complexity of social reality in our analyses and discourses, she concluded, “ but that does not mean that we should not continue to try.”'
Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC made a response to the lecture and fielded a question and answer session.
If you would like to listen back to the lecture, response and Q&A session, you can download our Annual Law Lecture 2013/14 podcast.
Image courtesy Aimee V.