Timehost: Welcome to the TIME Auditorium. We're very pleased to be joined by an important figure in the history of this country. Angela Davis -- one of the leaders of the Black Panther movement in the 1960's.

Timehost: Today, she's a professor at Berkeley, and she's organizing a conference that's taking place there this weekend, called Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex, held at the University of California at Berkeley, September 25-27. We're ready for our first question...

mystikchylde asks: What are your ideas on prison reform?

Angela Davis: First of all, that's a huge question. I guess what I would say is that I believe that we should move beyond prison reform. Historically, "prison reform" has tended to strengthen the prison system. So what those of us who are organizing this Critical Resistance conference are saying is that we need to think about radical alternatives -- education instead of incarceration, free drug programs instead of the criminalization of drug use -- and we are especially concerned about the degree to which prisons have become a source of profit. Instead of calling our movement a prison reform movement, we are calling it a movement against the prison industrial complex.

Stamm444 asks: Do you ever get together with your former comrades in the Black Panthers?

Angela Davis: Well, yes, sometimes I see David Hilliard, who is an activist in the San Francisco area, and Erica Huggins, who works with non-profit organizations in the Bay Area as well. But I am now concerned about building movements that are inter-generational. I think that older people such as myself should learn how to accept leadership from younger people. The week after the conference high school students in the Bay Area are going to walk out in protest of the tradeoffs between prison and education. I look to them for activist leadership.

G_inuwine asks: How do we unite as a black race, so that we can have a voice in this country?

Angela Davis: I'm not sure that race is the most effective way to unite. As a black person who is very much opposed to racism, who has devoted most of her life to black liberation and the fight against racism, I think it's extremely important to build bridges across racial boundaries. At the same time, I am more concerned about black progressive and radicals coming together than I am about black conservatives. I certainly would not want to be involved in a community building process with the likes of Clarence Thomas, who has opposed affirmative action, for example. I think it is the issues around which we ought to unite and the political issues in particular, that are important.

Christopher_J26 asks: What can you recommend to us to keep radicalism alive at the turn of the century?

Angela Davis: We need radical movements, radical consciousness, radical campaigns. I think it's important to build bridges across racial boundaries. People of color and ethnicities need to learn how to work together. Black people need to learn how to stand up en mass against assaults on immigrants -- people from Asia and Central America whose rights are being violated. More Native Americans are imprisoned per capita than any other group. And Latinos are the fastest growing group behind bars. In 1985 Latinos constituted 10 percent of state and federal inmates. In 1995 that figure was 18%. Of course, 47 percent were black. That means that black men are 7 times more likely to be imprisoned than white men. The campaign against prisons should be a site for building coalitions and radical consciousness -- considering the extent to which prison construction and operation are becoming increasingly central to the US economy. We need to challenge the corporatization of the punishment industry -- and that is a radical stance, it seems to me.

mystikchylde asks: What have you written recently...and are you still writing poetry?

Angela Davis: Actually, I haven't written poetry for a very long time. And only one or two of my poems was published. I'm not really a poet. My last book was called "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism" published by Pantheon. And a book that's coming out in the next few weeks is called the "Angela Y. Davis Reader", published by Blackwell. I'm working on a book right now which will consist of essays about the prison industrial complex.

ntatwrk asks: Do you think gangsta rap glorifies a life that inevitably leads to prison?

Angela Davis: Well, there are a lot of forces in our society that lead us, some young people, directly into the prison system. In many instances, what the question refers to as gangsta rap does glorify prison life, but the music does not create the conditions that lead people into prison. We should look at schools for example, in communities of color that focus more on control and discipline and monitoring, than in inspiring and imparting knowledge. In many instances these schools prepare young black and Latino children to go to prison, not to go to the university. In fact, in California, since 1984, the state has only built one new university, while they've built 22 prisons since 1982. As a matter of fact, for every black male in a public university in California, there are five black males in prison. So I would not hold gangsta rap responsible for this massive structural problem, that both reflects and intensifies the racism in our society.

lucky_strike_kid asks: Where do you stand on victim's rights issues?

Angela Davis: I think victims' rights are extremely important, however I don't think we should argue that the rights of victims of crime equal the failure to acknowledge any rights where prisoners are concerned. We supposedly live in a democratic society. People who are convicted of crimes, who are sent to prison, should not lose all of their rights. The right they lose is their right to liberty. According to the UN, there are a whole range of human rights that do need to be respected. And the US does not respect many of them. In this context, I would also point out, that many people are in prison for non-violent crimes. 70% of women are in prison for non-violent crimes. However, when we talk about prisoners, we assume they are the murderers, the rapists, who have committed the worst possible of all crimes. Certainly there are people in prison who have committed horrendous crimes, but that should not justify treating the young person who is in prison who might have used drugs the same way. We have a great deal of work to do to counteract the stereotypes and to recognize the humanity of so many people -- almost two million -- who are behind bars. As a black person, I certainly could never believe that the 30 percent behind bars or who are under the control of the criminal justice system, should be treated as people who have no future -- treated to the penal repression that one finds in so many institutions.

ntatwrk asks: Do you still believe people should take up arms to defend their neighborhoods from the police?

Angela Davis: Well, that is a strange question. In 1966, when the Black Panther Party was founded, they used guns and law books symbolically. The call was not for people to use arms against the police, but to stand up against police brutality and to stand up to police violation of rights of the community. I have always argued, and I continue to try to make this argument, that it is organized movements that will bring about change. The work that I'm doing now with the Critical Resistance conference and campaign reflects my ideas about how to change the society. We need to persuade as many people to think critically about their surroundings and the politics that inform their lives.

_alphakat_ asks: What are your thoughts about affirmative action?

Angela Davis: We need affirmative action policies. We need to protect and defend affirmative action policies all over the country. Here in California, where affirmative action has been abolished, we need to try to reverse that trend. Affirmative action was initially proposed as a strategy to desegregate major institutions in this society. According to a report in the New York Times last week, the strategy has been hugely successful. I would point out that it seems that there are affirmative action policies in respect to the prisons. Why is it that 70% of prison inmates are people of color? Why is a young black person so much more likely to end up in prison than a university or college? These are certainly questions that we have to try to answer.

Stamm444 asks : How has the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union affected your ideology?

Angela Davis: I still consider myself a socialist. What we learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries has made me more insistent on democratic forms of socialism. I think that particularly now in the US with the education crisis, the housing crisis, the health crisis, the jobs crisis, we need to place discussions of socialism on our agenda.

Timehost: Angela, how likely do you think that will be, that that would happen?

Angela Davis: It very much depends on people's willingness to consider radical alternatives. It depends on our ability to rebuild some of the movements that have fallen apart as a result of the collapse of socialism. I do think it's important now to support Cuba, and even with the enormous problems that exist in the Cuban economy, we should point out that education is free in Cuba from kindergarten through the postgraduate level. People pay nothing for their apartments and housing in comparison to what we pay here -- never more than 10% of their income. Health care is free. It seems to me that even if we don't develop movements that are ideologically based, we can encourage people to think about the kinds of changes that would move us in the direction of socialism, such as a system of health care that is accessible to everyone.

seattle98103 asks: Do you think that the internet will unite radicals?

Angela Davis: The internet has been a powerful organizing site. Consider the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal -- his case has been organized largely through the internet. Much of the work that we have done on our conference has been done via e-mail and our website. But I don't think the internet has the power in and of itself to unite radicals. We can use it but we also need to use other sites in our various modes of organizing.

G_inuwine asks: Do you think that the new Black Panther Movement has been as successful as the one that you were affiliated with?

Angela Davis: As far as I know, a number of young people, particularly here in the Bay Area, have been inspired by the historical work of the Black Panther Party and have begun to address the contemporary issues in different ways. Which is the way it should be. It would be absurd to attempt to transport one historical movement from one era to another. Things are vastly different today. But I do think, and I insist on this, that young people will provide the leadership for movements that have the potential for change. And I am totally impressed by so many of the young people I see today, who are so much more sophisticated and so much more politically conscious than we were in the late 1960's. Young people who know how to talk about racism and sexism and heterosexism, and classism, and all the interconnections. Twenty five years ago, many of us were groping our way towards an understanding of gender and race, for example. And I've met young people today who take that totally for granted and are moving in exciting directions. The day before yesterday, I attended the meeting of the high school students who are planning the walkout, and I was utterly impressed, and I hope that there is some national publicity around the walkout scheduled next week, to protest the tradeoffs between prisons and schools.

mystikchylde asks: Are you finding yourself becoming more involved into "mainstream" politics?

Angela Davis: I don't think so. But on the other hand if mainstream politics moved towards the left, then suddenly we'd need to support those politics. At our conference, we will be listening to talks by Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who I suppose you could say are mainstream politicians, who have made important radical interventions. So my position is wherever one happens to be, it is possible to carve out a site of resistance.

gmmbrz asks: Do you really think your message of radicalism is still relevant in an age when the U.S. system of capitalism has so clearly triumphed?

Angela Davis: I don't happen to believe that capitalism has triumphed. If it has triumphed at all, it is certainly by default. The wealth that capitalism generates relies on the horrendous exploitation of people in Asia and Central America, and these corporations that use Third World labor have often left the US in search of cheaper labor, and have created terrible conditions here at home. Many young people who might have been able to look forward to a job now look forward to prison. And in prison, they often work for many of the corporations at wages that are the same as the Third World wages. Forty seven cents an hour for example, in many prisons. So that the capitalism that appears to triumph does so only at the expense of the lives of enormous numbers of people who are considered expendable. And that is why we decided to make the organizing principle of the conference and campaign the prison industrial complex.

WrigleyJr asks: 25 years ago, you imagined the society today: Are we better or worse than you imagined?

Angela Davis: I think we are both better and worse than I imagined 25 years ago. Material conditions are a lot worse. I could never have imagined that almost 2 million people would be in the country's state and federal prisons and county jails. In the late 60's there were about 200,000 people, and we felt that that was an enormous number. The devastation of black communities I could never have imagined then. The impact of drugs and at the same time, the impact of the drug wars -- because the drug wars have become wars against black and Latino communities. But we're better in that our consciousnesses are deeper. And more complicated. We know how to challenge domestic violence, for example, and sexual harassment. Movements around women's issues have created an entirely new concsciousness. The politics of sexuality is important now in a way that we never could have imagined 25 years ago, and that's good. So, yes, it's much better and it's much worse.

Timehost: Speaking of the politics of sexuality, what's your opinion on the Clinton crisis?

Angela Davis: Well, on the one hand it is important to place sexuality within a political context. But on the other hand, when one goes as far as the Starr investigation and the media have gone, one feels as if the country is being seduced to participate in this vast soap opera. What concerns me most about this saga is the extent to which it has marginalized everything else -- all the other important issues. I want to know about health care. I want to ask Clinton why he supported the dismantling of the welfare system which is hurting so many women, and is directing so many women into prison. 50 years from now when historians are examining this era, I wonder what their response will be. But I'm tired of it myself.

ntatwrk asks : I see you have Ramona Africa speaking at your event. Do you think Wilson Goode was right to bomb the MOVE encampment?

Angela Davis: The bombing not only of the MOVE house and organization but also that entire block was one of the worst moments in our history. Police brutality, police crime, such as the attack on Rodney King, have a long history in this country. One of the worst incidents was the bombing of MOVE and the killing of so many men and women, and Ramona Africa has done an amazing job in defending Mumia Abu-Jamal across the country and throughout the world.

UBean asks : I have often heard for years the importance of rehabilitation after sentencing. Yet, I find few resources available. Are these empty promises or is funding the answer?

Angela Davis: Over the last few decades there has been a shift from rehabilitation to punishment. The prison system, both state and federal, no longer pretends to rehabilitate people and that is a serious problem. The expanding prison system is used to warehouse ever-larger numbers of people and to treat them like animals. This is in violation of the United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. And that would also include violations of the rights of women -- we are also fighting against the sexual abuse of women prisoners. We will also call for a national day of prison visiting on April 11, 1999. We will be urging people to visit prisoners -- we'll be urging individuals, encouraging their churches to participate, and encouraging schools to arrange visits -- to create more traffic inside and outside, so it becomes possible to defend the human rights of those who are incarcerated.

Christopher_J26 asks: And What advice can you give to carry Radicalism into the 21st Century?

Angela Davis: I think we need to create productive conversations and develop activism among different groups. We need activists, of course, but also intellectuals and scholars, people from the labor movement, women's movement, prisoners, former prisoners. We need to learn how to talk to and with each other. We need to develop new vocabularies. One of our panels this weekend at the Critical Resistance conference is called Developing New Vocabularies. And we have to recognize our own potential power. Gatherings such as the one we're organizing this weekend should give us a sense of our collective power. We are quite excited about the power of the conference, because those of us who were organizing it thought we were quite ambitious to hope that 500 people would attend. Now we're expecting 1500 people and probably more. And I should say that we have involved artists and musicians and filmmakers and poets in every aspect of this conference. Radicalism in the latter years of this century and millennium is inconceivable without the voices and visions of artists and musicians. Last weekend we had great gala benefit concert -- with Ani DiFranco, among others. The cultural dimension is essential.

Timehost: We'd like to thank Professor Davis for joining us tonight.

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