Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

Angela Davis gave this speech on May 4, 2013, at the University of Chicago. In it, she highlights the importance of feminist theories and practices with a focus on intersectionality and abolition.

Davis notes Assata Shakur is a model for how Black women challenged common assumptions about women. The 20th century saw a lot of debate about the definition of who counts as a woman, but many women of color and poor white women did not identify with the feminist movement of the time, which they saw as “too white and especially too middle class, too bourgeois” (95). As a result, radical women-of-color feminist theories and practices emerged as a more inclusive alternative. Davis believes feminism and abolitionism should inform each other. She refers to the phrase “the personal is political” to explain how institutional and police violence relate to family violence and individual violence (105). Criminalization only reproduces the cycle of violence, and Davis reminds her audience to go beyond tackling individual perpetrators of racism and violence to focus on the systemic problems. Prisons, especially, are a key structure of racism.

Davis tells her audience that feminism is not just about addressing the traditionally feminist topic of gender equality.