Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis

Freedom is a Constant Struggle Reviews

• 
  Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤

  A brilliant collection of interviews and speeches by Angela Y. Davis concerning racism, activism, feminism, state violence, and more. I read this over a period of two days but I think it would be better to read an interview or essay a week as it becomes repetitive after a while if you read them all at once.
   
  The world needs more Angela Davises. She is incredible, compassionate, intelligent, insightful, and passionate about creating an equal world for all. These qualities shine through on every page of this book.
  
  Though my interest waned towards the end, it was because I read it all at once instead of over time. It still deserves the 5 stars I'm rating it. I will be reflecting on Ms. Davis' words for some time to come.
• 
  elena ❀

  Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement carries a lot of important information that we should know. Angela Davis not only talks about movements and topics she is passionate about - like prison abolition, feminism, rights for BIPOC - but also emphasizes on the importance of understanding the history Black people have gone through, what civil rights movements have achieved for the people in the United States and other countries around the world, and what it means to stand in solidarity with Black people and other minority groups.
  
  Although the book cites and specifies many important things we should start considering, understanding, and realizing, the speeches provided were repetitive. I appreciated the interviews more because of the questions asked along them, which allowed me to ask myself questions and get a broader understanding of the point trying to be made. I understand how sometimes it is necessary to repeat points over and over because, sadly, sometimes people don't want to listen. With that being said, instead of putting repetitive and similar interviews and mentioning topics that were not covered too in depth, I feel like the structure of the book would have been better if, instead of repeating things and only touching on them, the writer/author went more in depth of what she tried to convey. For example, Angela is clearly passionate about prison abolition, so instead of repeating her similar points, it would have been better to go more in depth about it. The same goes for the mentions of feminism, Palestine, and more on Ferguson.
  
  The book is still an educational read, and I think it is still important to read it because of how much information is provided. Going into it with an open-mind is important, but I truly wish I had enjoyed this book more.
• 
  Jean Menzies

  I need to talk about this one more either on my channel or on my blog (or both?) but in the mean time everyone else should read it!
  The discussion on my channel so far:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CWJB...
• 
  Thomas

  A powerful collection of interviews, speeches, and essays from Angela Davis. She focuses on the importance of Black Lives Matter and Black feminism, while emphasizing the importance of connecting white supremacy within the United States to other forms of state violence and oppression throughout the world. Some salient takeaways I walked away with included: the drawbacks of individualism and the strength of collective movements for social justice, the necessity of taking a global perspective on issues of equity and justice, and how we can opt into oppressive systems even if we hold marginalized identities (e.g., Black people becoming members of the police force). Davis also expresses solidarity with Palestinians’ struggles for liberation and writes about the interconnections of Israeli and US militarization.
  
  The pieces in this collection are brief so folks may want to read additional texts to gain a more in-depth perspective on the issues Davis raises. Still a solid place to start and articulated intelligently and forthrightly too.
• 
  Lucy Dacus

  We are all so lucky to be alive at the same time as Angela Davis.
• 
  Michael

  A fast-paced series of speeches, interviews, and essays, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle examines how ostensibly disparate social movements around the world in fact share deep and meaningful connections that might link them together in a global struggle for human liberation. Across ten pieces of writing Angela Davis explores a wide range of topics, from the militarization of the police in Israel and America to the rapid spread of the prison-industrial complex throughout the world. Her arguments are consistently sharp and incisive, and wherever possible she gestures toward points of further research for interested readers. Having first published this in 2015, her central thesis that only robust social movements effect meaningful change comes across as especially prescient. While there is some repetition among the pieces, the collection is as relevant as ever and worth checking out.
• 
  Prerna

  In these various speeches, interviews and essays, Angela Davis strikingly and brilliantly (as always) draws the parallels between capitalist individualism, neoliberalism and racism, poverty, repression. They perpetually feed on and spawn each other. She also points out the dangers of tying down entire revolt movements to single, deified individuals. While these individuals (like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr) certainly had prominent roles to play, these movements are a collective phenomena, and to identify them with single, monumental personas is to remove our own personal agencies from an expanding community struggle.
  
  As always she talks about feminism, prison industrial complex, racism but she also advocates for a new vocabulary to talk about repressive systems since many of the terminologies we currently use are historically obsolete and only provide a shallow understanding. She provides the example of thinking that changes in the law spontaneously correspond to real world changes, when countless examples have shown that this is far from the truth. She also says that feminism must involve a consciousness of capitalism, post-coloniolism, racism and a much broader understanding of gender and sexuality. She writes about how the personal is political, about how our struggles against institution recrafts who we are.
  
  Most interestingly she talks about Palestine and expresses solidarity with Palestinians' struggle for liberation. Israel has also helped US in military training and security, so she emphasizes on how the forced apartheid is a global issue that we all need to identify with.
• 
  Tunde

  I would have given this book a five stars but the second half of the book pulls from different speeches Angela Davis has given over the past couple of years. Some of the speeches became repetitive. While what she was saying needed to be repeated I felt those pages could have been better served diving deeper into the history of certain Palestinian or Turkish political prisoners instead of glossing over names.
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  "Freedom is still more expansive than civil rights."
  
  I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about what was excluded from my education. Why are some voices or contributions left out? Is it simply a factor of a formula that there are only so many hours in a day, so many days in Black History month, or could there be other philosophies in play? Why do we only teach about civil "disobedience" that is peaceful and within a Christian framework? So Martin Luther King Jr., yes. Malcolm X and Angela Davis, no. Is it that she's a woman? A Communist?
  
  I make no accusations. I do think it is interesting to think about. I finally heard Davis's name in
  Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and decided to read more.
  
  Davis has been a radical activist for decades. She goes back to Black Panther Party days, although she did not stay a member for long, choosing the Communist party over the BPP when faced with the directive to choose. She still worked closely with the social justice mission of the party, and has ever since.
  
  This book is slim, partially composed of a written interview exchange between Davis and the editor, and finished up with transcriptions of recent speeches Davis has given. Because of this structure there is a fair amount of repetition, but this does demonstrate which issues are prominent - militarization of police, getting rid of prisons, systemic racism, Palestine, immigration, ... actually let's let Davis sum up the issues:

  "Here we are in the twenty-first century and we still can’t say that we have affordable housing and health care, and education has thoroughly become a commodity. It has been so thoroughly commoditized that many people don’t even know how to understand the very process of acquiring knowledge because it is subordinated to the future capacity to make money.”

  Davis is a radical, but I enjoyed pushing my thinking farther than it usually goes. A few of her ideas I wanted to do more research on, so I was not agreeing with her on everything (but to be fair, not disagreeing either, just my first exposure to some of the ideas.) I admire her lifelong commitment to these causes, I can't imagine where she finds the emotional energy to persist.
  
  Oh and one more quotation because it made me laugh:
  
  “...We recently witnessed the reelection of Barack Obama. By this time everybody who may have been hoping that Obama was the messiah realized that he was simply the president of the United States of America. Simply the president of the racist, imperialist United States of America.”
• 
  Anabel

  I urge everyone to read this. Inform yourself about Palestine, the Prison-industrial complex, abolition movements, Black freedom struggles, and many other interconnected struggles. This book consists of interviews and speeches by Angela Y. Davis and it's such an important read, I couldn't recommend it enough.
• 
  Maxwell

  As someone who has known about Angela Davis but never read anything by her before, this was a great introduction to her. It's very accessible, told either in the form of conversations with Frank Barat or through various transcripts of speeches Davis gave around 2013-2015. Because of this nature, it is at times a bit redundant. But the ways in which she brings to light connections between various freedom movements across the world is powerful.
  
  It's refreshing to read something that moves so far beyond the individual, in fact rejecting the ideology of neoliberal capitalism completely, and focusing instead on how we can only move forward as a species when we recognize the intersectionality of our causes. I imagine this would be great on audiobook too, if that will help you get into the material more. It's 10 chapters, each can be read in a short sitting. So even if you're not someone who is inclined to pick up non-fiction or perhaps just not a reader of this type of non-fiction, I'd encourage you to check it out.
  
  My biggest takeaways were learning about what G4S is, how much the US is financially supporting Israel every day, how Israeli military practices have literally been used as training for the militarization of the US police department, and thinking in new ways about how to deconstruct the myths of capitalism and the very real effects it has on our day to day lives. For such a short book, it's surprisingly dense and has a lot to unpack.
• 
  K

  3.5 stars. Wanted to love this, but I found myself getting confused as to whether or not I was re-reading the same speech. It was redundant and didn't feel like time and care was put into making this. The points about the connections from Ferguson to Palestine weren't really completely filled out, because it was just quick mentions in various speeches. There were some nice teachings on prison abolition, but overall I wanted more.
• 
  Sleepless Dreamer

  I'm just gonna say this: I get along better with Palestinians than with American left wing people by far.
  
  So Angela Davis is, of course, a prominent person in the fight against racism. Well known for her socialist activism, she's definitely had a lot of influence, especially with the Black Panthers. I'm always amazed by older people who are activists for so long. I imagine it takes a lot of character and grit so I was excited to learn more about her.
  
  The book is built of short speeches and interviews. It's short but unfortunately, repeats itself. For example, Davis mentions that Palestinians tweeted Ferguson activists advice about tear gas 4 times or that she was on the FBI wanted list 5 times. Ideas weren't always coherent enough, as often happens in interviews and short speeches. I imagine this is a great book for people who are already familiar with her activism and want some more extra content.
  
  Davis speaks of a broad framework: pro feminism, queer rights, immigration rights, Palestinian rights, anti- racism and capitalism. In her eyes, these are all one. Justice requires our full support of each of these. It is a personal failure not to equally support all of them equally or to see them as one cause.
  
  On one hand, this makes sense on some level. If we claim to support Black people, there is room to fix all systems that hurt them. Systems feed each other. We cannot argue for Black liberation without recognizing the struggles of Black women, Black queer people, etc. We must recognize that the losers of capitalism are also often related to race.
  
  However, what happens when principles clash? For example, climate change definitely hurts people of color and especially poor nations who are already suffering under the bulk of the capitalist world order. However, poverty is also incredibly destructive. How much do we spend on climate change vs alleviating poverty now? Intersectionality doesn't quite pinpoint prioritization- precisely because it is all encompassing.
  
  In general, most of Davis' arguments can't quite translate into policy. It's great to speak of problems but it seems like it's all very theoretical and emotional, rather than actual ideas on how to change systematic issues. What are the correct policy decisions in order to alleviate poverty? How do we correctly apply those ideas? What does a post-colonial or post-capitalist society look like in practice?
  
  I have an issue with intersectionality. There, I said it. Please notify me if I get kicked out of the leftist club. Sometimes, there are clashes between intersections and that's fine. As a queer person, an ideal world for me would be one where no one would ever speak of gender. This is not the ideal world of a cultural feminist. It's also not the ideal world for many cis trans people. Who gets priority here? Intersectionality cannot help us. Compromises and mutual understanding can.
  
  And finally, let's talk about Palestine.
  
  When Davis writes "end the occupation on Palestine" what does she means? Is she talking about the military occupation in the West Bank or is she talking about the entirety of Israel, as some Palestinians claim?
  
  Moreover, what does she see as an end to the occupation? A Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza like the one that was offered several times and was turned down? Is she talking about one state? Does she know that one state binational solutions are unpopular, both among Israelis and among Palestinians? Does she care about what average Palestinians and Israelis think?
  
  This is my ultimate issue with framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a similar situation to South Africa or the US. There's no road map for what comes next. This isn't a case of "give everyone equal rights and it gets solved". Neither Israelis nor Palestinians dream of a joint country. Partition plans have been floating around since before 1948 and haven't been implemented which suggests a systematic failure.
  
  This is our challenge: finding a way to guarantee self determination and equal rights without partitioning the land. This is the heart of the problem. Not racism, not antisemitism, not global terror, not colonialism. If you can't see it, you've been reading biased sources.
  
  And it's wild to me that Americans feel comfortable to take an 100 year issue and dumb it down to a side note in their own quests for liberation. There's something incredibly performative about this activism. It seems like an attempt to globalize an internal American issue, as if talking about a conflict across the ocean somehow adds validity to your own struggles. Like putting *Middle Eastern* sprinkles on your own cause.
  
  And this idea that the militarization of American police came from Israel is laughable because Israeli police aren't militarized. Davis is confusing between police and magav- army police. They are, as the name implies, in the army. They're not the police and most of their work is involved with border control.
  
  These are Israeli police.
  
  
  
  These are magav soldiers.
  
  
  
  How little accountability do you need in order to blame Israel for America's police brutality? Like, I am sorry but that's on the US. Israel teaches counter-terrorism. That's it. The Israeli police are well known for being incompetent, they are not capable of teaching anyone anything.
  
  If Davis would pay more attention to Israel, she'd know that Israeli-Arabs/48 Palestinians have been begging the Israeli government for more policing, not less. While Americans call for defunding the police, the Israeli police lacks budget, skills and manpower in order to effectively counter crime in poverty areas.
  
  There's also this strange assumption that Palestinians are all allies to her cause. In practice, my impression is that Palestinians (much like Israelis) don't really get American race issues nor are they very intersectional. Sure, Palestinians are always down to bash Israel but presenting Palestinians as though they're this uber woke crowd is somewhat hilarious- you're more likely to find Israelis who passionately care about critical race theory and even that is quite rare. In some ways, this is a challenge I see as an Israeli. I'm queer and very liberal but I will stand up for Palestinians, even if they're often homophobic. I don't want to create conditions for improving people's lives- we shouldn't condition help on liberal values.
  
  Davis complains that people say the conflict is complicated in an attempt to shut down conversation. I often say the conflict is complicated but I never intend to shut down the conversation. I want to jump in, I want us to delve into the reality here which yes, is messy. I want us to unpack failures and talk about it all, without shying into blind ideology. Especially Soviet ideology that has resulted in horrible things being done to Jews.
  
  To conclude, I think this is a nice book for fans of Angela Davis but I didn't feel this is quite the must read leftist book that it is often claimed to be.
  
  What I'm Taking With Me
  - This review is a mess but hey, the academic year is over and I have no interest in writing coherently anymore.
  
  - I often worry that intersectionality creates borders. I do not blame the immigrant who supports capitalism in order to climb ahead.
  
  - And it's funny how in this book the word "Israelis" doesn't get even mentioned once. Heck, she talks about white people significantly more than she talks about Israelis. Antisemitism also only gets mentioned in regards to the confederacy, never as part of the conversation on Israel-Palestine.
  
  -I hope to write my bachelor thesis precisely on why we're talking about Palestine here. I mean, throughout the book, Palestine is the only foreign cause mentioned. It's fascinating- racism and oppression exist on some scale or another in most countries (and heck, in every Middle Eastern country) but there's this focus on Israel.
  
  - There's a part of me that thinks it would be cool to create a tour of Israel and Palestine that focuses on actual issues, rather than conflict tourism areas. Let's take foreigners to see Bat Yam's poverty and Jisr's shitty infrastructure. Let's talk about how Israeli periphery gets shunned while Tel Avivian academics sit around in conferences and discuss racism, as if it can be disconnected from the overarching societal issues. Let's visit the neighborhoods of Jerusalem that never ever see any tourists. Let's talk about the Palestinian hierarchies, let's talk about how the army both changes the class struggle but also shapes it, the way wealth and politics are intertwined and how they shape police brutality in Israel.
  
  - A good rule for recognizing antisemitism- if you replace Zionists with Jews, is it antisemitic? Or, in other words, talking about "the Zionist's media's tentacles" plays into a classic antisemitic troupe of Jews controlling the world, of Jews doing evil and getting away with it because they're so powerful. Literally, the octopus imagery is an antisemitic canard. Do better, socialists.
  
  ----------
  3.5 stars and I'll round down because I'm tired of Americans assuming their own racial troubles reflect internationally.
  
  Review to come!
• 
  Lauren

  The speeches and the interviews in this book left their mark, but they would have been even more powerful had they included more context. The book's format presents these pieces with little annotation and background, and few explanations of the issues presented. Adding "Selected Works" to the title might have helped, signifying that more reading (or background) on the subjects may be necessary.
  
  Davis is a brilliant speaker and a passionate voice. Hearing her read her own words in this audiobook version was particularly fulfilling.
  
• 
  Zaynab

  Interviewing is an art form. It require the ability to transition from one question to the next while being able to connect questions thematically. The interview questions tend to jump from one subject to the next without drawing clearer or better connections between each subject matter. So the interview section of this book wasn't as interesting to read besides Angela's answers. The speeches she gives are honestly the better part of this book, not only for the theoretical connections Davis makes but because it gives insight into her speech patterns. I didn't realize how fairly stream of consciousness her speeches tend to be, and how much she deviates in the middle of a speech to draw in a connection between what she's talking about and whatever comes to mind. I guess I've admittedly been a little star struck every time I've seen her speak live, so it was interesting to read her speeches and delve into the syntactical realms of her rhetoric and psycho-linguistic processes.
• 
  chantel nouseforaname

  Angela Davis is one of my heroes and this book did not disappoint.
  
  Her aligning the freedom movements of Ferguson & Palestine together and painting a clear picture of the ways in which they are linked and the ways that they can help others to understand international conflict, local dynamics, racism, police brutality and government measures to oppress people is so well articulated you can't pick up this book and not learn something.
  
  Her conversations/speeches around the legacy and influence of Assata Shakur and place she holds/what she means to the idea of resistance and how that's linked to black women is just — it's everything.
  
  I've been lucky enough to see Ms. Davis speak in university and the weight of her presence, the fact that she's struggled against the government and is here.. her intensity even when speaking lightly, it impacted me profoundly. This book continued that impact on me and I'm going to continue to read all her work.
• 
  Book Riot Community

  I’ve been trying to get into the book club scene locally (and possibly failing) but this was the pick of the month. I’ve always to read more by Angela Davis. This book of interviews and essays clearly distills many complex current issues, highlighting how local struggles are also global ones. Racism, capitalism, and the prison-industrial complex are all explored in depth. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone wanting a big picture look at social issues.
  
  — Jessica Yang
  
  
  
  from The Best Books We Read In October 2016:
  http://bookriot.com/2016/10/31/riot-r...
• 
  Becky

  I borrowed this from the library when I realized that I had yet to read or see any of Angela Davis' work, and didn't really know anything about her at all. I felt like I was missing the voice of someone fundamental to the movements and progressive ideals that I support, so I sought to rectify that. I use three different library systems, and between them ONE library had a few of her books, and this was the only one available in the next 6 months. A little disappointing, but maybe this was a good starting point for me anyway, because this was a collection of speeches (and one interview) from different talks and appearances that Davis made around the world in the 2010s, and as such, it covers a WIDE array of topics, but in short bursts.
  
  So... the negatives first. Collections like this are hit and miss for me. I'm a little torn on how I feel about this one. I think that, as far as content, the ideas and concepts and arguments and connections she presented on the various topics in these talks, it was brilliant. Really interesting and informative and eye-opening.
  
  But the format put me off. I listened to this on audio, read by Angela Davis herself, and, as much as I wish I could say that it worked for me, it really didn't. I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the speeches (and one interview) were literally transcribed verbatim into text here... and not cleaned up or edited for a collection like this. Let me explain. Angela Davis, has a kind of, varied staccato, style of speaking, which, while it serves its purpose, of allowing her time, to think, and read, and form thoughts as she goes, ends up being, a little monotone. I don't know if this is simply her READING tone, or how she normally speaks, because as I have mentioned, I was not very familiar with her. But, the fact that what she was reading was her previously delivered speeches to live audiences, (or one interview, which was via email with Frank Barat over several months), it ended up being a bit dry and... lifeless. The speeches were good, great even... but I found myself repeatedly wishing I'd seen them in person... where her presence and personality and persona could lend a hand.
  
  This is where I think that editing for different format would have made a big difference. In the interview, particularly, I had a very hard time tracking who was speaking. The way she read made it very difficult to know when the question or prompt had ended and her reply had begun. It all kind of ran together. In the TEXT (which can be previewed right here on Goodreads), this is delineated by using different fonts. But in audio, there's no separation. So, perhaps editing this to be less of a conversational style and revising it to be more of a defined Q&A or speaker-led back and forth for the audio would have helped. An example:

  [Barat]: How would you define "Black feminism"? And what role could it play in today's society?
  
  [Davis]: Black feminism emerged as a theoretical and practical effort demonstrating that race, gender, and class are inseparable in the social worlds we inhabit. At the time of its emergence, Black women were frequently asked to choose whether the Black movement or the women's was most important[...]

  
  Likewise, the speeches still included things like mentioning applause, etc, which just... it feels strange to read (or hear) that in a collection one is reading. It's enough to know that the content of the essay was originally written as a speech, but that doesn't mean that it should not be edited for relevance to the new format... where there is no audience reaction or participatory aspect.
  
  And finally, I will just say that there was an aspect of redundancy throughout these speeches and interviews that made it feel repetitive. So much of what I really LIKED about Davis' ideas and observations was the interconnectedness of so many social and political movements... but that very thing meant that the same ground was covered in nearly every speech. And it would be fine, if you were in person, hearing it and experiencing it for the first time, perhaps, or maybe even several times, if you had been a longtime follower of her work and familiar with her... But back to back, one after another... it just felt repetitive.
  
  Which is a shame, because I really do think that she is brilliant and is able to see and connect movements and concepts that I probably would never have seen without someone to point them out. She is able to provide context and perspective to movements that I could never experience and was only taught about in very biased and skewed ways. (I mean, it's unsurprising that this would happen, and the more that I read on this topic and learn, the more I realize how little I know.) As I was listening to this, I took a bunch of notes and jotted down quotes and thoughts that I had in reaction to her talks. I wrote down other books to add to my list, and other topics to read more on, particularly conflicts and movements outside of the US. I know VERY little about them beyond basic info one would see on the news, but after listening to Davis relate them to the movements here, it's easy to see how it's all the same fight... and as I continue to read and learn about history that shaped THIS country, and how it brought us to where we are, I should expand that to encompass other countries that have, and are still, fighting for equality and freedom - not just racial, but feminist and gender based, and LGBTQ+ and all manner of intersectionality. It's all relative, and it's all important.
  
  When she related the experiences of black people here in the US to genocide... that caught me off guard, I admit. We're so used to viewing genocide as overt - the death camps of the Holocaust, or the mass murders in Rwanda, or the persecution against the Rohingya in Myanmar, just to name a very few. But it is also fair to say that genocide, by definition, is taking place in the US against Black people. I had never heard of this charge being made against the US (another "failing" of our racist education system)... but it was. And it still is. Genocide was defined in 1948 by the UN... and in 1951, a petition was made to the UN for relief from the genocide black people were experiencing in the US. Here's an
  excerpt:

  "Out of the inhuman black ghettos of American cities, out of the cotton plantations of the South, comes this record of mass slayings on the basis of race, of lives deliberately warped and distorted by the willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease., It is a record that calls aloud for condemnation, for an end to these terrible injustices that constitute a daily and ever-increasing violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
  
  It is sometimes incorrectly thought that genocide means the complete and definitive destruction of a race or people. The Genocide Convention, however, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, defines genocide as any killings on the basis of race, or, in it specific words, as “killing members of the group.” Any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnic or religious group is genocide, according to the Convention. Thus, the Convention states, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” is genocide as well as “killing members of the group.”
  
  We maintain, therefore, that the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government."

  
  Segregated. Discriminated against. The target of violence from the policies of every branch of government. Still.
  
  One of the last notes that I took as I listened was a quote from Faulkner:

  “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

  
  That about sums it up. Read this book (in print). I'll definitely be reading more of Davis' work.
• 
  Tori (InToriLex)

  Find this and other Reviews at
  In Tori Lex
  
  This was a informative and hopeful read, that I happily relished. I haven't read any other books by Angela Davis, but this has inspired me to read and learn more about her world view. The first three chapters are interviews with Angela Davis in regards to her views on how we can continue to advance social movements in a effective way. The next seven chapters are speeches that Angela Davis has given around the world. All of the topics that Angela discuss challenge us to find the intersections of struggle that exist around the world, and broaden our thinking of how social movement works.
  
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
  "In many ways you can say that the prison serves as an institution that consolidates the state's inability and refusal to address the most pressing social problems of this era."

  
  The most important take away I have is change has always been propelled by collective action,which includes many more people than will ever be mentioned in our history books. It's dangerous to forget that people were the driving force behind the civil rights movement in the United States, including many black women. When we recognize how intricately the forces against poor people of color throughout the world work together, it's easier to unite against them. It's hard to think outside of the reality and systems that we exist in, but that is the only way we can begin to change them. She also mentions Assata Shakur being added to the Most Wanted Terrorist list, as a clear sign that black liberation continues to be a threat to the powers that be.
  
  

  
    "...education has thoroughly become a commodity. It has been so thoroughly commoditized that many people don't even know how to understand the very process of acquiring knowledge because it is subordinated to the future capacity to make money."

  
  Angela Davis wants us to recognize how the prison-industrial complex is connected to oppressed people in Palestine. She wants to show that feminism and social change has room for everyone of all genders, abilities and sexuality's to fight for freedom. Angela does a magnificent job connecting the black experience for change in the U.S. to the fight that continues everywhere against capitalist control. I would recommend this to everyone. This short book encouraged me to continue on with my own activism and get more involved in the global struggle of people fighting for their own freedom.
  
  

  
  "Perhaps most important of all, and that is so central to the development of feminist abolitionist theories and practices: we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as normal."
  
• 
  ↠Ameerah↞

  "In the case of the United States, Black and Native lives are systematically choked by enduring white supremacy that thrives on oppression and settler colonialism, and is backed by drones, the dispossession of territory and identity to millions, mass incarceration, the un-peopleing of people, and resource grabs that deny that indigenous lives matter and that our planet matters."
  
  Angela discusses a range of topics such as; the militarisation of police in Israel and America, and the expansion of the prison-industrial complex globally. It is really eye-opening and encourages you to look a little closer at how social justice movements around the world have more in common than you might think.
  
  So much to take away from this. Highly recommend.
• 
  kav (xreadingsolacex)

  a must-read.
• 
  Sarah ~

  Freedom Is a Constant Struggle - Angela Davis
  
  
  الكتاب عبارة عن مقالات ومقابلات ومحاضرات وخطب ألقتها أنجيلا دايفس في عدة محافل وجامعات، تركز على وحدة النضالات ضد العنف الممنهج الذي تمارسه الدول والقمع والعنصرية والاستعمار والنسوية والاعتقال والسجن كفكرة عقابية، وتجارة السجون التي تدعمها الرأسمالية.
  
  ولأن :
  "The personal is political."
  "الشخصي سياسي أو الخاص سياسي."
  
  ولأن :
  "... Local issues have global ramifications."
  "... القضايا المحليّة لها تداعيات عالميّة."
  
  تأأتي أهمية النضال بكل مكان، والتضامن والاستفادة من تجارب الآخرين؛ من فلسطين المحتلة، والتضامن العالمي معها، وعنف الشرطة ضد المواطنين السود واللاتينين والسكان الأصليين والإعتقال التعسفي، والعنصرية الممنهجة، وانعدام العدالة والمساواة، وتقاطعية النضالات وفهم أعمق لها كلها في ضوء العصر الذي نعيش فيه.
  هذا الكتاب مهم وقد يبدو صعبًا للبعض، ولعل مما سهل عليّ قراءة الأفكار التي يطرحها هو كثرة الاقتباس منه واستخدام الأفكار التي تعرضها أنجيلا دايفس من قبل مجتمع النسويات العربيات في تويتر، وهو أمر لم أدركه قبل قراءته.
  شكرًا يا بنات، خيركم سابق دائمًا.
• 
  Bri

  Gonna come back to this one when I have the capacity to soak in the wisdom.
• 
  Cherisa B

  This book is a collection of interviews and speeches that Ms. Davis gave between 2013 and 2015. This means she could comment on Occupy Wall Street, Barack Obama and Michael Brown and the beginnings of BLM, but not George Floyd, Donald Trump, or the Neonazis in Charlottesville, for example. Still, there’s a lot that she can and does tell us about solidarity and resistance to racism, the national and global industrial prison complex against people of color, and how nations get away with criminalizing their own citizens with the failures of the state to solve the problems of housing, education, employment and healthcare (including mental health). Her connections of struggles across national borders are really persuasive.
  
  She’s not a voice in the wilderness, and I’m just late to the game to know about her ferocious intellect, dedication and experience. We all know Dr. King, and maybe something of Malcom X and other black activists. But it seems to me her ideas could equally serve to help generate more progressive and transformative action, and for greater justice for all.
  
  Three and a half stars. There are probably better books that distill her ideas and history, and some of the content was repetitive (she spoke about the same issues over the three years multiple times), but it's solid on the topics she covers nonetheless.
• 
  Amy

  As my first read of Angela Davis’s work, I enjoyed this!
  
  Since this book is a compilation of interviews and speeches, some things were overly repetitive or were spoken about in a way where it is assumed that the audience is very familiar with the subject matter. Because of this, I sometimes lost focus or interest. But regardless, I still learned a lot despite this being less than 200 pages!
  
  I really wish the occupation of Palestine was discussed more in depth here. As someone who understands little of the situation, I was hoping this book would shed some light. But thats okay—I will find the information elsewhere!
  
  I definitely want to read more books written by Angela Davis, as she’s an incredibly interesting and intelligent woman. I’m not sure if I would recommend this book as a starting point, though. I’ll have to read more by her and update this review later.
• 
  Leigh Kramer

  I’ve long admired Angela Davis’s work and I’m even more astounded by her and her activism now. Her work is truly intersectional, as evidenced by the connections she’s able to make across history, issue, and even more globally. This was an interesting collection of interviews and speeches. It got repetitive at times but it made sense since we’re reading speeches, not essays.
  
  I bought this from City Lights Bookstore when I lived in San Francisco, not long after it was published. As with so many books, I intended to read it much sooner but I’m glad I read it now. While Davis addressed present day events, it was interesting to read her thoughts now and see how things have changed…or have not. This was especially true of her remarks about Palestine, given the atrocities that have occurred in recent months. And of course there’s the rise in police brutality in these intervening years. We have farther to go and I’m grateful for the work Davis does in showing us the way.
  
  CW: discussion of racism, police brutality and abuse of power/coverups, murder of Black and brown people, white supremacy, apartheid, genocide, enslavement, incarceration, Islamaphobia, war, homophobia, transphobia, death penalty, sexual violence, and microaggressions; reference to trans woman who was sentenced to a male prison
• 
  Iris

  Focusing on Palestine and Ferguson, Davis collects interviews, speeches, and essays on global violence and oppression. And like any good communist, she makes it blindingly apparent that this is not an individualist issue. Nor is it an issue that is enclosed by any country’s borders.
  
  You should pick this up because it is a radical synthesis of events pertaining to the current state. It is traditionally published, and therefore fact checked. Davis is also incredible at laying many aspects of our society out in such a short collection.
  
  I want to read everything she’s ever written!
  
  This should be given to every single person that asks “what can I do?”
  
  This should be given to every person that is making an effort to learn anti-racism.
• 
  Ellie

  Collection of fascinating, thought-provoking speeches by the always interesting Angela Davis.
• 
  Imane

  She made all the points and she connected all the dots!
• 
  Maryam

  It totally wasn't anything like I was expecting it to be so I enjoyed it less but that's completely my fault:)
  
  I thought it was gunna be like a nice lil book about the freedom movements all around the world but it is in fact not:) it's a collection of essays and interviews and speeches by Angela Davis (still about the freedom movements tho). The book stops being informative in like the first half after that it's just repetitive. Maybe it's a formatting thing but the same points were brought up 800 times to the point where you know when you read a section and then lose where you were reading and just take a guess as to where you were and end up reading a bit that you'd already read and you realise because it sounds familiar? (great description I really have a way with words:)) yeah I'd feel that all throughout the book cept I hadn't read those sections before it'd be just because it's so repetitive. The speeches just ended up sounding the same.
  
  It was pretty good but not grEAT idk still read it if you're interested.