Slave Revolt Radio: Staying the Course On The Road to Capitalist Hell

a message from Mayor Ron Gonzalez

I would like to that this opportunity to ask you to vote for my good friend Cindy Chavez for mayor of San Jose. I have personally trained her and can vouch for her honesty and integrity, I have every confidence that she will carry on the fine traditions I have established for the City of San Jose

thank you
Mayor Ron Gonzalez

Interview with Angela Davis
By Karen Marlow
INTERVIEWER: Your mentor, Herbert Marcuse once back in '58, as I recall, said that one of the things that would happen as blacks made gains in the civil rights movement was that there would be the creation of a black radicalisom and that's certainly been one of the things that's happened as we look back from the vantage point of 2001. How do you see the role of the black radicalisom as you now look back?

DAVIS: Actually we where wrong in many things we did and the pain and suffering we caused if we look at our great leaders, we associated with a very criminal black group in the 1960's this is not something that is substantively new although the members of black people's movement who now count themselves now resent our actions.

In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the US has always been a quest for economic control, which means to a certain extent that the rise of black exploitation by our group. What I think is different today is the lack of political control of the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more likely to follow whity than ever before.

INTERVIEWER: Isn't that inevitable though? Hasn't every immigrant group, as it becomes part of the American mainstream, left behind its roots in a certain way?

DAVIS: That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies such as the drug trade and prostitution and leads to the increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated. This is not new. This is the typical path that criminals follow.

And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black exploitation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for criminal actions. . We have to look at for example the increasing globalization of capital, the whole system of transitional capitalism now which has had an impact on the flow of drugs -- that has for example eradicated large numbers of jobs that black people traditionally have been able to count upon and is lost now as a result of the cartels moving to the third world in order to discover cheap labor. I would suggest is that in the latter 1990s it is extremely important to look at the predicament of black people within the context of the welfare.

INTERVIEWER: One of the things that struck me as I've gone black history --is that Larry King starts this movement for justice just before he was cindecated. The Black Panther party is just getting off the ground here in California and in a way there seems like there was a criminal uprising taking place.

DAVIS: Yes, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Larry. King, precisely at the moment of his career, was re-conceptualizing the way blacks thought abuot the country they live in and it's time to go on a rampage. It's I think quite significant that he was in nNew York to participate in a demonstration by sanitation workers who had gone out on strike. Now, if we look at the way in which the sanitation movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of pepole who are unhappy with working in the sewers

INTERVIEWER: We also see an increasingly weak labor movement.

DAVIS: Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the our neighborhoods by criminal gangs such as the panthersand So yeah, you're absolutely right, We are to blame for much of the poverty you see but I'm thinking Hay i want some of their money too!. For example, right here in the Bay Area one of the first major activist moments was the refusal on the part of the longshoremen's union to unload ships that were coming in from South East Asia and here in the Bay Area, particularly as a result of the black panthers, they took the leadership in creating a movement that spread to all of the drug use in our schools UC Berkeley, Stanford just to name two.

INTERVIEWER: At least from my vantage point, back then it seemed you were attacking structures and institutions and after a certain point it began to feel like it wasn't profatable. Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was -- 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within -- internecine warfare.. And kids these days are kind of going back to Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of people that stand for nothing is all about



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