“Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, And the Foundations of a Movement,” by Angela Davis
Angela Davis’ new book, “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, And the Foundations of a Movement,” published by Haymarket, hypes rising against the current atrocities, finding a connecting language and evolving interconnected social movements. The volume, in a series of essays and interviews, functions as an alternative and an encouragement for revolution proponents. Angela Davis facilitates the inter-connectivity of the thought and analysis of groups to establish an excellently coordinated concerted campaign that puts together significant structural changes and liberation. Rooted in the belief that the empowerment and emancipation of the societies are strictly related to and dependent on independence and democracy, this text an open way offers practical strategies for reform around two of the most prevalent concepts: Creating supranational unity among national and associated foreign struggles and the influence of excellently-organized social movements against individualism
Angela Davis ‘s book emphasizes on the comparisons of the movements in Ferguson and Palestine to demonstrate the imperatives of transnational cohesion amongst revolutionaries. At a single instance, she is “pass remarkably in a pleasant manner” to Michelle Alexander ‘s original work “The New Jim Crow” concerning implementing a universal structure. She argues that in the absence of this comprehensive perspective, it is impossible to comprehend the mechanism that has created widespread imprisonment in the United States. She points out that when a social reformist wishes to dismantle the prison-industrial system across the U.S, it is crucial to recognize the interdependent obligation to eradicate segregation and eliminate the invasion of Palestine by Israel. Davis integrates these campaigns by analyzing a coordinated universal plan to take care of impoverished immigrants from the global south, which includes holding them in a “huge garbage bin” (detention center) and fostering an “ideological perception that the entire society is safer and freer.”
Pressingly, Angela Davis explores the connection around U.S. law enforcement authorities and the Israeli armed forces. The Israeli army, which is running a dictatorship that controls a country and perpetuates segregation, has equipped and extends training of U.S. federal agents, law enforcement officers, and FBI investigators in the fight against terrorism. As activists criticize the Israeli army, it influences what occurs in excessively policed neighborhoods in the U.S., because the U.S. police forces are already armed with combat equipment and are supervised by the Israeli army.
Part of Angela Davis’s denotation is that “Progressive struggles are doomed to fail unless they also try to develop a consciousness of the insidious promotion of capitalist individualism. Her major point of view is the misguided insistence on progress by abstract personalities within neoliberalism, which overshadows systemic inequality. Angela Davis intersperses Darren Wilson (single assailant) and Barack Obama (single liberator) to shed some light on how important personalities are deliberately positioned to detangle them from the millions of people who supported their campaigns – and to kick-start those causes. Regarding Wilson, the “recognizable bigot” that murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, she proposes that merely through seeking vengeance and hoping on particular law enforcement officers to “take the consequences” of history, the established order can still be sustained. Keeping Wilson in prison and tossing away the key only obscures and hides the actual perpetrator — institutionalized, racist state brutality.
On the other side, Angela Davis illustrates the inconsistency in others who blame Obama for not creating a positive transition of policy. On her (Davis), it is the citizens, not the administration, who are capable of bringing structural progress. She insists that people involved don’t lack the appropriate POTUS; instead, they overlook an excellently-organized concerted campaign. Many that stood behind Obama ‘s triumph also neglected an attempt to exercise their prevalent influence in efforts to step in a libertarian charge. “Collectively, his followers did not oppose the military offensive in Afghanistan or the closing of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.” Davis generates dual bits of information to the campaign organizers throughout their attempts to address individualism. They should study and propagate socio-historical circumstances and the origins of social inequality of campaigns via activism and mobilization. Secondly, they should concentrate on basic level coordination that incorporates the most afflicted. For illustration, in the case of detainees are portrayed as symbols of goodwill, I, not only do we undermine anti-prison initiatives, we then render prisoners weaker in the course of trying to protect their privileges.
Angela Davis strongly confirms, “Any shift that has taken effect has arisen as a consequence of social uprisings.” Looking further, it’s clear that it wasn’t people like Abraham Lincoln, Obama, or perhaps even herself that advocated for reform – excellently-organized social campaigns have already done so. The headline of the author recommends that unity amongst youth activists has provided the cornerstone of a (latest) revolution. She acknowledges that the potentiality rests with younger generations, and also that the current generation is influenced by feminism and anti-bigotry protests in a sense that Angela Davis ‘s cohort wasn’t. It is with this summation that Davis “discovers the aquifers of optimism for the future.”