Angela Davis

Both of the Angela Davis videos that i viewed on YouTube were very interesting in the sense that she tends to take an issue that society has created in to somewhat of a "backburner" issue throughout the years in order to continue the marginalization of oppressed groups by trying to encourage the idea that it has been overcome. Her main issue that I speak of is racism.
In the video, Inside USA - Angela Davis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU-PNWxhjr8), she focuses mainly on the racism and its involvement in Civil Rights and the overwhelming population of indigenous and minority communities found incarcerated within the U.S prison system. The first piece of information fromt he video that stood out to me about Angela Davis herself was the fact that at age 26, she was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, which is tended to be reserved for serial killers, rapists, and thieves. This fact alone is interesting as she was simply fighting for the rights of marginalized people which at that time, stood in the way of governmental agendas.
The main points that stood out to me within the Inside USA video include:
*The media have forgotten how to speak about racial issues - need to remind the public that the issue of racism is not, in fact, over.
*The Civil Rights movement actually enabled the government to fill prisons with people of color because they are unable to understand the nature of the situation. I found this most interesting as this would be very controversial to say about the governmental system but I found this to be quite true as i stepped back. By simply dismissing the fact that racism exists, the U.S. system can legitimize the unequal amount of minorities within its prisons.
*The nature of capitalism in this country: privatization of healthcare, privatization of prisons, and privatization of various institutions. (This portrays the theory of Marxist Feminism in which capitalism is the root of oppression)
*The amount of poeple actually not even included in the conversation of racism and Civil Rights (The Projects)
-The Projects of New Orleans, for example, could have been renovated but the new plans have no place for poor people.
*Finally, the last piece of information offered by Davis in the video about the U.S. prison system:
- U.S. has 1/4 of the total worldly prisoners
- structural ways of hiding poverty and racism
- depository for all the problems of the world
- being used for something very different than crime (such as validating racism)
- crime rate has fallen, incarceration has actually gone up (contradictory)

*In the video on YouTube of Angela Davis discussing the 40th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's death, Davis goes further in depth with the idea of institutionalized racism. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g45mEgIdxZs) Here are some of the main points that I pulled out from her speech:
- While she was out performing non-violent demostrations pertaining to the murder of Martin Luther King, the LAPD had placed high-powered machine guns on top of their main police station in an effort to prepare for any sorts of riots. (This tells me that everyone knew that the death of Martin Luther King would create a stir, almost as though it was planned as a way to dull their spirits)
-On April 5th the police broke in to her offices while she was out demostrating and placed tacks and nails in to the spaghetti they had made for later that evening. (I found this to be not only a way of displaying the negative attitude displayed against African Americans at this time but also just immature)
-Davis spoke a lot of how people focus so much on the civil rights aspect of what she refers to as the Freedom Movement, as well as only on Martin Luther King as its main leader but in fact this movement covered a variety of issues and had many prominent leaders that assisted in not always traditional ways. One example of this is Rosa Parks by her simple yet prominent demonstration on the bus.
-She also speaks more about the prison system in the U.S. and how we are number one in the world for incarcerations at approximately 2.1 million with China in second at I believe she had stated 1.5 million.

*These are just some of the issues she covered in these videos but they are the ones that stood out to me.