The DC Public Library (DCPL) is hosting a discussion next week with Angela Davis, a former Communist Party member and FBI fugitive.
Davis, who was an active member of the Black Panther Party and the Communist Party of the United States of America, will address a sold-out crowd at the Martin Luther King Jr. on March 15. Memorial Library, DCPL’s taxpayer-funded central facility.
Davis, 78, an abolitionist who rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, was charged with murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy in 1970 after authorities linked her to the purchase of guns later used by three inmates, which a judge and juror held hostage during their trial for killing a prison officer.
Activist and writer Angela Davis (PBS)
“Through her activism and scholarship over many decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in social justice movements around the world,” the statement said. description of the event is reading. “Her work as an educator — both at the university level and in the larger public sphere — has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice.”
“Like many educators, Professor Davis is particularly concerned about the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions,” it says. “Having helped popularize the idea of a ‘prison-industrial complex’, she now urges her audience to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a movement for the abolition of the death penalty in the 21st century.”