Angela Davis discusses gender violence, historical erasure of women's activism
Kevin AgostinelliPolitical activist, scholar and writer Angela Davis said that violence is an indication of the impossibility of imagining livable futures in a lecture Thursday.Davis described several harrowing experiences of gender and sexual violence in the United States, including both instances that she has witnessed firsthand and others that were experienced by victims for which she has worked to defend and raise awareness."I ... remember, as a child, a late night walk on our front door by a woman who was fleeing a man, who I later found out had raped her," she said.Recalling whispered conversations in elementary school about children who were the victims of sexual assault, Davis said she found it strange that these children were perceived as partly responsible for the sexual assaults.Davis noted that she also picked up a woman from the side of the road who had been raped in another situation."A police [officer] had come by, and she thought that she was going to get help from the police officer, but he had also sexually assaulted her and left her there," she said.A Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Davis was closely affiliated with the Black Panther Party through her participation in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.