Angela Davis speaks on How Does Change Happen?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc6RHtEbiOA

From the lecture of Angela Davis: "It is really important to work with your imagination, to use your imagination, to think beyond the moment. But... it's not enough --simply to imagine a different future. We can walk around with these ideal words in our heads while everything crumbles around us. And so I would say, critical habits involve collective intervention as well. If we take the critical impulse seriously, it involves a dual commitment. I would say first of all --to use knowledge in a transformative way."

"Of course, we assume that the knowledge that matters comes from places like this...[universities].... But, I would like us to think about knowledge in a much broader way. This is one site for the production of knowledge. But, knowledge gets produced in other sites as well... And, especially for... [those coming from backgrounds that know what poverty or racism means]... It's extremely important not to discount the learning that happens in our communities, the learning that happens on the job.... When I say, "knowledge," I'm not talking about the specialized knowledge, I am not talking only about that specialized knowledge, I am talking about knowledge in the broader sense."

"As I was saying, the critical impulse, which I want to suggest we need to develop, involves a commitment to use knowledge in a transformative way. To use knowledge as a way of helping us to remake the world, to remake the world so that is better for all of its inhabitants... and I am not only talking about human beings. This critical impulse means that we have to absolutely refuse to attribute any kind of permanency --to that which is. Simply, because it is. There's another aspect of what we might call a critical posture towards the world. And, in my opinion this where feminism comes in. And, I will talk about feminism a little later. But, I want us to think about feminism much more broadly than we usually do. I want to think about feminism as encouraging us to adopt critical habits toward the tools we use. And I'm talking about, when I say tools, I'm talking about the conceptual tools. That means our concepts, our vocabularies, and not only in the academe... but also among in organizing practices..... We have all these difference languages.... we assume that some are more important others.... we have all these different vocabularies and we don't share the meanings of these words. I can say "struggle," and I know that there are some people who will understand exactly what I mean when I say struggle. To other people, struggle? What is that?"

"Now, before I move on to talk about some of the aspects of our contemporary world that desperately need changing, I want to make two important points."

"And one has to do with the tendency to erase the contributions of those of those who have perhaps done the most to bring about progressive change. And, the second point, has to do with the difference between the change we want, the change we struggle for on the one hand, and the change we actually achieve... the changing change that we actually achieve...."

Then, later in her lecture, Ms. Angela Davis, goes on to say, "Often those who contribute most powerfully to movements for radical social change, our erased from in the histories that are transmitted from generation to generation. Civil rights movement as an example....."

LISTEN TO the lecture. It is very worth your time. I have typed up the first portion of her lecture above so you may read it along with listening to her.

Angela Davis points out that it was people like you and me who influenced others... others like the young man, Martin Luther King, Jr., to get involved in the Montgomery protest. "Rosa Parks was an organizer; she wasn't a tired woman.... She was a trained organizer. It is a story about people just like you." Ms. Davis talks about other movements.... and individualism and how dangerous it is. Then she talks about George Bush in Washington, D. C.

Second point she wants to make is that "the victories we do win are not always the victories we have fought for." Ms. Davis shares some personal knowledge of past civil rights understanding concerning the Black Panther movement, etc. People --like you and me-- even with our personal problems, help spark movements. She is not romanticizing the time, but demonstrating the amazing way of manifesting solidarity with people in Asia or in South Africa.... "There were real problems with the way the Black Panther Party unfolded... They did not have the vocabulary or the concepts to think about the masculine that was at the heart of the movement at that time. The ramifications that followed were amazing. They did not stop police violence or racial profiling, but they achieved a lot of other changes." She talks about the women's movement.....

"The contributions of the women's movement, a lot of different women's movements...."

Raised radical demands...

Jobs or help without strings attached.....

Ms. Davis begins to run short of time. Towards the middle of the last part she talks about the thwarted efforts of socialism in eastern Europe. That despite the failures, they made amazing changes in respect to people's lives. (We may disagree with how she presents a young women's idealism concerning the USSR, but the point is I think about the contrast of what people in the USA dreamed of --but could not access in the USA due to poverty or other excluding situations.)

Returning to the discussion of the lost of history.... "Victories are never permanently engraved in history."

"Social meanings are socially constructed. We cannot leave it up to the state to create those meanings. Meaning state in the broadest possible sense; government in Washington.... and California...."

Labels like "terrorists" have a personal meaning to her... (if you know who she is, you will understand.)

"Social meanings are socially constructed and we cannot leave it up to the state to produce those meanings. And, because we are always encouraged to conceptualize change only as it affects individuals.... there is this dangerous individualism" to which she referred earlier.

"This dangerous individualism is bound to transform the collective victories that we make. If we imagine these victories as community victories, and they are transformed into individual v then we seek out h examples...." Then her lecture becomes very contemporary with a contrast of examples of "who we put up as heroes that forgets about the structural changes that were actually intended by those struggles. Individuals like Condalizza Rice can say.... look where I am, look what I accomplished.... now "I am running around the world making war."

"...in the 60's and 70's... even if the structural change that we wanted did not occur... even if relief was not brought to subjugated communities the way we wanted ....what we did manage to do is change the terrain of struggle. We reconfigured the landscape on which we now try to increase the measure of freedom all communities enjoy."

Ms. Davis is "quite concerned about questions of vocabulary, the need to think about the conceptual tools that we use, the need to adopt critical habits --habits that require a kind of constant criticism not only of those things that we want to change, but of the way we want to change them and of the tools we use to conceptualize that change."

She uses a contemporary example, the word, "diversity." It upsets her; not that she does not believe we should not have diversity. But...

"The word diversity has been colonized so much of what we were once able to talk with much greater specificity. All we have to do now is evoke diversity. And, what does diversity mean?......."

Ms. Davis is not an opponent of diversity. Ms. Davis states she is "an advocate of strong conceptions of diversity." And the way she summarizes it is that "you can have difference that truly makes a difference, and that's the kind of diversity" she wants; "difference that's going to make a difference. But you can also have difference that doesn't make a difference. Difference that allows the machine to keep functioning in the same old way and in a matter of fact sometimes even more efficiently and effectively. George Bush is so proud of the fact that his Secretary of State is a black woman."

"If we embrace weak notions of diversity, it is a concept that promotes a hidden individualization of problems and solutions that ought to be collective. It is a concept that can, unless we redefine it and in its strongest version, that can leave structures of inequality and injustice in tact. And, what is immensely importance for our purposes this afternoon, diversity is a concept that provincializes our relationship to the world."

"We live during an era that is called globalization, right? There is suppose to be this instantaneously global transmission of knowledge, the products that we purchase for our daily use are produced and distributed by in large on the global market. We wear the sweat of global workers, specially young girls and women. We wear their sweat on our bodies. We consume a disportionate amount of the world's energy. And therefore, we live as if the rest of the world were simply there for the purpose of serving and confirming as what is represented as our way of life."

"George Bush, the man throughout the world that stands for the worst...... most exploitative elements of this country. Personally embarrassed of having to be represented in the global arena by such a figure as George Bush."

"Embarrassment is too weak of a term. Absolute revulsion that wars are being conducted in our names, and that torture is being justified in our name, and that democracy has become a watch-word for the most abominable violations of human rights."

Ms. Davis stated that never in her, 62 years, could she "have imagined that the progeny of ulter right wing conservatives would produce the kind of situation we find ourselves in today. Not only war and torture, but a political discourse that aspires to persuade us that democracy can become this watch-word for terror, for torture, and for the wholesale denial of individual and collective rights. One might go so far as to say that the strategies of the Bush Administration involve evoking the fight to save democracy as a justification for the rapid erosion of democratic rights. And so there is torture that is unrecognized as torture, there are secret prisons that are not revealed and when they are revealed, they are justified...."

"There is this prospect of fencing off the Mexican border to prevent people from entering this country whose lives have been destroyed by the impact of global capitalism. And, of course we need to tell Arnold S..... that the prison situation is horrendous. California is at the very bottom of the list. 2.2 million people are behind bars [in the USA] which means that the United States incarcerates more than any country of the world.

Paradime. New modes of democracy... or capitalism. "Democracy? When you listen to George Bush, when he says [the word] democracy, replace the word with the word, "capitalism;" it makes a lot more sense, the strategies [he proposes] make a lot more sense because this is not really about democracy. This is a depressing situation. It is really depressing. But it doesn't have to be depressing. It is --only if you assume that the way things are today is the way they will be tomorrow. Back to what her mother told her, "This is not the way they're suppose to be and they do not have to remain this way."

Four more pages of notes that she did not get to... She attempts to summarize. "Feminism need not be only about women, nor about gender. We can think about feminism as a methodology that can better enable us to conceptualize and fight for progressive change. The type of feminism I am talking about calls upon us to seek out connections, to make connections that ought to be obvious... but are not because of the ways in which our perceptions of the world are so deeply idea-logically influenced...."

"Individualized and state connections..... even though we see the routines of the state."

I recommend you listen to her lecture yourself. However, I have attempted to write down the highlights for those of you whom do not have a computer that has speakers.

She ran out of time to finish talking about her work. She gives examples of people who are denied their liberty and are either in prison or in exile.

She ends with a plea, "Please get involved, please try to make a difference, please try to turn this country around."

"...how important it is to transport certain habits of imagination..." --Angela Davis

This is worth your time. Sit back and listen with your heart and mind.

If you have ever desired the opportunity of attending a lecture by a professor of the highest integrity and intellectual ability, Angela Davis delivers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc6RHtEbiOA

Also of interest is this speech about prisons in the USA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh8ZrGhzJIM&feature=related

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_arms_for_zimbabwe/98.php/?CLICK_TF_TRACK

The above link is from Mia Farrow's web site. You may then sign a petition to support the stopping of the shipment of arms to Zimbabwe.

Today I viewed a Woodrow Wilson scholar speak about networking and being a change agent. I once lived in Vermont and my friend, John, worked for a political organization started by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.... I have noted over the past two decades that people who have "made it" in their field, whether it be ice cream or acting, have really taken it to heart to "give-back" or become a change agent.

I went to Asia when I was 22 years old to work with an organization that was supplying doctors and nurses to countries that we Americans are now engaged in war with. My heart aches at times when I recall the beautiful people of the various cultures I was able to meet at such a young age and to know that many of them today are in misery due to what the US policies have become. However, throughout history the US has exploited other countries for raw materials, labor and oil. We do need change this is for certain. Even our neighbors to the south in Mexico are having difficulties because our latest idea here to their north is to use corn for fuel rather than for food.

My heart has always been a believer in the Trickle Up or in collaborative networking empact that a single individual may have if he or she joins with others and doesn't do things for glory of self, but out of fulfilling a need that is laid upon ones heart.

I think the work that Ms. Mia Farrow is doing in educating the world about China is so very important. Look at what a voice... we have made recently when we put our voices altogether into ONE. I believe Ms. Farrow's interests and outrage over what China does and doesn't do grew out of her love for children. My grandchild is so very precious.

I hope that many of you who have the ability to influence change in laws will support the passing of de facto custodian bills into law --in whatever part of the globe you may live. Children need constitutional rights and human rights protections. They need to have the right to continue living with the psychological parent who has raised them if it is in their best interest rather than being bounced back and forth throughout their childhoods because of so-called parent rights. Best Interests of the child should always be paramount in all decision-making. Sadly, it is not often so.

I hope that all of my pen pals and readers of my blog are doing well today. I must reach out to some of you soon. I have spent little time online recently due to having so much on my plate. However, I feel connected to many of you since I have discovered your existence, others who are into helping others who are vulnerable and caring about our planet. You, me... we have been what one calls social ecologists because we have hearts that are caring for the earth, and could not subtract the care we need to give to one another as humans. I am thinking of an old friend tonight whom I wrote to for many a year, someone who is of two cultures, of two worlds, a man of Africa and of the UK. He would photograph nature. I recall a trip he made to see the gorillas before the genocide. He sent me a photo of one of the gorillas. I wonder if this particular one survived.

Through this site I have met two psychologists, one in the UK and an American in NZ who combine their work with humans with their concern for endangered species.

Bye for now and I hope to hear from you either through a message or a comment on my blog.... if you have a minute to spare. I know we are all busy with matters at hand.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_arms_for_zimbabwe/98.php/?CLICK_TF_TRACK

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2270109/7139815

The blog entry following this one is the one that I wrote to my pen friends about. However, I cut and pasted the most recent clip of Mia Farrow being interviewd about China. Their policies are creating genocide and blood profit in Tibet, Beruma and tne Sudan. Mia Farrow has an organization called Dream for Darfur...

To find my blog page easily, copy this onto a little notebook and then next time you are online, copy and paste it in the address space... and you will come directly to my page. http://360.yahoo.com/cherishedparadox

http://www10.earthhourus.org/ Turn out the lights; if we all do this for an hour, it will do a lot more than we could ever imagine. See this link. The idea is to turn off all lights on March 29th from 8:00 to 9:00 pm.

I recall living in NZ and taking walks after putting five little girls to bed. (I was a nanny on a sheep farm in the mid-early 1980's.) If there wasn't a moon that night, it was so dark, I couldn't see to take a walk. In the cities, yes, there may need to be an occasional light. But why on earth are all the buildings lit up even when the cleaners have gone home?

Many think that having public light lessens crime. I doubt this helps in the long run. If we could use some of the funds saved on public lighting on social programs that assist youth prior to them resorting to crime, I think crime would be reduced.

Hey, I love the connections with my global pen pals.... from Perth to the UK to Africa....

Today, Friday, 28 March 2008

I lay half asleep, half awake this morning waiting for my alarm to sound. Occasionally I listen. However, not for the alarm, but for a quiet awareness taking place. Some may call it spirit, others may call it intuition or mysticism. It is not important what word-label one uses to describe these moments all of us have when we are still and quietly listening. I am not one to get caught up in the lives of celebrities, though I enjoy a good flick with well written dialog or a music that makes my heart soar. There are also some extremely talented individuals that have given us food for thought. I enjoyed listening to Ted Koppel in the 1980's and become thoroughly engrossed in Charlie Rose's interviews.

Today, I was within this "still quiet" place as I began to wake and I thought of Mia Farrow. JUST like that. Mia Farrow has several children, many of them whom are adopted. Several months ago I read an NARP interview. I recall thoughts on adoption and learned that one of her children plans to become an adoption attorney after his education is completed. However, in spite of my own personal experiences with litigation over adoption and custody issues, these were not the thoughts on my mind. In fact, there were no particular "thoughts" going through my mind.... just an image of her from a black comedy, a film that I particularly liked where at the end the character has become a therapist and meets one of the sons she had been unintentionally separated from as a young child. He comes to her as a client and he does not know that she is his biological mother. I woke up with this image of her talking to the young man within the context of this film.

Rather than wait until my alarm sounded, I peeled off the warm blanket, noted that it was several hours before dawn and went to "google" Mia Farrow's name. Caught up in adoption/custody issues now for several years, I thought I may find that she had adopted another child or was speaking out about similar issues. It is not that I have had my head in the sand, but today was the first I have learned about the latest contentious relations with China. I cut and paste the following links because I do believe that I am suppose to know about these issues and to place them here for hopefully a hundred others, like me, who could in some way voice their opinions so that China will know that the global world is watching.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18221663

Will the Olympics mean relief in Darfur?
April 19: Did Hollywood influence China's decision to lean on Sudan about the genocidal crisis in Darfur? And what does it have to do with the Olympics? NBC's Mark Mullen reports.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120338432062875839.html

http://www.miafarrow.org/joint_statement_darfur_011707.pdf

http://www.miafarrow.org/genocide_olympics.html

http://www.miafarrow.org/editorials.html

Mia Farrow is active in agencies that encourage adoption, as evidenced by her involvement with UNICEF as a Goodwill UNICEF Ambassador.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/228283

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2270109/7139815

http://www.miafarrow.org/

http://www.miafarrow.org/links.html

http://www.miafarrow.org/sponsors_genocide_olympics.html

I copied and pasted this from Mia Farrow's web site: "The Beijing communist regime practices hatred toward all the freedom-oriented societies. It uses various methods, such as distorted propaganda, cheating, spying, bribery, and economic threat, to gain profit for the dictatorship regime. Toward countries like Sudan, the Beijing regime could care less regarding human rights there, as long as it can share profit from blood. After all, they two are real friends in many ways. Beijing wants to be a part of the global economy, but does not want to take global responsibility."

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said to the suppressed or suffering, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

This is what I believe in my own life. The child that I have been raising for ten years has longed for me to be able to adopt her. Those whom could have made it possible --may not exactly be friends-- but their silence is what harms this most precious little person. Perhaps Mia Farrow and I have a kindred spirit. It appears to be so.

Thanks for reading and responding to my blogs.