Gaddafi wants Caribbean in Africa

Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has said he would like a United States of Africa to include "Caribbean islands with African populations".

Col Gaddafi, speaking in Tripoli as the African Union's (AU) new chairman, said this could include Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

The Libyan leader also sympathised with Somali pirates, describing their actions as self-defence.

Last week he said that multi-party democracy was not right for Africa.

The BBC's Rana Jawad in the Libyan capital says Col Gaddafi's critics believe he is too erratic to be chairman of the 53-nation AU.

A week into his appointment his agenda for Africa is expanding and his views remain as controversial as ever to some people, she says.

Praise for pirates

Celebrating his new role at his compound in Tripoli on Tuesday, Col Gaddafi suggested Caribbean islands should join the AU and become a bridge between Africa and Latin America.

He went on to tell a gathering of some 400 guests that Somali pirates were only hitting back against other countries stealing marine wealth from the region's waters.

Col Gaddafi said the United Nations should protect Somali waters from the piracy of other countries.

He also said he would use his 12 months at the helm of the AU to try to resolve Africa's conflicts, including Darfur and Somalia.

Last week, the Libyan leader used his inaugural address as rotating head of the AU in Ethiopia to push his long-cherished pet project of a United States of Africa.

He envisages a single African military force, a single currency and a single passport for Africans to move freely around the continent.

But the response from many of his fellow African leaders was lukewarm, with some saying the proposal would add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

He also raised eyebrows by saying that multi-party democracy only led to bloodshed in Africa and that the best model for Africa was his own country, where opposition parties are not allowed.

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Darwin was an abolitionist

...while many of his contemporaries approved of slavery, Darwin did not. He came from a family of ardent abolitionists, and he was revolted by what he saw in slave countries: “Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal .... It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.”

-- Olivia Judson

Read full article on Darwin's 200th birthday here

Commentary: Lincoln's remarkable tie to former slave

CNN Editor's note: James Oliver Horton is Benjamin Banneker professor emeritus at George Washington University and a professor at the University of Hawaii. He is a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and author of "Landmarks of African American History."

James Horton says Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass had a relationship of shared respect.

(CNN) -- Few relationships in American history have been more remarkable than that between President Abraham Lincoln and black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

Lincoln was born a Southerner 200 years ago, on February 12, in a rough-hewn cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. He spent most of his adult life in the North, working a series of odd jobs before becoming a lawyer and a leading Illinois politician.

Finally, in 1860, he became the first Republican president of the United States.

Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland in 1838 and found shelter with the Underground Railroad's Vigilance Committee in New York.

He was joined there by Anna Murray, a free black woman from Maryland who had helped him escape. The couple married and soon moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Douglass became deeply involved in the abolition movement and became one of its most effective anti-slavery speakers. iReport.com: Hear Douglass's descendants read Lincoln's second inaugural address

After an abolitionist lecture tour in Ireland, Scotland and England, Douglass moved his family to Rochester, New York, where he started a newspaper, The North Star. For more than 30 years, he edited a variety of newspapers that focused on issues of racial justice and equality.

Through the 1850s, Douglass became one of the most respected and influential abolitionists in the nation. His support of Lincoln's presidential candidacy in 1860 was measured and based on his pragmatic analysis of national politics at that time.

Before the election, he addressed a crowd of anti-slavery voters in Geneva, New York, most of whom were skeptical of Lincoln's qualified and relatively mild opposition to slavery.

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Douglass argued that although Lincoln was not the perfect abolitionist choice for president, he was by far the best of the alternatives. Even though he understood that Lincoln was no hard-core abolitionist, he hoped that the election of a Republican to the presidency might help move the nation in an antislavery direction.

Douglass's reaction to Lincoln's presidential victory in 1860, like that of many African-Americans and abolitionists, was hopeful. "God be praised," he exclaimed.

Lincoln's reaction to Southern secession and the formation of the Confederacy encouraged Douglass and other abolitionists.

Many anticipated that a war with the slaveholding South would inevitably mean a war on slavery and an end to that inhumane institution. Douglass called the Civil War "the American Apocalypse" and argued that "not a slave should be left a slave in the returning footprints of the American army gone to put down this slaveholding rebellion."

Despite Douglass's optimism, many African-Americans lacked faith in Lincoln's administration. Their misgivings sprang from a knowledge of his pre-presidential political career.

During his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate seat in 1858, Lincoln faced an attempt by his Democratic opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, to portray him as an abolitionist who favored racial equality.

Understanding the potential political devastation among Illinois voters of such a charge, Lincoln defended himself with strong declarations of white supremacy.

"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races," he declared during his debate with Douglas in Charleston, Illinois.

Although he was committed to the containment of slavery, not allowing it to expand into the Western territories, Lincoln explained that he believed that the Constitution protected the slave property of Southern slaveholders.

This stand on slavery's protection deeply concerned Douglass and others who hoped that Lincoln's election might lead to its abolition.

In his first inaugural address in early March 1861, just a month after the Southern states seceded and formed the Confederacy, Lincoln sought to assure slaveholders that they had nothing to fear from his administration.

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists," he said. He then added a personal note on the question of slavery, as he had done during the 1858 Illinois Senate race. He assured slaveholders that "I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

Although Lincoln's words did not convince the South, they raised fears for Douglass and other black Americas. Early in the war Lincoln's actions exacerbated these fears as he revoked emancipation orders issued by Union Gens. John C. Freemont and David Hunter and even relieved Freemont from duty. He also disbanded the black regiment Hunter had formed.

Yet, in fall 1862, when Lincoln announced that he would emancipate the slaves of rebel slaveholders as of New Year's Day 1863, Douglass reacted immediately in the pages of Douglass's Monthly.

Though impatient with what he saw as Lincoln's "cautious, forbearing and hesitating way," Douglass announced, "we shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree."

When the Emancipation Proclamation was announced January 1, 1863, it also authorized the recruitment of African-Americans into the Union armed forces.

Douglass agreed to recruit African-American troops but was greatly disturbed when blacks received roughly half the pay of whites at the same rank. During their first conversation in summer 1863, Lincoln and Douglass discussed this pay inequity

As Douglass recalled, he first met Lincoln in August. Later he explained to a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia "how the president of the United States received a black man at the White House."

To great applause, he explained that the White House messenger respectfully invited him into the president's office. Lincoln rose and extended his hand as Douglass entered. "Mr. Douglass, I know you; I have read about you, and Mr. Seward [William Seward, the secretary of state] has told me about you."

Douglass explained that Lincoln "put me at ease at once."

Although Lincoln did not promise immediate action on the equal pay issue, he was clearly impressed with the service of African-American troops and seemed to agree that "ultimately they would receive the same [pay]."

Douglass left the meeting much impressed with the president, a man much like himself, sincere, self-educated and self-made. Lincoln, he believed, was worthy of "the prefix Honest" before the nickname Abe.

Lincoln's respect for Douglass encouraged a clearer anti-slavery position. In his second inaugural address after his re-election in 1864, Lincoln linked the hardships of war to the sinfulness of slavery.

Perhaps, he speculated, the Almighty would continue to punish America "until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword."

For Douglass, these words were further proof of "the solid gravity of [Lincoln's] character."

As a further sign of respect, Lincoln invited Douglass to the White House reception after the address, a gesture unprecedented in presidential history.

As the former slave entered the room, the president announced to his guests, "Here comes my friend Douglass." Then, taking Douglass' hand, he asked for a comment on the inaugural speech and added, "there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours." Douglass complimented the speech, whereupon Lincoln thanked him.

Lincoln had dealt with other blacks during his time in the White House but never on such an equal footing as with Douglass. Both men were well aware of the significance of race for their time. Douglass was realistic in his understanding of Lincoln's racial assumptions and never regarded him as a thoroughgoing racial egalitarian.

Still, long after Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Douglass remembered his finer qualities. In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant unveiled the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, dedicated to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Douglass then delivered a speech gracious in its praise of the former president.

Although Lincoln "shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race," Douglass explained to the interracial audience, his actions made him the man whose name was "near and dear to our hearts."

Then speaking directly to the African-Americans in the audience, Douglass urged gratefulness for "the vast, high and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln."

This relationship between a former slave and a sitting president of the United States was unique indeed. Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, evidently understood the mutual respect that the two men shared. After Lincoln's death, she presented Douglass with Lincoln's favorite walking cane, saying her late husband would have wanted him to have it.

She also wrote, "I know of no one that would appreciate this more than Fred. Douglass."

Her judgment was sound, for Douglass later wrote, "She sent it to me at Rochester, and I have it in my house to-day, and expect to keep it there as long as I live."

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of James Oliver Horton. The article was adapted from "Lincoln and Douglass: Hope, Ambivalence and Change" published in New York Archives, Winter, 2009

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New book: Joaquim Nabuco and the British Abolitionists

Leslie Bethell & José Murilo de Carvalho (organizadores), Joaquim
Nabuco e os abolitionistas britanicos: Correspondencia 1880-1905
(Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks/ Academia Brasileira de Letras, 2008),
450pp. (Bi-lingual edition of 110 letters, with an introduction
by the editors, a chronology and a bibliography)
Published December 2008.

English edition to be published February/March 2009:

Joaquim Nabuco, British abolitionists and the end of slavery in
Brazil: Correspondence 1880-1905 edited with an introduction by
Leslie Bethell & José Murilo de Carvalho (London: Institute for
the Study of the Americas, 2009).

From the Introduction to English edition:

‘A little studied aspect of the struggle to abolish slavery in
Brazil in the 1880s is the relationship established and
maintained between Joaquim Nabuco, the leading Brazilian
abolitionist, and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in
London. The correspondence between Nabuco and Charles Harris
Allen, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, and other British
abolitionists throughout the decade and beyond reveals a
partnership consciously sought by Nabuco in order to
internationalise the struggle in Brazil. These letters provide a
unique insight into the evolution of Nabuco’s thinking on both
slavery and abolition and at the same time a running commentary
on the slow and (at least until 1887-8) uncertain progress of the
abolitionist cause in Brazil.’

New book: Race and the Politics of Solidarity

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/PoliticalTheory/ContemporaryPoliticalThought/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTMzNTM2MQ==

Race and the Politics of Solidarity
Juliet Hooker
Description

Solidarity--the reciprocal relations of trust and obligation between citizens
that are essential for a thriving polity--is a basic goal of all political
communities. Yet it is extremely difficult to achieve, especially in
multiracial societies. In an era of increasing global migration and
democratization, that issue is more pressing than perhaps ever before. In the
past few decades, racial diversity and the problems of justice that often
accompany it have risen dramatically throughout the world. It features
prominently nearly everywhere: from the United States, where it has been a
perennial social and political problem, to Europe, which has experienced an
unprecedented influx of Muslim and African immigrants, to Latin America, where
the rise of vocal black and indigenous movements has brought the question to
the fore.
Political theorists have long wrestled with the topic of political solidarity,
but they have not had much to say about the impact of race on such solidarity,
except to claim that what is necessary is to move beyond race. The prevailing
approach has been: How can a multicultural and multiracial polity, with all of
the different allegiances inherent in it, be transformed into a unified,
liberal one? Juliet Hooker flips this question around. In multiracial and
multicultural societies, she argues, the practice of political solidarity has
been indelibly shaped by the social fact of race. The starting point should
thus be the existence of racialized solidarity itself: How can we create
political solidarity when racial and cultural diversity are more or less
permanent? Unlike the tendency to claim that the best way to deal with the
problem of racism is to abandon the concept of race altogether, Hooker stresses
the importance of coming to terms with racial injustice, and explores the role
that it plays in both the United States and Latin America. Coming to terms with
the lasting power of racial identity, she contends, is the starting point for
any political project attempting to achieve solidarity.
Product Details
240 pages; 6 1/8 X 9 1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-533536-1ISBN10: 0-19-533536-8
About the Author(s)

Juliet Hooker is currently Assistant Professor of Government at the University
of Texas at Austin. She has published numerous book chapters in edited volumes
and journal articles that span Political Theory and Latin American Politics,
with a special focus on Theories of Multiculturalism, Latin American Political
Thought, and Afro-descendant and Indigenous Politics in Latin America.

The Black Power of Capoeira

(Photo from the Black Belt archive)

By D. David Dreis
Published in Black Belt magazine in the early 1970s

http://www.blackbeltmag.com/the_black_power_of_capoeira/archives/541

The nation of Brazil is taking a long, hard look at its checkered past. Some of what it sees is in need of a whitewash, cleaned up and scrubbed so that it makes good reading in history books. Slave uprisings, the likes of which were steeped in bloodshed, are part of its folklore. And Brazil is finally accepting capoeira as the true black power of its nation.

For several years now, Brazil has skirted its heritage with capoeira. It has been overlooked, disregarded and dismissed. Historians battled against bureaucratic red tape to find the clearing, some gaps in history had to be filled in. A few years ago an 81-year-old Portuguese man, an eyewitness to the open gaps in history, told his story; the story was about capoeira.

Vicente Ferreira Pastinha was the man who did the filling. What he talked about at length were the slave uprisings against the cruelty of persecution and the tool of self-defense employed by the slaves, created by the blacks.

Now that Brazil is taking its reluctant look, it is learning about capoeira and wincing at what it has learned. Descriptions aptly outlined by the old man attest to fast-moving arms and legs battling the onslaught of intemperate slave owners, fighting against the huge organization of oppression only to be pressed down in bloody defeat. Capoeira had its most terrifying results in the slave uprisings against the plunderers of human dignity, the landowners who were in operation since the colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese. With each suppression came more and more restrictions until at last, weary and beaten, the insurgent African natives, the slaves, were defeated. As the white populous worked on the ledgers of history, they erased the black marks of capoeira, pretending it never happened. Pastinha remained alive and brought the reality of the past into full focus.

Kept alive in the secrecy of hardened souls, the martial art continued to be taught and learned, and if movements were displayed, they were said to be a harmless native dance. This was the way capoeira survived the torture of time.

Pastinha revealed how the cultural aspects of the art seemed to vanish and how desperate students used the art to break down the statutes that were placed in their way. That they used capoeira for damage and destruction without rhyme or reason is also part of the haggard history. Without the culture and the heritage, much as that taught in the world of the martial arts, there was nothing save destruction and demolition. Again and again, insurgent blacks were put down in one after another bloody encounters. Capoeira’s heritage seemed to vanish for good.

Now, 81 years old and blind, destitute save for the income that has been secured from devoted followers of the art, Pastinha is cared for with the respect of students who look at him with the same dedication that Japanese karate and judo students look toward their sensei. He lives in Salvador, Brazil, and still partakes in the martial art, although the years and the disregard have taken their toll on his prowess.

But as Pastinha has revealed the past, a 68-year-old instructor known only as “Master Bimba” is advancing it to the future with his instruction in the martial art. Since he has been teaching capoeira, many practitioners have passed through his hands and are advancing the art further still.

Five years ago, a group headed by Benjamin Muniz started to make a true and schematic study of the “kata” of capoeira, transferring what Pastinha related into viable and teachable terms. Reluctantly, the nation began to recognize capoeira and accept it for what it was although they have staunchly refused to accept it as a national sport, knowing all too well that capoeira is not a sport at all. Today, it has been “washed down” as a cultural, native dance. In this manner capoeira is, to the Brazilian hierarchy, “acceptable.”

International Prestige

Muniz and his group, the Olodum, are performing demonstrations wherever they can find an audience. Their efforts at folklore festivals have garnered them international prestige, despite the backhanded help given them by national officials.


In 1968, the Olodum represented Brazil at the Third Latin American Folkloric Festival staged in Argentina and took second place after finding themselves winners of three gold medals and one silver. This year, they garnered a first place win at the Latin American Festival held in Peru. So commanding was their performance, supported by musical instruments, which are part of its clean-scrubbed look, that the Brazilian Ministry is paying homage to the art with the inclusion of capoeira demonstrations on its “official” schedule of national demonstrations.

But its homage is to the development of the black man in the martial arts. Although the students today are members of all races, much like many of those studying Oriental martial arts are Caucasians, the Negroes are paid the most homage through their development of capoeira.

Nothing is making the black man walk tall more than his tie in the culture of the martial arts. This heritage has become entrenched in the folklore of the martial arts history. And there’s nary a tinge of the Oriental in its makeup.

How strange it was for the heritage to start in Brazil and seemingly end there, because slaves were traded and deposited all over the world. Quite possibly, had there been instructors in the martial art in the United States, capoeira might have changed the face of history in North America.

This is not a treatise on civil rights; it is a testimony to an austere and legitimate martial art that identifies with all of the traditions of the other martial arts forms. As the Japanese warlords oppressed the Okinawan populace, causing them to seek an effective means of self-defense, so it is with capoeira, developed from the black African who was trained to fight the elements in his homeland but turned to use his training to fight against the tormentors of human dignity in Brazil.

Representatives of Brazil, those who wish to look with pleasure on the history of their nation, would like the demonstrations of the dance to continue and be treated as a dance. Indeed, capoeira, because of its potentially dangerous aspects, must be practiced as a dance, as a “kata,” but there cannot be a “kumite.” The practitioners know the law and are forced to accept it, but they earnestly believe that the art could be a dynamic sport if the reigns of government myopia were removed.

Admittedly, there have been many practitioners of the art who are working out with no punches or kicks pulled. It has resulted in some damaging effects, and even they recognize that the unleashed power of the art must be tempered somewhat for a sport in which the nation could take pride. As Gichin Funakoshi tempered karate and Jigaro Kano tempered judo, the leaders of capoeira, perhaps Master Bimba, are looking for that combination of sport-art.

The emphasis on capoeira is on muscular strength, joint flexibility and rapid movements. All of these are calculated to subdue, and subdue fast, any threat, any battle.

Quick Body Movements

Capoeira makes much of quick body movements as most of the martial arts do. But it places a greater emphasis on the power of the legs, strong weaponry in the employ of trained fighters. A capoeira man may meet a fighter face to face, but in a fraction of a second he can flip to the ground, shooting a strongly placed foot into a vital attacking area. It has been said that the capoeira fighter, trained to put punch-power in his foot, can effectively destroy a man mortally with a well-placed kick!

That it whets the interest of those who see it has been fairly well documented. In Los Angeles to attend a folklore festival, the members of Olodum were besieged with requests from students to demonstrate at local colleges and universities. At every demonstration, there was much interest in bringing the martial art instruction to the United States. Many of those people making the requests were, to no one's surprise, from the black community.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Waldemar Dos Santos is the man in charge of making capoeira popular. His is a mission that has seen the face of determination muddied by blockades to his perseverance.

Dos Santos, a short, strong man with scarred hands and forehead, learned his capoeira on the streets. But he is the foremost teacher in this city where study in judo and karate have reached a new high in interest and attendance. At 37, the man is determined to have capoeira become even more important than these other martial arts. “This is Brazilian,” he says with assuredness. “This fighting art is in the blood.”

So pronounced is Dos Santos about capoeira and its nationalistic ties that more than 100 students are studying with him. He learned the martial art in the beaten-earth clearings, which were to become “academies” for capoeira in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but having now returned to Sao Paulo, the young man is determined to make the art “official.”

He, too, has suffered from the oppression of red-tape authority. He has titled his “course” a Brazilian folklore movement. His students practice in what was once the parlor of a townhouse, its walls now smeared with dirty palms and feet. After six months of “dance” movements, which in reality is the “kata,” Dos Santos instructs his students into the violent phase of the art. “I admit,” he says, not too proud of the statement, “that Brazilian capoeira is one of the dirtiest, formalized fighting styles known.”

How “dirty” has capoeira been or become? The history books are not clear on this point, either. There are many legends surrounding the martial art and explaining how it was used by Brazilian sailors who picked it up and “adapted it” from the slaves before them. According to some sources who reluctantly admit it, the sailors used capoeira to “fight for keeps,” taping knives and razor blades to their bare feet and hands before entering a fight. Dos Santos shrugs his shoulders on this facet. Perhaps that was how the art was “bastardized” by the Brazilian sailors, but he has enough confidence in “empty hand” and “empty foot” facets of the art to bypass that addition.

Recent Police Records

Recent police records in Rio show what happens when capoeira gets out of hand. Military police tried to arrest a drunken capoeira (the term is used for the fighter as well as the art) nicknamed “Master Satan.” Satan took on a 24-man platoon and fought them to a draw. Seven policemen were hospitalized, two with broken arms and two with split livers. When Satan still stood defiant after a battering by 24 billy clubs, police had to decide whether to shoot him or let him sleep it off. They decided to try the latter.

“The feet are man’s most deadly weapon,” says Paulo Romero, a Rio capoeira practitioner. “The head is the weakest. Capoeira aims at bringing the strongest weapon to the point of weakness.”

Master Bimba has defined the modern sport-art and outlined 72 separate movements that have colorful names, similar to those given in tai chi chuan, such as “Daddy’s Scissors,” “Banana Plant” and “Tail of the Dragon Fish.”

“Before World War II,” Master Bimba says, “capoeira was illegal.”

Police were called wherever it was practiced. Now, at long last, it is being appreciated for the thing of physical beauty that it really is. Speed, agility and multiplication of force is the key.

Master Bimba knows that this definition is in conflict with the view taken by the fighters in the art. “Capoeira is as graceful as a ballet, but it was invented to kill,” he admits. “In a street fight in old Colonial Brazil, capoeira was a fight to the finish. A knife, a razor, a broken bottle made a capoeira the equal of 20 men.”

Pastinha, however, shirks the contempt against the art. Historically, it belongs to Brazil and it should be recognized, in his opinion. “As a Brazilian,” he says, “I am proud of this friendly country. The capoeira meeting his adversary has the possibility by means of lightness and quickness of the art to disarm any opponent, either taking the weapon from him or vanquishing him by throwing the armed adversary to the ground.”

Pastinha is still the prime authority on the art, and he has seen it develop to a point of respectability. Master Bimba is the foremost practitioner and teacher in Brazil, and his students are as enthusiastic over the techniques as students anywhere. There are some who are unhappy that it is locked into the demonstration aspect, colorful though it may be with its musical accompaniment and bright costumes, ofttimes striped trousers that give off a garish and more “carnival” appearance than most. At least the art is being nurtured and someday perhaps, if it continues to live and gain in popularity, capoeira may grow into a full-fledged martial art and a national endeavor.

Right now, one university accepts it as part of its curriculum within its folklore program. Moving it over to physical education may be a tricky accomplishment, but until that day does arrive, the followers of the art will continue to demonstrate it, allowing people to forget it is really an example of black power.

UNH 2009 MLK Jr. Celebration

One in 100: Dismantling a Prison Nation

The University of New Hampshire is pleased to present its 2009 MLK Celebratory events commemorating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A series of six major activities with an overarching theme entitled, One in 100: Dismantling a Prison Nation, will highlight King's struggle to create a beloved community where social, political, and economic justice are more the norm than the exception. This year's theme centers on the conclusion of a 2008 PEW Report that revealed the sobering results of the steady growth of America's prison industrial complex, a system that has more than one in every 100 adults confined behind bars. UC Berkeley Prof. and internationally known civil rights activist Angela Davis, will deliver the keynote address

In recent years a persistent theme of Davis' work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List".