She also notes that when organizing does happen, the people you fight for must always be part of the conversation. In abolition work, for example, you must make sure prisoners are involved in meetings and planning, which can be done by setting up teleconferencing and having inmates phone in. All around the world people are saying that we want to struggle to continue as global communities, to create a world free of xenophonbia and racism, a world from which poverty has been expunged, and the availability of food is not subject to the demands of capitalist profit. I would say a world where a corporation like Monsanto would be deemed criminal. Where homophobia and transphobia can truly be called historical relics along with the punishment of incarceration and institutions of confinement for disabled people; and where everyone learns how to respect the environment and all of the creatures, human and non-human alike, with whom we cohabit our worlds.

Which is a shame, because I really do think that she is brilliant and is able to see and connect movements and concepts that I probably would never have seen without someone to point them out. She is able to provide context and perspective to movements that I could never experience and was only taught about in very biased and skewed ways. (I mean, it's unsurprising that this would happen, and the more that I read on this topic and learn, the more I realize how little I know.) As I was listening to this, I took a bunch of notes and jotted down quotes and thoughts that I had in reaction to her talks. I wrote down other books to add to my list, and other topics to read more on, particularly conflicts and movements outside of the US. I know VERY little about them beyond basic info one would see on the news, but after listening to Davis relate them to the movements here, it's easy to see how it's all the same fight... and as I continue to read and learn about history that shaped THIS country, and how it brought us to where we are, I should expand that to encompass other countries that have, and are still, fighting for equality and freedom - not just racial, but feminist and gender based, and LGBTQ+ and all manner of intersectionality. It's all relative, and it's all important. Adducing the old adage of actions speaking louder than words, Angela Yvonne Davis embodies radical citizenship, activist, and scholarly engagement through her history of anti-imperialist and feminist struggles. Once on the FBI’s most wanted list, Davis continues to haunt the increasingly intricate authoritarian systems on a global level by her continuous commitment to the exercise of intersectionality. Her new book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, borrows its title from a freedom song chanted in the Southern United States during the twentieth century freedom movement, and it speaks precisely of that, of the continuities rather than closures when it comes to the unfinished plights for freedom all over the world.

Regimes of racial segregation were not disestablished because of the work of leaders and presidents and legislators but rather because of the fact that ordinary people adopted a critical stance in the way in which they perceived their relationship to reality. Social realities that may have appeared inalterable, impenetrable, came to be viewed as malleable and transformable; and people learned how to imagine what it might mean to live in a world that was not so exclusively governed by the principle of white supremacy. This collective consciousness emerged within the context of social struggles. Racism is extant not necessarily because of individual actors but because it is so deeply ingrained in the system. We cannot assume that the worst is over just because white people are no longer burning crosses or screaming the n-word.

For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. And finally, number ten: we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology. Angela Davis new book made me think of what Dear Nelson Mandela kept reminding us, that we must be willing to embrace that long walk to freedom. Understanding what it takes to really be free, to have no fear, is the first and most important step one has to make before undertaking this journey. Angela is the living proof that this arduous challenge can also be an exhilarating and beautiful one." —Archbishop Desmond Tutu As always she talks about feminism, prison industrial complex, racism but she also advocates for a new vocabulary to talk about repressive systems since many of the terminologies we currently use are historically obsolete and only provide a shallow understanding. She provides the example of thinking that changes in the law spontaneously correspond to real world changes, when countless examples have shown that this is far from the truth. She also says that feminism must involve a consciousness of capitalism, post-coloniolism, racism and a much broader understanding of gender and sexuality. She writes about how the personal is political, about how our struggles against institution recrafts who we are.Chaumtoli Huq's expertise lies in labor and employment issues, human rights, role of law in social movements and access to courts. She has devoted her career to the public interest serving as Director of the first South Asian Workers’ Rights Project in the country at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and as the first staff attorney to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a multi-ethnic, immigrant, worker-led labor organization of taxi-drivers. To conclude, I think this is a nice book for fans of Angela Davis but I didn't feel this is quite the must read leftist book that it is often claimed to be.