This book is a compilation of ten interviews and lectures by the renowned activist and scholar of the black liberation movement, Angela Davis. Delivered between the years 2013-15, at different universities and cities in the US, UK and Turkey, each interview or lecture has its own focus and flavour, but there are common themes throughout. Chief among these is that political and social change is brought about by people’s movements, not individuals, and that such movements are connected.
The Montgomery bus boycott, which propelled him to fame, was initiated and sustained by hundreds of black, female, domestic workers who refused to ride the buses if they had to sit in the back.
Only movements can force reluctant politicians to make changes.
Native Americans have an even higher rate of incarceration.
The connection highlighted by Davis was spontaneously made in the field: Palestinian-Americans joined the Ferguson protests, pro-Palestine slogans were raised, and activists in the West Bank and Gaza tweeted advice to Ferguson on how to deal with tear gas.
One of G4S’s subsidiaries is a private prison company in the US, a sector which has become increasingly profitable with privatisation, leading Davis, among others, to speak of the prison-industrial complex.
In view of the current situation in the US, Davis’s book has added relevance, stressing, as it does, the resistance power of inclusive popular movements.
Extraordinary Renditions: American Writers on PalestineEdited by Ru FreemanMassachusetts: Olive Branch Press/Interlink Publishing, 2016Pp.