Author, activist and former 1970s radical Angela Davis had a huge audience Jan. 21 when she addressed the Women’s March in Washington.
A smaller one — perhaps 2,000 — will pack a Chula Vista gym March 15 when she continues her campus tour with a talk at Southwestern College.
On Wednesday, Davis was in Manhattan, Kansas, speaking to 1,200 people at Kansas State University.
“There is no way to make America great again,” she’s quoted as saying. “If America is ever to be great, it must be in the future. The work that we have to do in the coming period is vast.”
Last week at the University of Missouri, the UC Santa Cruz professor emerita said: “I want to see the same crowd from the women’s march stand up for illegal immigrants. … We have to figure out how to show up when it’s not necessarily about us.”
An eventbrite page for free tickets to Southwestern’s event said it was sold out, but that more tickets will be released “incrementally” after Feb. 10.
Her talk here, titled “Education or Incarceration,” draws on her research on criminalization related to race, gender and imprisonment, the school said.
“Having helped to popularize the notion of a ‘prison-industrial complex,’ Dr. Davis will urge her audience to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.”
Davis, 73, earned her master’s degree from UC San Diego and was here again as recently as 2014, when she spoke at UCSD’s Price Center Ballroom,
“Davis, notorious for her outspoken political activism and controversial 1971 arrest, and later acquittal, for allegedly masterminding a Marin, California, shootout that left three people dead, sounded at times upbeat and equally reflective,” said a report on that talk.
“Her well-received speech signaled to the multi-ethnic crowd that the time had come to not only celebrate the heroes of Black History, but also the ordinary citizens who collectively contribute to the ongoing struggle for economic, racial, and social justice.”
Southwestern College’s Janelle Williams, professional development coordinator, invited Davis on behalf of her committee, the school said.
Her tour continues this month with stops Feb. 12 at Cal State Monterey Bay and Feb. 23 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton before his visit to Chula Vista.
It will be Davis’ first visit to the school, a spokeswoman said.
