1 post tagged “conspiracy”
I recently attended a lecture on Prisons, Politics, and Gender given by Angela Davis.
This is what the post will be about.
Angela Davis is a former (?) Black Panther freedom fighter, and she is now current Professor of The History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. She is most famous for the campaign to free her from prison in the 70's, cause she kinda broke the law. But not really at all. But just because she didn't BREAK any law didn't mean that she wasn't on the FBI's top ten most wanted list for something like 2 months.
She also once ran for VP of the US under the Communist ticket. Because of her affiliation to the communist party she was fired from a prominent position in state government by Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan - what a complete embodiment of Satan douche. Don't worry, she was totes rehired.
So yeah, she's pretty interesting.
So why did I go to this lecture? Let me explain with this dialog:
Brittany: OMG girl you wanna go listen to Maya Angelou speak?
Me: OMG *fangirls* YES! Now I can find out why the caged bird sings!!!
Brittany: Yeah...I dunno anything about her but Carissa says she's here RIGHT NOW! LETS GO PUT ASIDE YOUR FOOD!
Me: Okay, I will even put aside nutrition to go! Screw eating!
...at the auditorium...
Me: Ummm Brittany this isn't Maya Angelou, it's Angela Davis
Brittany: Oh close enough
Me: Eh, whatever, prisons is a sweet topic *cool*
Let me just start of by saying that Angela Davis has THE COOLEST AFRO IN THE WORLD.
Okay, now on to the serious part.
The lecture started off poorly. The whole thing was kinda shaky until the end. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
To start off she mentioned Obama and Clinton. And then she said she really could care less because she is now a member of the Green Party and voted in that primary. But she does think that neither of them can a have a voice for all women/African Americans/minorities.
It was rather refreshing to hear someone speak about them that way.
Next she brought up Sodexho, which was the first thing me and Britt noticed about the pamphlets in our hands. Sodexho was a sponsor of this event and we weren't getting any damn food.
But her point about it was different. Turns out, Sodexho provides meal services to most of the colleges around America, most prisons around the world, and the US army.
It also use to be the largest shareholder of the company that owns most of the prisons in the world.
So technically she shouldn't have ate the food that was provided to her here - but she was real hungry XD
Next she talked about how the ideas of Kentucky Fried Chicken and commercial Prisons came from the same people.
Apparently they wanted to create two business that would always be in demand.
Oh, the jokes - they are endless and hilarious.
Next she addressed race and prisons. Sorry, I am not talented enough to convey what she said here. This where the presentation really started to take off and her confidence grew.
I also learned that there is now an entire prison in Arizona dedicated to handling solely Hawaiian prisoners.
She then talked about a young man who was shot in the head for being gay by a fellow classmate. Both are 15 & 14 respectively.
Well the boy died. And now the 14 year old will be tried as an adult.
A bad situation all around.
And I feel horrible, because I read that the boy often wore high heels to school. Sorry, just a shout out to his memory ~fabulouzz bb~ christ I never even bother to put on a pair.
In short, I learned more from her lecture than I learn in an entire month of reading multiple news sources everyday.
I left during the questioning round though, because Britt bailed and a weird guy asked a very creepy rhetorical question and I was like: "No sorry dudes I'm dying of starvation."
All in all it was really fun :)