Angela Davis Hands Up Analysis

In this set of interviews, Angela Davis simultaneously addresses the issue of why we are stuck in this carceral state while also providing her solution, a solution that many would see as too radical. After first reading this interview, I thought immediately of the conversation we had with the two activists from Hands Up United. Society views her as an “enemy of the state”, as a communist and terrorist because of her use of violence as means to affect change, something very similar to what is happening now on the ground in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore. She also elaborated on tensions within the original civil rights movement because of multiple strands of activism running through the black community (ranging from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to the Black Panther Party). However, Davis slightly complicates what the speakers from Hands Up said because it becomes clear that this is not a new type of activism (it might simply appear new because of how popular media sources have chosen to represent these events). Still this “new agenda” that she speaks of seems like the most appropriate approach after spending a semester looking at where we stand and how
Davis, unlike many, acknowledges not that the system is broken but rather hypocritical and fundamentally wrong. For her, capitalism democracy is the root of the problem. While this offers a vision of a more ideal political ideology, Davis does not make it clear what happens next. How can we imagine a society with no prison? This will force us to redefine crime and punishment and a fundamental change of our psyche. This is something that Davis fails to address in the interview; either her solution is still too rooted in political theory or our common sense, hegemonic idea of American society is so set, that it seems impossible to change even an obviously problematic