Marxist Angela Davis: Riots are 'rehearsals for revolution'

FPI / August 28, 2020

The mayhem unleashed on America's cities by Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other anarchists is laying the groundwork for a larger "revolution" to bring about "radical change" to the capitalist system, Marxist activist Angela Davis said.

"Sometimes we assume the most important work is the dramatic work — the street demonstrations. I like the term that [Marxist cultural critic] John Berger used: Demonstrations are 'rehearsals for revolution,' " Davis told filmmaker Ava DuVernay in a Vanity Fair interview.

The Black Lives Matter riots and “defund the police” movement represent the culmination of decades of radical left-wing activism, Davis said.

Davis is a tenured professor (retired) at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“The protests offered people an opportunity to join in this collective demand to bring about deep change, radical change,” Davis said. “Defund the police, abolish policing as we know it now. These are the same arguments that we’ve been making for such a long time about the prison system and the whole criminal justice system. It was as if all of these decades of work by so many people, who received no credit at all, came to fruition.”

Davis, who was a longtime member of Communist Party USA, also equated capitalism with racism: “Capitalism has always been racial capitalism. Wherever we see capitalism, we see the influence and the exploitation of racism.”

The Marxist activist also backed the rioters' tearing down of historic statues: “Those statues are our reminders that the history of the United States of America is a history of racism. So it’s natural that people would try to bring down those symbols.”

Davis continued: “Not only should there be free education, but there should be free childcare and there should be free health care as well. All of these issues are coming to a head. This is, as you said, a racial reckoning. A reexamination of the role that racism has played in the creation of the United States of America.”

Free Press International