A Fireside Chat on Activism with Angela Davis

"Even before the shootout, Angela Davis was a popular figure among radical blacks and whites because of her forthright stand on the issue of her membership in the Communist party and her subsequent confrontation with the Reagan administration. She was fired from her position as a philosophy instructor at U.C.L.A. in 1969 after she admitted her party affiliation. After Aug. 7, when she went underground and made the F.B.I.'s most- wanted list, she became almost a legendary figure to the left. Radical households displayed posters which said, "Angela is welcome here."

"One can talk about multiple feminisms; it is not a unitary phenomenon. There are those who assume feminism is about moving up the hierarchy into positions of power, and that's OK, but that's not what feminism does best. If the women at the bottom move up, the whole structure moves up.

The kind of feminism I identify with is a method for research but also for activism."

"At a challenging moment in our history, let us remind ourselves that we the hundreds of thousands, the millions of women, trans-people, men and youth who are here at the Women's March, we represent the powerful forces of change that are determined to prevent the dying cultures of racism, hetero-patriarchy from rising again."