The @JohnsHopkins Foreign Affairs Symposium is an entirely student-run, non-profit speaker series dedicated to discourse on current and pressing issues.
Welcome to the 2021 Foreign Affairs Symposium: “Where Do We Go From Here?” Our 24th series comes at a time defined by unimaginable change. Having dramatically disrupted the global order, events of the past year have introduced major questions about the future of world politics.
I got to speak with Angela Davis tonight in a conversation organized by @JHUFAS. It was such an incredible honor. We talked a lot about the importance and challenges of international solidarity in the present.
"Without hope nothing can be accomplished. Increasingly it has become apparent to me that the work of activism is to generate hope, for those who are involved as well for those who are onlookers." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"I’m not saying we shouldn’t be safe, we should feel safe. The police are not accomplishing that goal and we have to figure out other ways, other institutions, that can work more effectively to help create safety and security in our communities." #AngelaDavis#FAS2021
"The strategy of abolition becomes the most obvious when one looks at the failure of the police to produce anything likely safety and security, whether they are private police or whether they are public police." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"Movements for Black liberation should increasingly embrace issues of healthcare, climate, environmental racism; as a matter of fact, we forget that the whole notion of environmental racism came out of the struggle for Black liberation." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"Capitalism is the elephant in the room here in large part because the declining health in Black communities, indigenous communities, Latin communities is very much related to...
It's important to remember that the global consciousness of structural racism began to emerge in this country about a year ago...the lynching of George Floyd happened at a moment when large numbers of people began to rethink the ideological representations of racism. #AngelaDavis
"I say this to point out that Black communities have a special responsibility to stand up and contest anti-asian racism." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"Black people are the most recognized target of racism that has unfolded over the last four centuries, and Black people have been the beneficiaries of solidarities from not only all over the country but literally all over the world." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"The fact that it was assumed that racism was an individual attitude makes no sense at all. How many decades have we spent assuming that the challenge was to make sure that a person is not considered to be a racist? It is so much more complicated than that." #AngelaDavis#FAS2021
"We have to recognize that racism is so deeply embedded into this country’s history. In the history of this country that is not something that anyone could ever make light of." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"Feminism cannot be effective as long as it focuses myopically on gender without recognizing the interrelationality with race and class and nation and so forth." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"The unfilled promise of the past can create agendas for the present and the future. Therefore, even though the structures and formations are different, we are relying on ideas that have been generated in the past." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"My life was literally saved by a movement that was grounded in internationalism… today I welcome the openness to examining the similarities and differences across national borders." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"I never thought I would witness a time like this with such conversations and moving closer to prison abolition. I just didn't think that I would be alive to witness that." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE#FAS2021
"I do think it is so important to point out that immigrant detention facilities are a key element of this system of jails and prisons…Immigrant detention facilities still constitute the most profitable sector of the private prison industry." #AngelaDavis#WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE