The jail cell door is wide open, the microphone is ready, and the King stands tall in spirit.

On Jan. 22, activist, scholar, and author Angela Davis came to speak at the Compton Union Building’s Senior Ball room on the WSU Pullman campus for a live-streamed speech for the 28th annual MLK celebration, entitled “The Dream Behind Bars”.

Davis is an activist for the wrights of the oppressed, using her voice to promote gender equality, race equality, and prison reform. In the beginning of her career Davis joined the Communist party and was an active affiliate of the Black Panthers was once accused of aiding in a prison break leading to a moment of being imprisoned and facing the death penalty, but was cleared of the charges.

WSU live streamed the event to their campuses across Washington State for a free and open to the public presentation; WSU Pullman, WSU Spokane, WSU Tri-Cities, WSU Vancouver, and EvCC (GWH 160).

Davis’s Material was a smoothly woven cloth stitched together with Martin Luther King’s global connection, holding together a mix of current events and her experience in the field of the oppressor and the oppressed.

Davis said that every year she likes to look at Dr. King’s Massey Lecturers, a series of speeches he did with CBC Radio, and she likes to refer to the lecture on the youth and social action. Saying that it gives you a sense of who Dr. King was and how he saw the power of young people. Talking about how the youth then abandoned middle class values and decided to trade suits for coveralls in order to understand the impoverished, saying there actions were similar to the peace core.

“They were constructive dropouts,” said Davis quoting King.

She then moves on to King’s call to a world conciseness. Events that are foreign affect movements here, for King, Vietnam.

King does come up in other parts, but she also brings in an element of the organized movements and how they aren’t spontaneous, it took work to get their. Making examples out of the Obama election and saying,

“Movements can create the impossible.”

During the speech she pointed out the movements of this generation’s affect on the world, recalling a trip to Savona, Italy to speak about the Cuban Five, five Cuban men who were accused and convicted of espionage against the US.

“When I went to Savona to talk about the Cuban Five, everyone was talking about Ferguson,” said Davis. She then went on to say that people all over were saying “hands up don’t shoot”, knowing exactly what it’s like to live with corrupt authorities. She also spoke about the Occupy movement,

“There was this sense that finally, we had found a way to challenge capitalism.”

She also said that it was the first time that you could critique capitalism since the 30s, when the American Communist party formed.

Davis gives you the state of the prison industrial complex, which is currently becoming more about profit then focusing on bettering people and drawing into how world economics is pulling away from essentials, like health care and education. In a way this has already done damage by saying that the Ebola epidemic shouldn’t have happened.

The police aspect of the keynote got interesting. It went back into the prison at first saying,

“Even if police perpetrators were found guilty, what difference dose it make?” Highlighting that our prison system is flawed, it doesn’t help the people who have been hurt and the criminals that need help. What can help according to her is boosting education.

Davis discussed that, not only are police and campus police able to get military weapons from the government, but are also trained with the Israeli military for the purpose of counter terrorism. Asking the question, how can you keep the peace when trained to shoot to kill?

Mid speech Davis said, “I want us to be aware of our tendency to exceptionalize.” We are known to except racist acts as exceptional, and not shocking.

To watch Angela Davis’ speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI-blcq-r3U