Angela Davis is a “high-level” speaker, connecting threads and trends at a macro level in the various global struggles for equity, dignity, and justice. While there were many moments I wished she would speak further and in more detail, her insights are treasured. Two big takeaways from this book are as follows:

Time and again Angela encourages us to have an “international” view of struggles. There is an enormous tendency to see struggles in different times and places as presenting fundamentally different issues when this is simply not the case. We see how Israeli military train police in America, and how American prison strategies are exported to Israel. Although the specific context of a given place is an important lens to understand those involved, it is through international solidarity that progressive movements have historically achieved victory (see ending apartheid in South Africa, abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, etc.) I take this to mean we must work to convince people of the intersections in our struggles. As King declared, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The repression in Ferguson shares an identical root with the repression in Palestine; trans rights intersect with prison abolition. My next hurdle is specifics: how do we convince people of their interconnectedness? Is talking enough?

We replicate the structures of retributive justice in our every day lives; someone attacks us verbally or physically and our response is a counterattack. As Angela says, the “retributive impulses of the state are inscribed in our very emotional responses.” Angela frequently restates the classic feminist slogan “the personal is political”; but her insights also articulate that the personal reproduces the political, and vice versa. We must work on both an individual and a collectivist front to overcome injustice and oppression. Neither is more or less needed; both are required in tandem. 4.5 stars