#South African Youth Day

[lethebomadi]

happy youth day '22. we'll never forget what happened 46 years ago on the fateful day - june 16th 1976.

#soweto #soweto uprising #soweto 1976 #apartheid #south africa #south african history #police brutality #racisim #youth day #youth day south africa

[fatehbaz]

The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children.

The ruling Labor Party last month [August 2023] pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year [2023], also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended.

The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.

“We don’t have a National Human Rights Act. Some of our states and territories have human rights protections [...]. But they’re not constitutionally entrenched so they can be overridden by the parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. The Queensland Human Rights Act – introduced in 2019 – protects children from being detained in adult prison so it had to be suspended for the government to be able to pass its legislation.

---

Earlier this year, Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that Queensland had the highest number of children in detention of any Australian state. Between 2021-2022, the so-called “Sunshine State” recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention, compared with 190 in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, the second highest. [...]

[M]ore than half the jailed Queensland children are resentenced for new offences within 12 months of their release.

Another report released by the Justice Reform Initiative in November 2022 showed that Queensland’s youth detention numbers had increased by more than 27 percent in seven years.

---

The push to hold children in police watch houses is viewed by the Queensland government as a means to house these growing numbers. Attached to police stations and courts, a watch house contains small, concrete cells with no windows and is normally used only as a “last resort” for adults awaiting court appearances or required to be locked up by police overnight. [...]

However, McDougall said he has “real concerns about irreversible harm being caused to children” detained in police watch houses, which he described as a “concrete box”. “[A watch house] often has other children in it. There’ll be a toilet that is visible to pretty much anyone,” he said. “Children do not have access to fresh air or sunlight. And there’s been reported cases of a child who was held for 32 days in a watch house whose hair was falling out. [...]"

---

He also pointed out that 90 percent of imprisoned children and young people were awaiting trial.

“Queensland has extremely high rates of children in detention being held on remand. So these are children who have not been convicted of an offence,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Indigenous people making up only 4.6 percent of Queensland’s population, Indigenous children make up nearly 63 percent of those in detention. The rate of incarceration for Indigenous children in Queensland is 33 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Maggie Munn, a Gunggari person and National Director of First Nations justice advocacy group Change the Record, told Al Jazeera the move to hold children as young as 10 in adult watch houses was “fundamentally cruel and wrong”. [...]

---

[Critics] also told Al Jazeera that the government needed to stop funding “cops and cages” and expressed concern over what [they] described as the “systemic racism, misogyny, and sexism” of the Queensland Police Service.

In 2019, police officers and other staff were recorded joking about beating and burying Black people and making racist comments about African and Muslim people. The recordings also captured sexist remarks [...]. The conversations were recorded in a police watch house, the same detention facilities where Indigenous children can now be held indefinitely.

Australia has repeatedly come under fire at an international level regarding its treatment of children and young people in the criminal justice system. The United Nations has called repeatedly for Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to the international standard of 14 years old [...].

[MR], Queensland’s minister for police and corrective services, [...] – who introduced the legislation, which is due to expire in 2026 – is unrepentant, defending his decision last month [August 2023].

“This government makes no apology for our tough stance on youth crime,” he was quoted as saying in a number of Australian media outlets.

---

Text by: Ali MC. "Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children". Al Jazeera. 18 September 2023. At: aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/australian-state-suspends-human-rights-law-to-lock-up-more-children [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[safety-pin-punk]

Punk History Resources: Vol. 1

This is a compilation of resources found and recommended by various alternative bloggers, each of whom are credited for their contributions. This started because I was getting SO MANY asks about resources such as videos, books, and websites to use to learn about punk history. Admittedly, my own list isn't that long, so I thought it was best to reach out to some others and share their knowledge with everyone. So thank you again to everyone who helped out with this!!

@raggedyfink @lovintheaesthetic @punk-patches @my-chemical-ratz

YOUTUBE:

Punk/Goth Docs Playlist on Youtube (77 Videos) (raggedyfink)

1991 The Year Punk broke (lovintheaesthetic)

She's Real (Worse Than Queer) (lovintheaesthetic)

Don't Need You, The Herstory of Riot Grrrl (lovintheaesthetic)

The Long Queer History of Punk (lovintheaesthetic)

The very Black History of Punk Music (lovintheaesthetic)

Punk's Not Dead (lovintheaesthetic)

BOOKS:

Phantoms the Rise of La Deathrock (raggedyfink)

Too Tough to Love by Roxy Ramone (raggedyfink)

I Slept With Joey Ramone by Mickey Leigh (raggedyfink)

Please Kill Me, The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Rock (punk-patches & lovintheaesthetic)

Encyclopedia of Punk (punk-patches)

The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho-Punk, 1980-1984 (my-chemical-ratz)

The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (my-chemical-ratz)

Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (lovintheaesthetic & my-chemical-ratz)

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (my-chemical-ratz)

Punk Rock: An Oral History (my-chemical-ratz)

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution (my-chemical-ratz)

Queercore: Queer Punk Media Subculture (my-chemical-ratz)

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution: An Oral History (my-chemical-ratz)

Spider-Punk: Banned in D.C.(this doesnt have anything to do with history but i love spider punk so) (my-chemical-ratz)

MOVIES / DOCUMENTARIES:

The Punk Singer (punk-patches)

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution (punk-patches)

Punk's Not Dead (punk-patches)

Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band (punk-patches)

Queercore: How To Punk a Revolution (my-chemical-ratz)

Afropunk (my-chemical-ratz)

Punk in Africa (my-chemical-ratz)

A Band Called Death (my-chemical-ratz)) (link courtesy of @wrench-p, but is unavailable to watch in the US))

ARTICLES:

(some of these are found on JSTOR, but you can sign up for a free 100 articles per month)

Muslim Punk in an Alt-Right Era (my-chemical-ratz)

A History of Punk (my-chemical-ratz)

Jews, Punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American Story (my-chemical-ratz)

What is Punk and Why Did It Scare People So Much? (my-chemical-ratz)

An Account of a South African Punk Rock Music Collection (my-chemical-ratz)

Queer As Punk: A Guide To LGBTQIA+ Punk (my-chemical-ratz)

Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s (my-chemical-ratz)

ZINES:

(some may not be *about* history, but they’re a huge part of it!)

Punk Planet archive (my-chemical-ratz & safety-pin-punk)

Queer Zine archive (I personally like the anon boy collection haha) (my-chemical-ratz)

Archive.org in general has a lot of zines :) (my-chemical-ratz)

ETC:

(These aren’t about punk history itself but could be helpful in learning about the politics that go with being punk)

A History of Punk from 1976-78: A Free Online Course from the University of Reading (safety-pin-punk)

Punk History Reading List (safety-pin-punk)

Essays about socialism (my-chemical-ratz)

Leftism 101 (my-chemical-ratz)

Rights as an American protester (my-chemical-ratz)

Social justice classes (I’m really excited to go through these!!) (my-chemical-ratz)

Stamped (my-chemical-ratz)

How To Be An Anti-Racist (my-chemical-ratz)

Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm (my-chemical-ratz)

I would love to make a Vol. 2 post at some point in the future, so if you have resources and want to share, PLEASE message me!!

#punk 101 #punk culture #punk history #punk #punx #punk resources #resource list #friends!!! #making this post legit made tumblr crash on my desktop soo uhhhh let me know if anything is fucked up please!

[apollos-olives]

hey! so i was watching a movie called "Sarafina!" which is a South African musical film about Apartheid and the main character, Sarafina, wanting to find more in life while she's at school under the opression. It's very interesting and a good movie to watch, it's actually one of my favorite movies as a South African myself, but what i found so incredibly sad is the parallels between it and what's currently going on in Palestine. The movie is set in 1986 and it's based on events that happened to school children where police would be at their schools, monitor what they learn and threaten to shoot when students rebelled in any way. it was heartbreaking to see how they literally opened fire and shot any random student at the high school, and there's this scene where their history teacher tells them that she hates the violence and hatred and wishes for peace. There's also parallels to the dehumanizing language, the white man tells the black child that they are ruining his land and so he will fight them because he doesn't care how old they are and he uses degrading language towards them.

It's terrible that this is literally what's happening and has been happening and it also goes to show how Israel truly is a terrorist state. I do recommend this movie because Palestine's struggle was SA struggle and altho we're nowhere near perfect, my best friend is black, my sister's best friend is white and we're both brown. Peace will come to Palestine and the Apartheid Israel will fall and Palestinians will have freedom.

In the movie they say something so powerful about how the youth is unable to forget because they are so young and how the government feared the youth because they will be the generation to taste freedom and i pray to God every day that Palestine will be free.

I'm sorry for the essay of an ask but i thought I'd share this with you. Palestine will most certainly be free and to ensure that us in SA will protest and boycott and do what we can to pressurize. No one is free until everyone is free

this seems like a wonderful movie to watch, thank you for the recommendation 🫶 and it's true, oppressive entities always fear the youth, since they know they will be the next generation to be free. it's a sad but inspiring reality.

[crossdreamers]

Dr James Barry, the Transgender Man who Became British Colonial Medical Inspector in 1822

The Vagina Museum tells the story of the transgender man who became a famous military surgeon in Britain in the 19th century.

Dr James Barry (circa 1789-1865) was a renowned military surgeon who is probably better known for the speculation about his gender than his illustrious career. So let's set the record straight about the work of this brilliant healer.

A famous surgeon outed after death

James Barry was assigned female at birth. This was only revealed after his death. The fact was made public as the woman who laid his body out after his death was disgruntled at not being paid for her work, so she ended up taking a story about his body to the press.

The story was somewhat newsworthy because in his lifetime, Barry was a famous surgeon, something of a rockstar in the military and surgical worlds.

It's hard to tease out details of Barry's early life due to posthumous speculation - once the news broke, several people claimed they'd known all along, or told stories about his supposed femininity, and the whole story was viewed through the lens of 19th century gender politics.

Even Barry's precise date of birth is not known - the likely date seems to be around 1789, but it may have been as late as 1799. Barry is known to have lied about his age, because his appearance was very youthful, and he sometimes passed himself off as younger than he was.

His life

Barry studied at the University of Edinburgh, and received his qualification as a doctor of medicine in 1812, when he would have been about 19 or 20 years old (or 10, according to his own account of his age!). After this, he studied in London and qualified as a surgeon in 1813.

He proceeded to join the British army, enlisting as a hospital assistant just four days after qualifying as a surgeon. During his 46 years of service, he gained huge renown as a surgeon and a doctor.

Surgeon in South Africa

In 1816, Barry went on his first overseas posting as an assistant surgeon. He was posted to Cape Town, and quickly became friends with the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. The friendship began because Barry treated Somerset's sick daughter spectacularly well.

Later in his life, in 1829, Barry went absent without leave from the army when Somerset himself became sick. He spent two years treating his friend until Somerset's death.

Colonial Medical Inspector

In 1822, Somerset promoted Barry to the role of Colonial Medical Inspector, which was an astronomical leap in Barry's career. Sometimes, though, the friendship raised eyebrows. In 1824, Somerset and Barry were accused of having sex with each other.

Barry's renown grew hugely during the ten years he spent in South Africa. He is sometimes credited as the first doctor to successfully perform a C-section in Africa where both survived, though that credit may better go to indigenous Africans

Throughout his long surgical career, Barry was posted all around the world, serving in the West Indies, Europe, America, and Africa. Following him was a reputation for excellence. Wherever he went, sanitation greatly improved, and soldiers and local people alike became healthier.

A bit of a jerk

Barry achieved all of this by being kind of a jerk. He was known to be quick-tempered, heavy-handed, argumentative and tactless. He rubbed his colleagues up the wrong way.

Barry's career wasn't a completely upward trajectory, because he sometimes got himself court-martialed or demoted due to his behaviour. He famously won a duel against a colleague, and shot the man's hat clean off his head.

Quarreling with Florence Nightingale

One of his most famous arguments was with Florence Nightingale herself during the Crimean War. When writing about it, years later, Nightingale doesn't specify the cause of the argument, but Barry lived rent-free in her head following it.

[Florence Nightingale  was an very famous English social reformer, a statistician and the founder of modern nursing.]

Loved by his patients

Barry's patients loved him, though. As well as being a talented physician and surgeon, he reputedly had a good bedside manner.

Barry's military career came to an end in 1859. He didn't leave, and he wasn't sacked for being a difficult person to work with. He was forcibly retired because he was old, and his health was failing. Six years later, he died in London, from dysentery.

In the century and a half since his death, discussion of James Barry has mostly focused on speculation about his gender. But that, perhaps, is one of the least interesting things about this remarkable doctor.

Top photo of Barry (centre), his dog and John, his servant, circa 1862, via Wellcome Images. Second photo: Portrait claimed to be of Barry, ca. 1820s

Thread from twitter (which we refuse to call X as long as Elon Musk is deadnaming his transgender daughter).

#transgender #trans #lgbt #lgbtqa #queer #ftm #history #trans man

[septembriseur]

From Stanley Cohen's States of Denial:

My earliest memory that could be called ‘political’ goes back to a winter night in Johannesburg in the mid-nineteen-fifties. I must have been twelve or thirteen. My father was away from home for a few days on business. Like many South African middle-class families (especially Jewish and anxious ones), we employed for these rare occasions a ‘Night Watch Boy’: that is, an adult black man – in this case an old Zulu (I vividly remember the wooden discs in his ear lobes)– working for a private security company. Just before going to bed, I looked out of the window and saw him huddled over a charcoal fire, rubbing his hands to keep warm, the collar of his khaki overcoat turned up. As I slipped into my over-warm bed– flannel sheets, hot water bottle, thick eiderdown brought by my grandmother from Poland– I suddenly started thinking about why he was out there and I was in here.

My mother always used to tell me that I was ‘over-sensitive’. This must have been my over-sensitivity at work, an inchoate feeling not exactly of guilt– this came later– but that something was wrong. Why did this old man have to sit out in the cold all night? Why had our family (and everyone like us) been allocated black men and women (who were called ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ or just ‘natives’) as domestic servants? Why did they live in tiny rooms in the backyard? Where were their wives, husbands and children? Why did they address me as ‘baas’, or ‘master’?

I don’t remember what I did with my bedroom epiphany. Almost certainly, I just dropped off to sleep. But later, even when I began to think sociologically about apartheid, privilege, injustice and racism, I would still return to some version of that early psychological unease. I saw this unease– correctly, I believe– as arising from a sense of knowing that something was deeply wrong, but also knowing that I could not live in a state of permanent awareness of this knowledge. Without my deliberate intention, this awareness would switch itself on or, more often, off. There might be weeks or months of blindness, amnesia and sleepwalking. Political education – later called ‘consciousness raising’ – made these phases less frequent, just as it should do.

Later, I started asking another question, one that I still discuss with people who grew up with me. Why did others, even those raised in similar families, schools and neighbourhoods, who read the same papers, walked the same streets, apparently not ‘ see ’ what we saw? Could they be living in another perceptual universe – where the horrors of apartheid were invisible and the physical presence of black people often slipped from awareness? Or perhaps they saw exactly what we saw, but just didn’t care or didn’t see anything wrong....

...By this time, my obsession appeared from an unexpected direction. In 1980, I left England with my family to live in Israel. My vintage sixties radicalism left me utterly unprepared for this move. Nearly twenty years in Britain had done little to change the naïve views I had absorbed while growing up in the Zionist youth movement in South Africa. It soon became obvious that Israel was not like this at all. By the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, I was already disenchanted with the liberal peace movement in which I thought I belonged. I drifted into what in Israeli terms is the ‘far left ’ – the margins of the margins.

I also became involved in human rights issues, particularly torture. In 1990,I started working with Daphna Golan, the Research Director of the Israeli human rights organization, B’Ttselem, on a research project about allegations of torture against Palestinian detainees. Our evidence of the routine use of violent and illegal methods of interrogation was to be confirmed by numerous other sources. But we were immediately thrown into the politics of denial. The official and mainstream response was venomous. Liberals were uneasy and concerned... Yet there was no outrage. Soon a tone of acceptance began to be heard. Abuses were intrinsic to the situation; there was nothing to be done till a political solution was found; something like torture might even be necessary sometimes; anyway, we don’t want to keep being told about this all the time.

This apparent normalization seemed difficult to explain. The report had an enormous media impact: graphic drawings of standard torture methods were widely reproduced, and a taboo subject was now discussed openly. Yet very soon, the silence returned. Worse than torture not being in the news, it was no longer news. Something whose existence could not be admitted, was now seen as predictable...

...It was natural to make the claustrophobic assumption that this problem was unique because Israel was uniquely horrible. Luckily our visitors from the international human rights community reminded us that the problem was universal. They were interested in information circulating in the international arena. How did audiences in North America or Western Europe react to knowledge of atrocities in East Timor, Uganda or Guatemala? I started imagining a nice thirty- something couple sitting, with their breakfast coffee and croissants, in New York, London, Paris or Toronto. They pick up the morning news- paper: ‘Another Thousand Tutsis Massacred in Rwanda’. In the mail plop two circular letters, one from Oxfam: ‘While you are eating your breakfast, ten more children starve to death in Somalia’, and one from Amnesty: ‘While you are eating your lunch, eight street-children are killed in Brazil’. What does this ‘news ’ do to them, and what do they do to the news? What goes through their minds? What do they say to each other?

[reasoningdaily]

As the world braced for the verdict of the Chauvin trial, in Columbus, Ohio, there was another fatal shooting of 16-year-old Black girl named Ma’Khia Bryant. Many who watched the graphic and gut-wrenching bodycam video have decried the officer who deemed it necessary to use lethal force to defuse a physical altercation involving the Black teenager.

When juxtaposing what feels like a never-ending pattern of police brutality against Black people with the treatment of white perpetrators, there is an obvious disparity that highlights the pervasive nature of systemic racism. White gunmen who commit heinous crimes are often treated differently, with police being able to apprehend white suspects and bring them safely into custody.

Three recent examples of this: 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who was safely arrested after entering Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina and killing nine people in 2015. What’s even more disturbing is reports that police brought Roof Burger King following his arrest. In 2020, during protests of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a 17-year-old gunman, Kyle Rittenhouse, used an AR-15 assault rifle to kill two people and injured a third. Law enforcement apparently offered Rittenhouse and a group of militia members water at some point before the shooting took place.

In March 2021, after a gunman shot and killed eight people, with six of them being Asian, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Director of Communications remarked that the shooter was having a “really bad day.” These comments drew public outrage at the humanization of the mass shooter. Black youth aren’t given the opportunity to be humanized, with a number of tragic stories illustrating this.

Over a decade ago, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones was fatally shot by Detroit police who were looking for a murder suspect. In 2012, the world was gripped by the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, who thought Martin looked suspicious. In 2014, a Black youth named Tamir Rice was shot by police. Rice, who was only 12 years old, was thought to be 20 years old. In 2015, a video of McKinney, Texas police officer Eric Casebolt went viral. Casebolt was filmed yelling at Black teenagers and threw one teenage girl to the ground while kneeling on her back. The video sparked rightful outrage at the excessive force used on the young girl.

Examining patterns of police treatment towards Black youth highlights a prominent issue: the adultification bias, which is the phenomenon where adults perceive Black youth as being older than they actually are. When the adultification bias was examined, one study found that Black girls as young as five years old were perceived as being less needing of protection and nurturing, compared to their white counterparts.  

Research indicates that Black boys are perceived as older and less innocent when compared to their white counterparts. “Black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent,” shared Phillip Atiba Goff, Ph.D., who authored a study examining this phenomenon in more detail. Black girls are treated disparately compared to their white counterparts and are more likely to be seen as older, while having to navigate the combined effects of racism and sexism.

The adultification bias contributes to the continued harm and abuse that Black youth face, not just at the hands of law enforcement, but also in the education system. When Black women and girls are mistreated, harmed and abused, it is less likely to be reported on. The Say Her Name campaign co-founded by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw was designed to bring greater awareness to this issue.

Disrupting the adultification bias must first begin with awareness that this problem even exists. Despite the wealth of evidence detailing the ways it manifests, greater understanding is necessary. Training about the adultification bias should be mandatory, especially for folks working with and around Black youth populations. Understanding the ways that the adultification bias manifests as well as how to mitigate this type of bias is imperative.

Although research indicates that those who are marginalized are likely to internalize some of the biases and stereotypes about their own identity group, it is likely that having more Black people working with Black youth populations would lessen the occurrence of the adultification bias. One can assume that having experience and exposure to Black youth may increase one’s understanding, and limit the adultification bias from taking place. Resources must be allocated to support education about the adultification bias and how it can be interrupted. Lastly, rather than resorting to punitive measures when dealing with Black youth, we must encourage the learning of de-escalation and conflict resolution strategies.

#How The Adultification Bias Contributes To Black Trauma #adultification of Black Children #adultification #Black Children Matter

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 1 March 1968, the racist Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 came into force in the UK. In Britain's East African colonies after independence, like Uganda and Kenya, the new governments were pursuing various policies to Africanise, which threatened tens of thousands of South Asian settlers: mostly British passport-holders. So the Labour government passed the act to prevent them coming to Britain, despite the fact that the country had net emigration at that time. Labour claimed that the law wasn't racial, but secret papers released decades later showed that it purposely targeted "coloured immigrants," and cabinet was even advised that the bill would breach international law. A confidential memo to prime minister Harold Wilson said that they could argue "the Asian community in East Africa are not nationals of this country in any racial sense and that the obligations imposed, for example, by the European Convention on Human Rights do not therefore apply." Though most Conservative MPs voted for the law, even the conservative Times newspaper described it as "probably the most shameful measure that Labour members have ever been asked by their whips to support." Tory Lord Ian Gilmour, who opposed the bill, described its purpose very straightforwardly to journalist Mark Lattimer: “to keep the Blacks out." (At the time in the UK all people of colour were considered "Black.") In our podcast episodes 33-34 we talk about the experiences of Asian migrants in Britain and how they fought against racism: https://workingclasshistory.com/2019/09/18/e28-29-asian-youth-movements-in-bradford/ Pictured: Kenyan Asian refugees at this time https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2220765034775301/?type=3

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by David Karsh

Desperate to find a restroom after a nearly nine-hour flight from Johannesburg, South African university student Klaas Mokgomole grabbed his carry-on and hurried off the plane.

Urgently searching out a gate agent at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport and praying that the man understood English, Mokgomole asked, sincerely, "Can you please show me to the blacks-only restroom?"

Mokgomole - then a South African university student and outspoken youth leader of the anti-Israel, Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement - stood in the busy airport restroom dumbfounded as Jews and Arabs went in and out. They would have been oblivious to the transformation taking place as they stepped around him on that day in July 2015.

Recalling that seminal moment, Mokgomole explained to the Tazpit Press Service during a recent visit to Jerusalem, "I was taught very emphatically, racism in Israel runs so deep, that the Jews do not even share their toilets with blacks or Arabs."

"To see within the first few moments after landing in Israel that this clearly is not the case marked a turning point for me," he told TPS.

#south africa #klaas mokgomole #ben gurion airport #bds

[eretzyisrael]

Eye-opener: South African activist abandons BDS movement after trip to Israel

South African university student Klaas Mokgomole couldn’t find a blacks-only restroom at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

By David Karsh, TPS

Desperate to find a restroom after a nearly nine-hour flight from Johannesburg, South African university student Klaas Mokgomole grabbed his carry-on and hurried off the plane.

Urgently searching out a gate agent at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport and praying that the man understood English, Mokgomole asked, sincerely, “Can you please show me to the blacks-only restroom?”

The agent’s eyes widened in disbelief. He told Mokgomole in no uncertain terms that he never heard of such a thing and pointed him to a nearby bathroom.

That’s when it was Mokgomole’s turn to be confused.

Mokgomole — then a South African university student and outspoken youth leader of the anti-Israel, Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement — stood in the busy airport restroom dumbfounded as Jews and Arabs went in and out. They would have been oblivious to the transformation taking place as they stepped around him on that day in July 2015.

Recalling that seminal moment, Mokgomole explained to the Tazpit Press Service during a recent visit to Jerusalem, “I was taught very emphatically, racism in Israel runs so deep, that the Jews do not even share their toilets with blacks or Arabs.”

“To see within the first few moments after landing in Israel that this clearly is not the case marked a turning point for me,” he told TPS.

His curiosity sparked, Mokgomole began what would become a transformational journey from virulent anti-Israel activist to passionate peacemaker and bridge-builder between Israel and the rest of the world.

‘We didn’t know the difference’

As a student at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he was a star player on the school’s volleyball and netball teams, Klaas Mokgomole’s willingness to speak out against injustice or on behalf of people he felt were being marginalized made him a young, rising leader within the African National Congress (ANC), the black liberation movement which eventually became the country’s ruling party.

It was while advocating for the rights of those less fortunate than him, where Mokgomole first found himself taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically as part of the anti-Israel BDS movement which was sweeping South African college campuses at the time.

Read More: Here

H/T @gaiagalit

#Anti-Israel Propaganda #apartheid #BDS #South Africa

[1morespiral]

i just tripped out during this study session and i don't know where this chat ends.

disclaimer/s: first, most of these are one-liners/mostly incomplete thoughts because, again, this is in between trying to actually get information in and trying to not copy the whole textbook on these sheets of paper, and actually trying rest during a study break. secondly, this whole thought sits closely to the importance of language to any self-identifying adult, the concept of community itself, and to africans entirely.

i asked myself: 'what is the broader south african coloured community's stance on the events of 16 june 1976?'

quick context: 16 june 1976, also known as 'june 16'/'sharpevillle massacre'/'youth day' is a day on which the youth of south africa took to the apartheid-thick streets to protest against being taught in the afrikaans language - which, although indigenous to south africa and spoken by most if not all of the coloured community as a first language, was (and continues to be by most people) considered as 'the oppressor's tongue'. reports say 'about 200' people died in soweto that day after the apartheid police opened fire on literal children.

a couple of things went through my head after that:

there were coloureds in support of that movement. (in whatever capacity) so they must've been able to detach themselves, right?

this whole 'oppressor's tongue' name is weird too, right? because the coloured community has developed an entire culture with whatever history has thrown at them. for sure having that as a basis of a movement must have sat funny with some coloured folk.

not all coloured people identify as 'coloured'. some identify as 'ethnically coloured & politically black'. in fact not all coloured people are 'coloured'. some are bi-racial and none of their parents are afrikaans-speaking. so what is these individuals' significance in this conversation?

should they feel a type of way about it? while it would be weird to say being coloured was 'forced on them', (insert the full history of coloured people with the dark and bright parts) it would also be remiss to not include the white man's involvement in the creation of the community. should they champion and protect their own oppression?

does it continue to become their 'oppression' once they have owned it and made it theirs? or does it just become a part of history?

while all of that is happening, a thought that i have shared with my friends in the past resurfaced. it basically says: 'the day south africa has a true and honest conversation regarding the coloured community is the day the relationship between the minorities in the country will start getting better or horribly worse.'

as i type this post i am asking myself 'does south africa even need to have that conversation in the first place? does the coloured community need to be re-legitimised beyond what we known them?'

yes? becuase in doing so, we get to clear some politcal grey areas?

no? because it is not our (non-coloured folk) place to decide what is worth talking about regarding their community and identity? especially just because it doesn't make full sense to us.

#if it bothers you what my opinion is: i believe all coloured people are my brothers and sisters in arms against a much bigger threat. #regardless of how they choose to identify themselves. #politics #south africa #south african politics #coloured #law school #1morespiral

[skippyv20]

Is the

@Telegraph

transition into OK magazine complete? Was this (lengthy) article part of a package deal? From the leaked letters saga to this?

My advice Don‘t bother reading. Nauseating sycophancy. Yards of it

Telegraph 

The meaning behind Meghan’s Montecito makeover

The Duchess of Sussex’s newly straightened and lightened hairstyle is a polished power move

ByAnnabel Jones,

 BEAUTY EDITOR AT LARGE24 April 2023 • 8:00pm

 anyone who knows the power of beauty to send a subliminal message, it’s Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. 

In her first public appearance since news broke that Prince Harry would be attending the King’s Coronation alone, Meghan debuted a newly straightened and lightened hairstyle set off with a flawless, glowing and minimally made-up complexion to introduce her friend and photographer Misan Harriman’s Ted Talk. 

Meghan said in her video message: “Our next speaker has an unmatched eye for a good photograph. I have experienced his talent first hand as he has captured many meaningful milestones for me and my family.”

Such milestones have so often been accompanied by a pivotal hair moment in her journey from actress to Duchess and now hopeful global power player, whether it’s breaking from royal tradition with her trademark “messy bun” on her wedding day, the sombre-yet-sleek scraped-back bun worn throughout her and Harry’s ill-fated South African Tour to the ultra-groomed hair and fresh skin she unveiled yesterday. 

Sombre yet sleek: the Duchess pulled back her locks during her and Harry’s ill-fated South African tour CREDIT: Getty

In the new video, Meghan appears to have coloured her hair a warm copper tone and it has been styled to be poker straight with soft, feathered layers which give shape and structure to her face. 

Meanwhile, her skin looks glowing, youthful and immaculate. It’s hard to be sure that Meghan has coloured her dark brown hair, as video lighting can cast a warm glow onto skin and hair, but Meghan’s apparent highlights give off a sunkissed effect that speak to the couple’s new life in sunny Santa Barbara.

To the untrained eye, the Duchess’s hair length (uber long) and texture (super straight) isn’t drastically different from her usual style, but she has a history of subtly changing her hair and makeup to make a statement at key moments. 

Since settling in Montecito, the Duchess has gradually shaken off her British regal style in favour of a minimal polished look that befits her new situation as a working mother of two and co-founder of non-profit foundation Archewell, which she runs with the Duke. 

Her new look alludes to the Gywneth Paltrow, polished chief executive school of thought rather than the beachy Californian look she adopted when she first moved back to the West Coast.  

Over the years, Meghan’s hair has evolved from the relaxed, laidback waves and barely there make-up she chose as an off-duty actress and during her courtship with Harry, to a more carefully thought-out part of her image which has switched-up as her role and circumstances have changed. 

Meghan’s trademark ‘messy bun’ while she was a working member of the Royal family CREDIT: Getty

Meghan’s new grown-up locks and understated Brandon Maxwell sheath dress depict a more discerning, power-dressing Duchess than the one who hid behind the two wispy tendrils that deliberately fell from her bun as a working member of the Royal family. It was a strategic style move that made her a relatable figure in a family steeped in tradition. 

“When we were preparing looks for life in the Royal family, as you’d expect, everything is structured, you can’t push the boundaries,” George Northwood, who spent two years tending to Meghan’s hair during her time in the UK, and who styled her hair for the evening of her wedding, told The Telegraph in

“And so, during our time together, we decided to create a more undone look to balance out the formal dress code, often including soft tendrils that ultimately became her signature messy bun.”

In July 2020, shortly after the royal couple stepped back from senior duties, the Duchess appeared on video for the Girl Up Leadership Summit with a similar hairstyle which Northwood said at the time represented “strength and a sense that she’s got everything sorted” adding that her straighter, longer hairstyle marked “a new chapter in her life without such strict protocols”. 

As for her glowing skin, Meghan has visited celebrity facialist Sarah Chapman over the years. For the Platinum Jubilee last year, Chapman told People magazine that she used products including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, a hydrating booster and pep 8 (peptide) serum on the Duchess. 

Advertisement

“With Meghan, I wanted her beauty to shine at the events, so lots of hydration, oils and massage achieve that, and I also use an LED light treatment,” she told the US publication. 

Whatever the reason behind Meghan’s decision to reveal her glossy new makeover, the message is clear – this is a woman firmly in control of her own narrative. 

A timeline of Meghan’s hairvolution

Young Hollywood ingénue 

September 5, 2006

Big, voluminous curls were her style du jour when she was a briefcase model on Deal or No Deal CREDIT: Getty

Relaxed girlfriend

September 25, 2017

Meghan cut a casual figure in the early days of her relationship with Prince Harry CREDIT: Getty

Engagement blow dry

November 27, 2017

Meghan looked primed for the occasion when her engagement to Prince Harry was announced CREDIT: Getty

Wedding messy bun

May 19, 2018

Harry helps his new bride into the car as they leave Windsor Castle to head to their wedding reception CREDIT: Getty

Regal waves

June 9, 2018

Meghan during Trooping The Colour in summer 2018 CREDIT: Getty

On tour tendrils

October 24, 2018

Meghan opted for a relaxed approach during a tea reception in Suva, Fiji CREDIT: Getty

Sleek working Royal

September 25, 2019

Meghan during a visit to meet female entrepreneurs in Cape Town CREDIT: Getty

Sparkling departure

March 7, 2020

With Harry at the Mountbatten Music Festival at the Royal Albert Hall in 2020 CREDIT: Getty

The revenge updo

March 7, 2021

With Prince Harry during the now-infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey CREDIT: Reuters

Power chignon

December 6, 2022

In New York for the Ripple Awards in December 2022 CREDIT: Getty

All I can say is…trash be trash be trash be trash…🐼 thank you!

[tysiaradz]

class notes

Apartheid

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/grade-11-what-were-consequences-when-pseudo-scientific-ideas-race-became-integral

Climate theory (of racism) - the colder the weather, the smarter the human (read: stamped from the beginning). The theory suggests that black people in Africa had no way of being intelligent

Simian traits - “ape like”, connected to black portrayal and Irish portrayal: JFK significance: he was Irish and catholic

White people made themselves feel racially secure by making themselves the ideal face shape and differentiating themselves from other races “you are not white!”

“Wide sargasso sea” jean rhys

Darwin, the father of modern evolution theory, was himself religious and was antagonised by the church for disproving the creationist theory. He was also not pleased with how his theories were being used to persecute other races and nationalities

What were the four different categories of people introduced under the Race classification laws?

White

Indian

Coloured

Black

What was the pencil test and what purpose did it serve?

If a pencil was placed in a students hair and fell, they were white. If it stayed, they were not white enough

What was the Sharpeville massacre and what was it caused by?1952

A protest forcing law enforcement to arrest them in the hopes that they would collapse the jailing system ended in thousands being arresting

March 21st 1960

Police opened fire on unarmed protest killing 70 and wounding 180

Passbook - document that black people had to carry at all times to be able to travel

The protest was to abolish passbooks

What is (somewhat) ironic about Nelson Mandela having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

He won the Nobel peace prize despite not being a pacifist

Imagine you educate someone online about systemic racism. Feel free to rant

Website is down

What factors increased the tensions between the blacks and the whites in the SA, and caused the later to want to control the former?

Black people were allowed to work in white spaces as many of the white population went to fight in ww2

Black people had to move into some white spaces such as living and work

ANC - African National Congress

4. He won the Nobel peace prize despite not being a pacifist

5.

6.

Dei steigers- “the sixties generation”

Brinks book was the first book to be banned by the south african government

How brink outwitted the censors

1979 printing: 3000 copies through a private publishing press in Johannesburg

Detected 2 weeks later - too late to confiscate the first printing, but the book was banned

Simultaneous publication in uk - a great success

Black June

Multi-day youth riots in Soweto started on the 26th June 1976

Brutally suppressed - armed personnel carriers, machine guns and helicopters against sticks and stones

SA internationally condemned for the massacre of the youth and the use of the violence at a mass scale

According to official statistics 175 killed (official citizens), 1140 wounded, 1300 arrested

A moral obligation

a dry white season illustrates the thesis made by brink in his article “after Soweto” 1976

following the massacre, the white citizens of SA shoulder a tremendous moral responsibility, which each should fulfill no matter the personal consequences.

Ben du Toit is an example of a person who took this moral obligation to the end.

Torture

Torturing political prisoners was frequent in SA in the 70s

The 1973 report of the UN Special Committee

Against Apartheid described over 100 cases of mistreatment of prisoners

Often used by Special Branch, specialised in detecting and fighting anti-government activity (methods near-identical with the Gestapo's)

According to the Western press, in 1977 alone at least 20 arrested people died in shady circumstances.

The author inspired some of the stories that happened to the protagonist from the experiences of others such as;

mohammed salim essop

Stephen bantu biko

Ahmed timol

Donald woods

James Thomas Kruger

To research: Steve Biko / Stephen Bantu Biko

Birth date: 18.12.1946

Death date: 12.09.1977

Founder of the “Black Consciousness” movement in South Africa

BCM was an anti-apartheid movement that was started in 1960. The movement started after the South African government outlawed the Pan-Africanist Congress and the African National Congress following the Sharpeville Massacre.

In his life, Biko was part of numerous anti apartheid movements. He began his efforts in protesting while at university (he first studied at st. Francis College and then at the University of Natal Medical School where he joined the multiracial National Union of South African Students).

His involvement lessened when he realised he found the NUSAS focused less on merging the rights of black and white people, but rather on viewing black people as the rightful majority. This was his reasoning for founding the SASO and becoming its president. The organisation was founded on the philosophy of black consciousness.

He drew censure in 1973 when SASO, its members and statements were restricted and banned. He reverted to operating covertly and, as a result was arrested and later died of died due to the torture he experienced while under arrest. He was found at the age of 31 outside a hospital naked, shackled and having experienced a brain haemorrhage.

Police denied responsibility for what happened to Biko, however, in 1997, five former officers admitted to being responsible for Biko’s death and applied for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (a way of getting consequences for their wrongdoings and committed atrocities).

216, 262

Notes:

Dark, uncertain

Charcoal metaphor

Highlight

[coochiequeens]

Why don’t the TQ+ just fundraise for their own museum?

The Smithsonian’s new Museum of American Women has announced it will be featuring at least one trans-identified male in the name of “inclusivity.” Monica Helms, the designer of the trans pride flag, will be inducted in the yet-to-be-opened facility despite concerning past behavior.

The Smithsonian first announced its new woman-centered museum last year when it inked a deal in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. Despite the fact it does not estimate the physical building will be opened to the public for at least 10 years, announcements about the design, facilities, and curation of the museum have already begun.

On the Smithsonian’s website, women are being featured whose exhibits and information will assumedly be present in the physical museum. Among them are prominent figures who changed the course of American and world history, including Henrietta Lacks — an African American woman whose “immortal” cell line has provided invaluable medical data since the 1950s — and Native American veteran and activist Grace Thorpe.

But among the brave and inspirational female leaders will be some males who identify as “women.”

In 2022, museum founder Abby Trott said she had brought in a team “of amazing, talented women” to design the upcoming exhibits, stating: “We’re trying to create a space to allow women — and anyone who identifies as a woman — to have a physical space to bond and be seen and heard and have a space to define what it means for them to be a woman.”

Among those males included in the Women’s Museum will be Monica Helms, the designer of the trans pride flag.

Born Robert Hogge, Helms designed the first trans pride flag in 1999. In his memoir, More Than Just a Flag, Helms – who named himself after a fictional battle in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – described himself as an “enlightened” being who is able to “float” between multiple worlds.

As previously reported by Reduxx, Helms once admitted to wearing his mother’s underwear as a youth, and stated that he “studied” girls at his school with an obsession that slowly turned to “lust.”

While serving with the US Navy during the 1970s, Helms began stealing the undergarments of female neighbors living in his apartment complex in South Carolina after seeing a bra in the washing machine of the laundry room.

“Images of the days when I tried on my mother’s underwear came back to me, pulling primordial feelings with them… the obsession of losing my virginity had filled my every waking moment…” Helms said of the experience. “Up until this point, my sexual desire for a first encounter had pushed every other fantasy of mine onto the back burner. As I stood watching the bra swirl around in the dryer, I sensed a growing desire to dress as a woman and to see the hidden woman within me.”

Helms then described taking the bra out of the machine and rushing back to his apartment to model it for himself in the mirror. He expressed having been sexually aroused at the sight of himself in women’s undergarments. 

Helms later married a woman who would discover his crossdressing fetish after walking in on him wearing one of her dresses. While she disapproved, Helms would continue regardless, and began spending family finances on clothing, makeup, and hormones. He also invested in attending get-togethers, with other male cross-dressers, where lessons were provided on how to talk and walk “like a woman.”

While Helms’ was indulging his expensive crossdressing habit, the family declared bankruptcy and lost their home in foreclosure.

After decades of marriage, Helms decided to divorce his wife and leave his children so he could pursue his life as a trans-identified male.

“They didn’t want me to leave, which made me feel even worse. But I couldn’t continue hiding my doctor visits and medical costs, not to mention receiving hateful comments from Donna about my shaved legs and breast growth,” Helms wrote in his autobiography.

But perhaps most disturbingly, Helms has authored several short stories with sexual themes, including ‘forced feminization,’ wherein men are transformed into women as a humiliating punishment. One story in particular sexualizes a little girl, with Helms claiming the story concept came to him in a dream. In the story, titled “A Woman Scorned,” a witch who perpetually appears as a teen girl pursues an adult man until they get married and have a daughter with similar “powers.”

Earlier this year at the age of 71, Helms announced he was adopting a teen boy with his significantly younger partner. The 14-year-old will be raised as his “trans daughter.”

Helms designed what is currently understood as the transgender pride flag in 1999, just a few years after divorcing his wife and ostensibly abandoning his children. During an interview held in 2017, Helms stated that blue represented young boys and pink represented young girls.

He has claimed the baby blue and pink pastel stripes came to him by way of “divine intervention.” A pride flag created by Helms will be displayed in the Smithsonian’s new Museum of American Women.

In 2014, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History accepted Helms’ original pride flag and placed it in the permanent archives.

By Anna Slatz

Anna is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Reduxx, with a journalistic focus on covering crime, child predators, and women's rights. She lives in Canada, enjoys Opera, and kvetches in her spare time.

Will his exhibit feature the underwear he stole? It’s not like any of the women he stole them from would want them back.

#USA #Smithsonian #Museum of American Woman #Women don’t have penises

[catdotjpeg]

College students at more than 100 campuses across the country plan to walk out today to protest for a ceasefire in Gaza and for their universities to sever their close ties to arms manufacturers providing Israel with its weapons, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. The national walkout was organized by a broad coalition of groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement; the anti-war youth organization Dissenters; Anakbayan, the national organization for Filipino students and young people; the National Students for Justice in Palestine organization; the Muslim Students Association; and others. [...] “The goal of our walkout and moment of silence is to disrupt the day-to-day complicity on American college campuses across the US” to bring them into the movement calling for a ceasefire, says Zoë DeMercado, a student and Dissenters fellow at Xavier University of Louisiana, one of multiple historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) participating. DeMercado tells Teen Vogue that other students she’s spoken to at HBCUs have felt compelled to participate by Palestinian solidarity with Black American communities during movement uprisings in both 2014 and 2020: “We can't stay silent about this.” [...] Wednesday’s walkout marks the first nationally coordinated student action of this scale since October 7. “The student movement is a historic sector that has mobilized thousands during a variety of anti-war moments in the United States,” Kaleem Hawa, an organizer with Palestinian Youth Movement, tells Teen Vogue, explaining that students have been inspired by past student movements against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid. “It's a painful moment for a lot of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims,” says Hawa, citing harassment of those speaking publicly on the conflict, in addition to the dehumanizing rhetoric and hate crimes. “It's scary stuff. So when I see campaigns like this, I feel very proud, because the students are always more courageous than their [institutions].” For DeMercado, her perspective in looking to the Black liberation movement made her choice to participate in the walkout feel obvious. “Black and Palestinian solidarity has gone as far back as the Black Power and Civil Rights Movement,” she says. The US has so far supported Israel’s military campaign against Gaza, with a White House spokesman saying a ceasefire would only benefit Hamas. A number of congresspeople are working on various legislative proposals on US engagement: Within the Democratic party, one letter signed by “every Democratic Jewish member and 128 other Democrats in Congress” backed a continuation of the Biden administration’s support for Israel, as well as humanitarian support for Gaza; a resolution by Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, and others calls for a ceasefire. On October 24, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended Israel’s military campaign to the United Nations Security Council, but said "humanitarian pauses must be considered" as Israel prepares for a ground invasion into Gaza. Also on that day, the UN’s secretary general called for a ceasefire, saying the “appalling” Hamas attacks “cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

-- From "Gaza: College Students Walk Out Calling for Israel Ceasefire" by Lexi McMenamin for Teen Vogue, 25 Oct 2023

You can learn more about the National Week of Action for Palestine, led by Resist US-Led War, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Muslim Students Association National, Palestinian Youth Movement, Anakbayan USA, Dissenters, and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center from 18-25 Oct, by reading the toolkit.

#youth activism #anti war #black liberation #palestine

[readyforevolution]

Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood, which was marked in the 1950s by the bombings of houses in an attempt to intimidate and drive out middle-class black people who had moved there. Davis occasionally spent time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City. Her siblings include two brothers, Ben and Reginald, and a sister, Fania. Ben played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was christened at her father's Episcopal church.

Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a segregated black elementary school, and later, Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time, Davis's mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, an organization influenced by the Communist Party aimed at building alliances among African Americans in the South. Davis grew up surrounded by communist organizers and thinkers, who significantly influenced her intellectual development. Among them was the Southern Negro Youth Congress official Louis E. Burnham, whose daughter Margaret Burnham was Davis's friend from childhood, as well as her co-counsel during Davis's 1971 trial for murder and kidnapping.

Davis was involved in her church youth group as a child, and attended Sunday school regularly. She attributes much of her political involvement to her involvement with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America. She also participated in the Girl Scouts 1959 national roundup in Colorado. As a Girl Scout, she marched and picketed to protest racial segregation in Birmingham.

By her junior year of high school, Davis had been accepted by an American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village. There she was recruited by a communist youth group, Advance.

Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she was one of three black students in her class. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during the Cuban Missile Crisis and became his student. In a 2007 television interview, Davis said, "Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary." She worked part-time to earn enough money to travel to France and Switzerland and attended the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki. She returned home in 1963 to a Federal Bureau of Investigation interview about her attendance at the communist-sponsored festival.

During her second year at Brandeis, Davis decided to major in French and continued her intensive study of philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre. She was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she and other students lived with a French family. She was in Biarritz when she learned of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, in which four black girls were killed. She grieved deeply as she was personally acquainted with the victims.

While completing her degree in French, Davis realized that her primary area of interest was philosophy. She was particularly interested in Marcuse's ideas. On returning to Brandeis, she sat in on his course. She wrote in her autobiography that Marcuse was approachable and helpful. She began making plans to attend the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965, she graduated magna cum laude, a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In Germany, with a monthly stipend of $100, she lived first with a German family and later with a group of students in a loft in an old factory. After visiting East Berlin during the annual May Day celebration, she felt that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than were the West Germans. Many of her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS), and Davis participated in some SDS actions. Events in the United States, including the formation of the Black Panther Party and the transformation of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to an all-black organization, drew her interest upon her return.

Marcuse had moved to a position at the University of California, San Diego, and Davis followed him there after her two years in Frankfurt. Davis traveled to London to attend a conference on "The Dialectics of Liberation". The black contingent at the conference included the Trinidadian-American Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and the British Michael X. Although moved by Carmichael's rhetoric, Davis was reportedly disappointed by her colleagues' black nationalist sentiments and their rejection of communism as a "white man's thing".

She joined the Che-Lumumba Club, an all-black branch of the Communist Party USA named for revolutionaries Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba, of Cuba and Congo, respectively.

Davis earned a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego, in 1968. She earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Humboldt University in East Berlin.

Beginning in 1969, Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had tried to recruit her, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location. At that time she was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA, and an affiliate of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party.

In 1969, the University of California initiated a policy against hiring Communists. At their September 19, 1969, meeting, the Board of Regents fired Davis from her $10,000-a-year post because of her membership in the Communist Party, urged on by California Governor and future president Ronald Reagan. Judge Jerry Pacht ruled the Regents could not fire Davis solely because of her affiliation with the Communist Party, and she resumed her post. The Regents fired Davis again on June 20, 1970, for the "inflammatory language" she had used in four different speeches. The report stated, "We deem particularly offensive such utterances as her statement that the regents 'killed, brutalized (and) murdered' the People's Park demonstrators, and her repeated characterizations of the police as 'pigs'". The American Association of University Professors censured the board for this action.

Davis was a supporter of the Soledad Brothers, three inmates who were accused and charged with the killing of a prison guard at Soledad Prison.

On August 7, 1970, heavily armed 17-year-old African-American high-school student Jonathan Jackson, whose brother was George Jackson, one of the three Soledad Brothers, gained control of a courtroom in Marin County, California. He armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and two black defendants away from the courtroom, one of the defendants, James McClain, shot at the police. The police returned fire. The judge and the three black men were killed in the melee; one of the jurors and the prosecutor were injured. Although the judge was shot in the head with a blast from a shotgun, he also suffered a chest wound from a bullet that may have been fired from outside the van. Evidence during the trial showed that either could have been fatal. Davis had purchased several of the firearms Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun used to shoot Haley, which she bought at a San Francisco pawn shop two days before the incident. She was also found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved.

As California considers "all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, ... whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, ... are principals in any crime so committed", Davis was charged with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley", and Marin County Superior Court Judge Peter Allen Smith issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours after the judge issued the warrant on August 14, 1970, a massive attempt to find and arrest Davis began. On August 18, four days after the warrant was issued, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List; she was the third woman and the 309th person to be listed.

Soon after, Davis became a fugitive and fled California. According to her autobiography, during this time she hid in friends' homes and moved at night. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City. President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis."

On January 5, 1971, Davis appeared at Marin County Superior Court and declared her innocence before the court and nation: "I now declare publicly before the court, before the people of this country that I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by the state of California." John Abt, general counsel of the Communist Party USA, was one of the first attorneys to represent Davis for her alleged involvement in the shootings.

While being held in the Women's Detention Center, Davis was initially segregated from other prisoners, in solitary confinement. With the help of her legal team, she obtained a federal court order to get out of the segregated area.

Across the nation, thousands of people began organizing a movement to gain her release. In New York City, black writers formed a committee called the Black People in Defense of Angela Davis. By February 1971, more than 200 local committees in the United States, and 67 in foreign countries, worked to free Davis from jail. John Lennon and Yoko Ono contributed to this campaign with the song "Angela". In 1972, after a 16-month incarceration, the state allowed her release on bail from county jail.[32] On February 23, 1972, Rodger McAfee, a dairy farmer from Fresno, California, paid her $100,000 bail with the help of Steve Sparacino, a wealthy business owner. The United Presbyterian Church paid some of her legal defense expenses.

A defense motion for a change of venue was granted, and the trial was moved to Santa Clara County. On June 4, 1972, after 13 hours of deliberations, the all-white jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The fact that she owned the guns used in the crime was judged insufficient to establish her role in the plot. She was represented by Leo Branton Jr., who hired psychologists to help the defense determine who in the jury pool might favor their arguments, a technique that has since become more common. He also hired experts to discredit the reliability of eyewitness accounts.

After her acquittal, Davis went on an international speaking tour in 1972 and the tour included Cuba, where she had previously been received by Fidel Castro in 1969 as a member of a Communist Party delegation. Robert F. Williams, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael had also visited Cuba, and Assata Shakur later moved there after escaping from a US prison. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak.[47] Davis perceived Cuba as a racism-free country, which led her to believe that "only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed." When she returned to the United States, her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles. In 1974, she attended the Second Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women.

In the mid-1970s, Jim Jones, who developed the cult Peoples Temple, initiated friendships with progressive leaders in the San Francisco area including Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement and Davis. On September 10, 1977, 14 months before the Temple's mass murder-suicide, Davis spoke via amateur radio telephone "patch" to members of his Peoples Temple living in Jonestown in Guyana. In her statement during the "Six Day Siege", she expressed support for the People's Temple anti-racism efforts and told members there was a conspiracy against them. She said, "When you are attacked, it is because of your progressive stand, and we feel that it is directly an attack against us as well."

Davis was a lecturer at the Claremont Black Studies Center at the Claremont Colleges in 1975. Attendance at the course she taught was limited to 26 students out of the more than 5,000 on campus, and she was forced to teach in secret because alumni benefactors didn't want her to indoctrinate the general student population with communist thought. College trustees made arrangements to minimize her appearance on campus, limiting her seminars to Friday evenings and Saturdays, "when campus activity is low". Her classes moved from one classroom to another and the students were sworn to secrecy. Much of this secrecy continued throughout Davis's brief time teaching at the colleges. In 2020 it was announced that Davis would be the Ena H. Thompson Distinguished Lecturer for Pomona College's history department, welcoming her back after 45 years.

Davis taught a women's studies course at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1978, and was a professor of ethnic studies at the San Francisco State University from at least 1980 to 1984. She was a professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Rutgers University from 1991 to 2008. Since then, she has been a distinguished professor emerita.

Davis was a distinguished visiting professor at Syracuse University in spring 1992 and October 2010, and was the Randolph Visiting Distinguished Professor of philosophy at Vassar College in 1995.

In 2014, Davis returned to UCLA as a regents' lecturer. She delivered a public lecture on May 8 in Royce Hall, where she had given her first lecture 45 years earlier.

In 2016, Davis was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in Healing and Social Justice from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco during its 48th annual commencement ceremony.

Davis accepted the Communist Party USA's nomination for vice president, as Gus Hall's running mate, in 1980 and in 1984. They received less than 0.02% of the vote in 1980. She left the party in 1991, founding the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Her group broke from the Communist Party USA because of the latter's support of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt after the fall of the Soviet Union and tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Davis said that she and others who had "circulated a petition about the need for democratization of the structures of governance of the party" were not allowed to run for national office and thus "in a sense ... invited to leave". In 2014, she said she continues to have a relationship with the CPUSA but has not rejoined. In the 2020 presidential election, Davis supported the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

Sources:

Angela Davis, Sweetheart of the Far Left, Finds Her Mr. Right". People. July 21, 1980. Archived from the original on March 11, 2015. Retrieved October 20, 2011.

The Real Stain on Angela Davis' Legacy Is Her Support for Tyranny". The Bulwark. January 23, 2019.

Angela Davis (January 26, 1944)". African American Heritage. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved January 24, 2020.

Davis, Angela Yvonne (March 1989). "Rocks". Angela Davis: An Autobiography. New York City: International Publishers.

Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Bhavnani; Davis, Angela (Spring 1989). "Complexity, Activism, Optimism: An Interview with Angela Y. Davis". Feminist Review (31): 66–81.

Davis, Angela Yvonne (March 1989). "Flames". Angela Davis: An Autobiography. New York City: International Publishers

Mechthild Nagel (May 2, 2005). "Women Outlaws: Politics of Gender and Resistance in the US Criminal Justice System". SUNY Cortland. Retrieved October 21, 2010.

Encyclopedia of Alabama. Auburn University. January 8, 2008. Archived from the original on March 13, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2012

Marquez, Letisia (May 5, 2014). "Angela Davis returns to UCLA classroom 45 years after controversy". UCLA Newsroom. University of California at Los Angeles. Retrieved August 26, 2019.