Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

by Angela Y. Davis

But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite, that democracy from below can challenge oligarchy, that imprisoned migrants can be freed, that fascism can be overcome, and that equality is emancipatory.

It is easy to feel discouraged and simply let go. There is no shame in that. We are, after all, engaged in a struggle that seems, if we look at it using a mainstream political framework and through a mass media prism, unwinnable. On the other hand, if we take a step back, look at things from a broader angle, reflecting on what is happening all over the world and the history of struggle, the history of solidarity movements, it becomes clear, sometimes even obvious, that seemingly indestructible forces can be, thanks to people’s willpower, sacrifices, and actions, easily broken.

I think when Alice defined Angela as a miracle, she meant that Angela is living proof that it is possible to survive, withstand, and overcome the full force of corporate power and the state fixed on the destruction of one important individual because she inspires collective solidarity. She’s living proof that people power works, that an alternative is possible, and that the struggle can be a beautiful and exhilarating one. That is something we need, as human beings, to experience. And it’s in everyone’s power to partake in the struggle.

It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as a part of an ever-expanding community of struggle.

Is the struggle endless? I would say that as our struggles mature, they produce new ideas, new issues, and new terrains on which we engage in the quest for freedom. Like Nelson Mandela, we must be willing to embrace the long walk toward freedom.

But you can’t simply invite people to join you and be immediately on board, particularly when they were not necessarily represented during the earlier organizing processes. You have to develop organizing strategies so that people identify with the particular issue as their issue. This is why I was suggesting in response to the question about Michelle Alexander that these connections need to be made in the context of the struggles themselves. So as you are organizing against police crimes, against police racism, you always raise parallels and similarities in other parts of the world. And not only similarities, but you talk about the structural connections. What is the connection between the way the US police forces train and are armed and Israeli police and military…. So when you popularize that, encourage people to think about that…

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible.