PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Angela Davis Receives Thomas Merton Award
by phgimc Monday, Nov. 13, 2006 at 4:34 PM

Angela Davis was this year's recipient of the Thomas Merton Center Award.

angela.jpg, image/jpeg, 300x406

On Friday, November 10th, Angela Davis was awarded the annual Thomas Merton Award at a dinner and fundraiser at the Station Square Sheridan Hotel. The Thomas Merton Award has been awarded since 1972 by the Thomas Merton Center. It is named after Thomas Merton and is given annually to "national and international individuals struggling for justice." Recipients include Amy Goodman, Molly Rush, Daniel Berrigan, Kathy Kelly, Howard Zinn, among others.

Angela Davis is known internationally for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Over the years she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar, and activist/organizer. She is a living witness to the historical struggles of the contemporary era.

Professor Davis was introduced, via a pre-recording, by Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and political prisoner who is incarcerated in the maximum-security State Correctional Institution Greene, near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. He is on death row.

Professor Davis' political activism began when she was a youngster in Birmingham, Alabama, and continued through her high school years in New York. But it was not until 1969 that she came to national attention after being removed from her teaching position in the Philosophy Department at UCLA as a result of her social activism and her membership in the Communist Party, USA. In 1970 she was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List on false charges, and was the subject of an intense police search that drove her underground and culminated in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. During her sixteen-month incarceration, a massive international "Free Angela Davis" campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.

Professor Davis' long-standing commitment to prisoners' rights dates back to her involvement in the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers, which led to her own arrest and imprisonment. Today she remains an advocate of prison abolition and has developed a powerful critique of racism in the criminal justice system. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center, and currently is working on a comparative study of women's imprisonment in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Cuba. Former California Governor Ronald Reagan once vowed that Angela Davis would never again teach in the University of California system. Today she is a tenured professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1994, she received the distinguished honor of an appointment to the University of California Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies.

An audio recording of Professor Davis' entire 51 minute speech at the Thomas Merton Award dinner is linked below, as is the slideshow presentation/introduction by Mumia Abu-Jamal. An audio-only recording of Mumia is also link in the comments section.

www.thomasmertoncenter.org

audio recording of Angela Davis speech
by phgimc Monday, Nov. 13, 2006 at 4:34 PM

audio link: MP3 at 47.2 mebibytes

www.thomasmertoncenter.org

Mumia's introduction and accompanying slide show presentation
by phgimc Monday, Nov. 13, 2006 at 4:34 PM

video: MPEG at 33.2 mebibytesvideo: MPEG at 33.2 mebibytes

play in quicktime, vlc or mplayer

www.thomasmertoncenter.org