Source: Cincinnati Enquirer (OH)
Contact:  http://enquirer.com/today/
Copyright: 1998 The Cincinnati Enquirer
Pubdate: 12 Dec 1998
Author: SUSAN VELA

ACTIVIST DENOUNCES PRISON SYSTEM.

NKU Audience Hears Angela Davis

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - Angela Davis, best known for the trails she blazed in
the late 1960s and early 1970s, criticized today's prison system Friday
night before a packed auditorium at Northern Kentucky University.

Businesses profit from more people going to prison and more prisons having
to be built, Ms. Davis said.

But prisons don't rehabilitate people, she added, saying there are better
ways of holding people accountable for committing crimes. Most often, she
said, blacks and Latinos, the illiterate, the homeless and the mentally
deranged are filling the jail cells. Ms. Davis spoke passionately, letting
her voice dip from high to low and using her hands to emphasize her
long-standing support for political prisoners and this country's booming
prison population.

Ms. Davis pointed to two celebrated cases:

Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row in Pennsylvania for what some believe is a
wrongful conviction for murdering a police officer in 1982.

Leonard Peltier, an American Indian who is jailed for murdering two FBI
agents in South Dakota more than 20 years ago.

She urged the crowd to think, know their history and do something about the
racial and social injustices inherent in today's the prison system.

"I think we're on the verge of a new era of activism, I really do," she
told the crowd. "People want to bring about a change. I ask all of you to
think very deeply about ways you can get involved." Ms. Davis was in the
national spotlight in 1969, when she was removed from her teaching job at
UCLA's philosophy department for being a member of the Communist Party.

She also became a voice for the Black Liberation Movement and, in 1970, her
efforts to free prisoners the Soledad brotherssparked a heated trial and
led to her own arrest and imprisonment. She was accused of murder,
kidnapping and conspiracy in a hostage situation at which she was not
present. She was acquitted in 1972.

A year later, she founded the National Alliance Against Racist and
Political Oppression. Ms. Davis now is a tenured professor in the history
of consciousness department at University of California-Santa Cruz.

While speaking Friday, she noted that many people her age often introduce
themselves to her by saying, "I'm from the '60s." She finds it odd that
some people use the decade as they would the name of a hometown.

She noted said that these people often romanticize the era and forget about
the horrors that sparked many of its movements. She admitted her own
naivete then in regards to the the nation's prisons. She never thought so
many would be built to house so many prisoners.

In the '60s, fewer less than 200,000 people were in prison. She remembers
contending that some foreign nations were less populous. But, now, there
are almost 2 million people behind bars. And between 1852 and 1965, 12
prisons were built. At least 20 have been constructed built since 1984, she
said.

"I think we should ask ourselves how this happened," she said.

- ---
Checked-by: Pat Dolan