Chasing Angela Davis

The other week Angela Davis came to Atlanta to give a speech. I was ecstatic, completely and totally and unequivocally ecstatic. I mean we are talking about living legend here, we are talking about someone who stood by her beliefs, regardless of what was popular or what the majority thought about it. She continues to speak out about injustices, and fights for equality for all. She gives a voice to those who would remain silenced through her books and teachings. She’s the bomb, and I couldn’t wait to meet her.

As I prepared to meet this living legend, I realized that the books I’d preordered hadn’t arrived in time. No biggy, I thought, I’ll just run to the local overpriced book chain and murder my piggy bank to get anything by A. Davis. She was worth it. But to my shock and dismay, NONE of the mega book chains in my area (15 min from downtown Atlanta), had ANY books by Angela Davis. WHAT?! You had a major figure in human rights coming to town to do a book signing and you don’t have any books available? Gimme a break.
Mildy disgruntled, but refusing to rage against the machine, yet, I made my way to the event, bookless but optimistic.

Optimism is a wonderful, and it sure is sad when that optimism runs out. To my shock and dismay, as I pulled up to Ebenizer Baptist, and parked a couple blocks away, I found that they had LOCKED the doors.

Yes ya’ll, they locked us out of the church, and there was a whole lot of US. So many of us you would have thought President Obama was backing town. Again I was turned off by the lack of preparation and forethought given to this event. I mean, after all this is Angela Davis, she deserved the Georgia Dome. This was a free event, but I sure would’ve paid to see her. Did they not think she would draw a crowd? Did they not think she was important enough? Did they not think her message was relevant enough to warrant a bigger venue? Oh yes by this point I’m raging, raging big time, raging in silence. Although I did have a few good conversations with the enlightened folks on the outside, and I got to see her through the glass of the church, I was still thoroughly pissed.

Then the New Black Panther Party showed up, just in time to shout their propaganda and pass out pamphlets. My views on the New party deserve a blog of its own. So I’ll just leave it at that. And I left at that as well, with the agitated voices of the youth grumbling disappointed of being turned away. The down turned faces of the mature, as they were assisted back to their cars by family and friends. And the oh so angry voices of the New party, shouting…whatever they were shouting.

I’m raging, against the machine, against the casual way we are regarded, against all that I cannot control…

and I wont stop raging, and preparing, until I see, until I become the change…