Profiles of Abolition:
Abolition and the Radical Imagination
Featuring Angela Y. Davis, Fred Moten, and Melanie Cervantes, moderated by Robin D.G. Kelley
5pm, Saturday, February 20, 2016
Agape International Spiritual Center
5700 Buckingham Parkway, Culver City, CA 90230
Facebook event here.
The evening will include performances by the Los Angeles Poverty Department to spark our radical imagination and lift up the spirit of liberation.
DR. ANGELA Y. DAVIS is Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis came to national attention after being removed from her teaching position at UCLA because of her activism and membership in the Communist Party, USA. In 1970 she was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on false charges. During her sixteen-month incarceration, a massive international “Free Angela Davis” campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972. Today Prof. Davis remains an advocate of prison abolition and has developed a powerful critique of racism in the criminal justice system. She is the author of many books, including her most recent collection, The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (City Lights Open Media).
FRED MOTEN is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Hughson’s Tavern, B. Jenkins, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (with Stefano Harney), The Feel Trio and The Little Edges. A new poetry collection, The Service Porch and a new collection of essays, consent not to be a single being are forthcoming. Moten lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California, Riverside.
A member of the Oakland-based arts collaboration, Dignidad Rebelde, MELANIE CERVANTES is a Xicana activist-artist whose work includes black and white illustrations, paintings, installations and paper stencils. She is best known, however, for her prolific political screen prints and posters which have been used by movements across the globe. Employing vibrant colors and hand-drawn illustrations, her work moves those viewed as marginal to the center — featuring powerful youth, elders, women, and queer and indigenous peoples.