Hey Sister, Go Sister, Soul Sister

Angela Davis dropped some wisdom on the graduates of Grinnell College yesterday.

All to the tune of $10,000 to $20,000.

Davis said today's student need to “blaze new paths” of fighting social justice – paths she acknowledges are different than the tactics she and activists used decades ago.

Let's take a look at Angela's path...

In 1970 Davis was implicated by more than 20 witnesses in a plot to free her imprisoned lover, fellow Black Panther and prison thug George Jackson, by hijacking a Marin County, California courtroom and taking the judge, the prosecuting assistant district attorney, and two jurors hostage.

In an ensuing gun battle outside the court building, Judge Harold Haley's head was blown off by a sawed-off shotgun owned by Ms. Davis.

To avoid arrest for her alleged complicity in the plot (she supplied the hijackers with a small arsenal, but claimed not to know the purposes for which it was used) Ms. Davis fled California, where she used aliases and changed her appearance to avoid detection.

(Innocent people always flee).

Two months later she was arrested by the FBI in New York City.

At her 1972 trial, Davis presented her version of where she had been and what she had been doing at the time of the shootout; because she was acting as her own attorney, she could not be cross-examined.

She presented a number of alibi witnesses, almost all Communist friends, who testified that she had been with them in Los Angeles playing Scrabble at the time of the Marin slaughter.

(Ruse is worth only 4 points).

Witnesses who placed her in Marin were dismissed by Davis and her fellow attorneys as being unable to accurately identify blacks — because they were white.

Davis' case was further aided by the pliant nature of the jury, which acquitted her.

Following the verdict, one juror faced news cameras and gave a revolutionary's clenched-fist salute. He laughed at the justice system, saying that prosecutors had been mistaken to expect that the "middle-class jury" would convict Davis. He and most of the jurors then went off to partake in a Davis victory party

(Setting the precedent for the release of OJ 23 years later).

Davis is currently a University Professor in History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The one time Communist, honored in 1979 by the Soviet Union and East Germany, does fairly well under capitalism and the scientific community is united in that fact.

Davis' tax paid salary is in the six figure range

I had the pleasure of voting against her twice when she was the Vice Presidential nominee on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 & 1984.

Finally, Phil Spector and Angela Davis separated at birth?