In an interview in Vanity Fair, Marxist activist Angela Davis warned that the rioting currently ravaging the country is just the early stage of a larger “revolution” necessary to bring about social and economic change.
“Sometimes we assume the most important work is the dramatic work—the street demonstrations. I like the term that [Marxist cultural critic] John Berger used: ‘Demonstrations are ‘rehearsals for revolution,’” Davis told black filmmaker/social justice activist Ava DuVernay.
“The protests offered people an opportunity to join in this collective demand to bring about deep change, radical change,” Davis added. “Defund the police, abolish policing as we know it now. These are the same arguments that we’ve been making for such a long time about the prison system and the whole criminal justice system. It was as if all of these decades of work by so many people… came to fruition.”
The lifelong communist went on to defend the mobs of vandals who have torn down statues and monuments around the country: “Those statues are our reminders that the history of the United States of America is a history of racism, so it’s natural that people would try to bring down those symbols.”
Ava DuVernay acknowledged in a tweet that the editor of the interview was slavery reparations proponent and literary darling, Ta-Nehisi Coates.