She urged everyone to think critically about “representations of divisions in this country.” Community is the answer.”ĭavis said that she has long seen Chicago as one of her “political homes,” an “antiracist, anticapitalist, feminist political community.” But in the context of the election, she underscored the need to “struggle over the coming period as we have never struggled before.” She reminded the audience that Trump hadn’t won the popular vote, that most people who cast their ballot did so against him, and that the millions of people who didn’t vote at all shouldn’t be forgotten by organizers and activists. “How do we begin to recover from this shock? By experiencing and building and rebuilding and consolidating community. “I feel really invigorated to be here, in Chicago, at this moment,” Davis announced, punctuating her words by leaning closer to the microphone as applause and cheers intensified. Whatever the original intent of the lecture Wednesday, much of the event was devoted to a discussion of the election. John Cusack sat in a front pew with black baseball cap pulled low. Two of Sandra Bland’s sisters were there. The crowd was a racially diverse who’s who of progressive and radical Chicago-including Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, and the leadership of Black Lives Matter Chicago, Black Youth Project 100, Assata’s Daughters, and the #LetUsBreathe Collective. Today, the professor emerita at University of California, Santa Cruz, is still an icon, regularly publishing influential feminist and anticapitalists treatises and lecturing widely around the country. In the early 70s she was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list, then tried and acquitted on charges of being an accomplice to the killing of a California judge (charges widely seen as then-governor Ronald Reagan’s retribution for her radical activism). She was depicted in the media as a dangerous terrorist then.

Seventy-two-year-old Davis looked regal, her gray-gold Afro in a halo around her face, her gap-toothed smile and lilting voice as captivating as it was 50 years ago. The onetime Black Panther leader urged the rapt audience to move beyond mourning and embrace grassroots political organizing in the face of the impending presidency of Donald Trump. Some 1,600 people packed the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel Wednesday evening to hear a lecture by legendary radical feminist and academic Angela Davis. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.Get your Best of Chicago tickets! Ticket prices go up May 15 > Close

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