When ostensibly asked if she supported violence while she was in jail, Angela Davis not only explained violence, but she related its origin: the violent state. Any violence perpetrated by the revolution, by the liberation of the oppressed, would merely reflect the violence under which the oppressed had lived and suffered at the hands of state terror (i.e., the police, the government, the military, institutional racism–whether de jure or de facto, etc.).
When you talk about a revolution, most people think of violence. Without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles and the goals that you’re striving for, not in the way you reach them. On the other hand, because of the way this society is organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere, you have to expect that there are going to be such explosions. You have to expect things like that as reactions.
Governor Ronald Reagan, who was from early on in bed with the FBI/CIA as an informer and useful tool, and President Richard Nixon, whom we all know as the most despicable of Presidents, should have been the ones jailed, the ones on trial.
If you’ve tried to read Marcuse or Baudrillard or Žižek or even Derrida on violence and the state and still don’t get it, then listen to the truth bombs detonated by someone once deemed the most dangerous woman in America. All your confusion will dissipate with the simple tale of her childhood in Birmingham.
This clip is taken from the documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. You can watch the entire film on Netflix. I highly recommend it.