#96 From Palestine to the World: Angela Davis & Dr. Gabor Maté
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Maurizio Benazzo: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Thank you. Thank you for being here. My name is Maurizio Benazzo.
Zaya Benazzo: My name is Zaya Benazzo. And welcome to this conversation from Palestine to the world on the global struggle for liberation with Angela Davis and Gabor Mate. This conversation is part of series on talks we are organizing on Palestine that will be released along with our new film called Where Olive Trees Weep, which we filmed with Dr.
Gabor Mate in 2022, May
Maurizio Benazzo: 2022,
Zaya Benazzo: in the occupied West Bank, where we follow him. He was offering trauma work for Palestinian women who have been in prison and some of them tortured in Israeli prisons.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah.
And I want to read a brief bio
Angela Davis is an international renowned activist, scholar, and writer who has dedicated her life to combat oppression in the U S and abroad. With a commitment to prisoners rights and a powerful critique of racism in the criminal justice system. Gabor Mate, renowned Canadian physician and author. His work explores addiction, childhood trauma, and human development.
His last book, The Myth of Normal, is a powerful critique of the impact of modernity and capitalism on our well being. Just have to add Angela, as a teenager in Italy, Angela Davis has been my hero. Her and Che Guevara were giving me the strength to combat and to be a rebellious young teenager in Italy, and to me it's such an honor to be here.
So I bow to this moment. And thank you. Thank you.
Zaya Benazzo: over the last eight months, we have been witnessing the unfolding of the unspeakable devastation and genocide in Gaza. At this very moment, we have 600, 000 people that are fleeing Rafa, and there's no safe place for them to go. Fuel, medicine, and all other supplies have been cut off. In the meantime, the death machine in West Bank is continuing to intensify.
We, there are over 11, 000 prisoners, 4, 000 of them under administrative detention. Which means
Maurizio Benazzo: no charge.
Zaya Benazzo: Including one of the characters in our film, Bassem Tamimi, is currently again in prison.
And settler attacks are intensifying, being supported by the military. And this week, U. S. approved another billion for arms to Israel.
At the same time, we're also seeing unprecedented degree of global resistance and solidarity with Palestine. We're watching the incredible. courage of the students that gives us so much hope to see young people standing for truth and justice with so much courage and clarity.
Gabor and Angela, you have both been Advocating for Palestinian rights for decades. Does this moment feel any unique or different than any other times before? And just, Gabor, I remember when we were in the West Bank you said, I don't hope to see any change in my lifetime. And I wonder, that was two years ago.
I wonder if that might have changed for you. Maybe we start
Dr. Gabor Maté: when I said that, I meant that I don't expect to see any dismantling of the Zionist apparatus. I don't see any easing in the occupation. I see nothing more than further imposition, angela and I have been, in our own ways, engaged with the struggle for a long time. And over that period of time, we've seen the occupation get more stark, more oppressive, more brutal less even willing to hide its depredations from the public.
I didn't expect to see the massive uprisings in favor of Palestinian rights in favor of the truth that we've been witnessing. It's October 7th. Angela said a long time ago that the Palestinian issue is a moral litmus test for all of humanity. I didn't expect to see that litmus test because I'm so clear to so many people.
So that's the change that I've seen.
Zaya Benazzo: Angela, you have anything to add to that?
Angela Davis: Oh, yes. This is on the one hand, a very difficult moment because we've seen an escalation of violence and torture intensification of Zionism and so many Palestinian people are suffering. But at the same time I know I have never experienced such a moment of hope.
For the cause of Palestinian freedom. And I think it's important to, to recognize that when we are involved in these struggles for liberation around the world, oftentimes there is no clear vision of what the outcome will be. There are no guarantees, but at the same time we have evidence that our activism does make a difference.
The work we do does make a difference. And even though we may not know the When we will see the evidence of that difference I think that is what we have to keep at the center of our vision, like Gabor. I never really expected to experience something like this global surge in support around the cause of Palestinian freedom.
I, but if, on the other hand, I knew, and I have known that if we continue the struggle that one day the fruits of our struggle will become manifest. And I think that, those of us like Gabor and myself will been involved in this movement for decades and decades. We are really privileged to be able to see some of the consequences, of the work that so many people have done over so many decades. So I think that, those who are often very sad that they don't see immediate results, can learn from this experience, not only with respect to the cause of Palestinian liberation, but the cause of global freedom. People all over the world, in the Sudan, and I.
T. And other places that where people continue to suffer
Dr. Gabor Maté: and you have a question for you. When I looked at my Instagram website, there's, announcing this conversation with me and I, there was the usual enthusiastic hellos. There was the account acknowledgements. Then there was the usual impersonal insults to either.
Or both you and I that's just part for the course, but one comment that I did see a number of times is all this talking and nothing's going to change. And it's true, I have to admit, this conversation is not likely to save the life of, or even the little finger of one Palestinian baby. Or for that matter And I have to say, the tragedy is on both sides.
I looked at some lists of Israeli soldiers killed in the last week or two. They listed four Israeli soldiers dead last week. So and so, sergeant so and so, 19. Sergeant so and so, 19. Sergeant so and so, 19. And the fourth sergeant so and so, 19. Imagine a society that where 19 year olds are sergeants, and they're dead, and so Not that I'm equating the suffering or the responsibility on both sides, that's the last thing that I do. What I'm addressing is, for all this talking that we do, it's true, we're not going to save a single life. I'm not asking this cynically, and I suppose it's a rhetorical question because I'm my own answer, but what is your answer to this question of, we can do all this talking and advocating and activism, it's not going to save a single life?
Angela Davis: Gabor, I think that if one simply considers one instance then, yeah, of course one conversation will never make a difference. One individual may never make a difference and of course, we who live in the West are accustomed to think on those terms. With those terms we see the individual as the unit of society.
We focus myopically on, on single experiences, but if one takes all of them together, if one, multiplies this this conversation by a thousand or a million if one, multiplies the protests that are themselves multiplying all over the world. One can begin to see a difference.
And I think that what is perhaps So important during this period especially, is to imagine ourselves not as single individuals. Imagine our acts not as isolated acts but connected to vast numbers of people and vast numbers of protests all over the world. That is what is capable of bringing about change.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Can you tell me why in your life you've considered Palestine such a moral, as I have by the way, too, such a moral litmus test for the whole world, and in one of your books you talk about an amazing incident where you were in jail yourself in 1970, I think it was and then you were tried on quasi terrorism charges and you were eventually acquitted.
But you received many many messages of support and solidarity from people all over the world, including from Palestine, including from Palestinian prisoners. And then when you witnessed it, Palestine yourself. You actually met some of these people who had, who were prisoners at the time when you were a prisoner and they had supported you.
It was a serendipitous meeting. Apart from your personal experience, why is Palestine such a lodestone, such a litmus test for the whole world? I think it is. I'd love to have your words explaining why.
Angela Davis: First of all let me say that I have quoted my friend, my my, my close friend and comrade who's no longer with us the poet, the black feminist poet June Jordan who said many years ago that Palestine was a moral litmus test.
So I just want, I want to make sure that people. Recognize June Jordan as someone who was a pioneer calling upon people all over the country all over the world, and especially calling upon people involved in movements for black liberation to stand up for Palestinian freedom.
I truly believe that Palestine is a moral litmus test, that one's position on Palestine is indicative of one's sense of what global liberation is all about, so that when we support Palestine, we're not saying that we only support Palestine. We're saying that we support struggles for freedom and liberation all over the world.
And precisely because of the tenacity of the Palestinian people, precisely because they have refused to give up since 1948, since 1967, the when I visited Palestine in 2011, I talked to a man who was a storekeeper just a conversation in the course of purchasing something at his store.
And he said to me, he said, as long as there is a single olive tree left in Palestine, we will fight for the liberation. Of our people and that has stayed with me. And I think that is the reason why we point to Palestine as indicative of struggles for liberation all over the world.
Black people have been very much inspired by the struggle in Palestine. People in other parts of the world have been inspired by that. And we know that if we manage to defeat Zionism, we will be able to defeat racism everywhere. We will be able to defeat we will have a sense of what it means to engage in struggles to overturn racial capitalism from Palestine to Alabama, let me say.
Dr. Gabor Maté: I think there's something unique about Zionism that you touch upon in one of your pieces. You talk about that Israel is not only the purveyor of a colonial settler project, But also one of the active, one that actively continues its violent expansion in the 21st century. Now, the last seven months, I have to say, have been the heaviest, darkest time of my adult life.
And I, this is subjective for me, and maybe it's my Jewishness and my own close relationship to the issue. I don't know what it's like for you. You've lived through the same times that I've lived through the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, the South Africa Apartheid and, struggle.
But there's something about this, and I'm not talking about numbers of deaths. Because in Iraq, half a million civilians were killed not that long ago in Vietnam, millions of people died. But there's something about the quality of it that seems even more deeply disturbing and upsetting for me than what I've seen elsewhere.
And I don't know if that's true for you but I think what it is for me is, yes, this is a colonial settler project. It had to become one, otherwise it couldn't have succeeded. But it's almost like we're Seeing world history in speeded up fashion in a few months, because this has went on for centuries here in North America.
Here's what, this is what went on in Africa for centuries and decades and so on. But here it's almost like we're seating up on our TV sets and our Instagrams and our TikToks and we're seeing it in real life. It's almost like we're looking at this horrendous version of our own past, speeded up and magnified.
I don't know if it distracts you that way, but it's like the whole colonial history is like, Shown us now in this untrammeled horror, and we can't avert our eyes.
Angela Davis: Yeah, thank you so much for making that point, and I would add that the influence of Zionism, Has been so powerful that it has blurred people's vision who are otherwise take progressive positions about the need for, to support human rights in in, in the world they're, this phenomenon of progressive except for Palestine.
It's something that we have been challenging, for a very long time, and it continues it continues today and as someone who went to a Jewish university, I attended Brandeis University so that and I come from the segregated South, as a matter of fact, I grew up in the city that was the most segregated city in the country and our first white allies, We're Jewish people.
I grew up with this sense of the need to challenge anti Semitism, but at the same time when I found out what was happening in in, in Palestine early on attending a university that was founded in the very same year as the state of Israel I learned from my Jewish friends, I learned from my Jewish friends.
About the contradictions. And so I grew up with a sense of the need both to challenge anti Semitism. And to stand with Palestinian people struggling against the settler colonial violence inflicted by Israel. So I would say that that has been the. The most difficult issue, the assumption that if you are against anti Semitism, then you have to be opposed to the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
If you are against anti Semitism, you have to stand with the state of Israel. And
my experience has been that Progressive Jewish people are the ones who have given leadership to the struggle precisely because they recognize the kinship between what is happening in the occupation of Palestine and what happened historically in terms of the Holocaust. So I, I think that the contradiction, the apparent contradiction is something that we have to recognize.
It's not a contradiction to be. Opposed to anti Semitism, to be opposed to racism, to be opposed to settler colonialism and its impact on the Palestinian people is one struggle, one global struggle for human rights.
Dr. Gabor Maté: I think one aspect of that difficulty is that Zionism isn't just a stand alone movement, it's very much embedded and interwoven with the much larger and much more powerful imperial projects, so therefore, as long as the empire and its media, Acolytes see Zionism as necessary to their purposes.
It's very difficult for people here to even hear the other side. And as I mentioned earlier today, perhaps, for two days in a row now, the New York Times, I had to take my hat off. I'm also almost speechless, has presented today and yesterday two articles that actually tell the truth about the occupation.
But that's extraordinarily unusual. And usually, and for decades, the emphasis has been on the violence of the other side. And at some point, you're actually right. I'm just going to quote you, if I may. You say and you wrote this in your book Freedom is a Constant Struggle, published in 2016. So lest anybody think Thanks.
That history began on October the 7th. We've been talking about this for a long time. And Angela wrote in 2016, is that placing the question of violence at the forefront almost inevitably serves to obscure the issues that are at the center of our struggles for justice. And can you just talk about that, how the violent I don't know anybody that justifies some of the events that happened on October 7th, I don't know anybody who does.
But at the same time, if we assume that's where it all began, and the only issue is Palestinian violence, what can we possibly understand? So placing this issue of violence at the forefront is the way of ignoring all the history and all the systemic issues that actually result in the eruptions of that violence.
Can you talk about that?
Angela Davis: Yeah, thank you Gabor. This is an issue that has always clouded struggles for liberation. I can talk just briefly about the The black liberation movement in the US. And there were, of course, those who advocated the use of violence mostly for self defense.
We were. Often interrogated about we didn't take a position of absolute nonviolence and when we pointed out that, self defense is about defending not only individuals, but defending the right to be And struggle for liberation but violence was always the central issue.
And of course, that misconstrued the extent to which the state used violence against struggles for a better world and prevented people from recognizing the extent to which the state was in possession of the monopoly of violence. And Palestinian, young Palestinian people who use rocks to indicate their to assent to occupation becomes the the emblem of violence, whereas the tanks and the bombs of the IDF are not considered violence in that respect.
So I, I think. We have to talk about violence because violence does corrupt. Violence does I would be happy if we didn't see any more violence in the world, but to assume that those who are fighting for A better world and attempt to defend themselves or attempt to express themselves through modes of violence that are oftentimes insignificant in comparison to the vast violence of militarism and armed forces that that Makes it impossible for us to really understand the right side of history.
I
Dr. Gabor Maté: think we can give one example of that in the very contentious and very sad issue of hostages. People say release the hostages, and yeah, it's
Who were abducted, are told the hostages will not be there. But we don't talk about it. Okay, but, so there's It's very sad about the hostages, and we all wish they were free. What we don't talk about is the hostages on the other side. In 2016 already, Angela wrote that, about the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails, including something like, you mentioned that 800, 000 men, this is by 2016, we're talking about, Eight years ago now, 800, 000 Palestinian men had been to the Israeli jails.
40 percent of Palestinian males, 40 percent of Palestinian males have been jailed by Israel one time or another. 40 percent and the numbers have only gone up. And we talk about hostages. The orthopedic Shifa Hospital. He was an orthopedic surgeon who saved lives. He was arrested. He was 53. A man in his, in the height of his vigor and health, father of six children.
He was arrested while doing his orthopedic work in Al Sheva Hospital. He was beaten and tortured to death in an Israeli prison. I didn't even deign to mention it. There the time Palestinian, thousands of them every year, children are captured with a charge, not if those was not, that even there could be a legitimate charge against them, an occupying power.
There's no right to arrest anybody for resisting them. If a child rights a sign saying, done with the occupation, they can be jailed. And they don't talk about the torture in Israeli jails. They don't talk about the fact, this is written in the Israeli press, that some of the prisoners taken in Gaza had their hands and feet tied so tightly that the circulation was cut off and they had limbs had to be amputated.
And this has been divulged by Israeli physicians. You don't see a mention of it in the Western press.
Angela Davis: Absolutely. And thank you.
Dr. Gabor Maté: And so that there's no, all I'm asking for and I think all you're asking for is some equivalence of concern rather than this one sided presentation of one party is always the perpetrators of violence and the other is just defending themselves.
Angela Davis: Absolutely. And thank you so much Gabor, for all of your work in bringing this lopsided assumption about violence and incarceration to light and let me say that I've had the opportunity on several occasions to meet Sahour Francis who is the head of Aramir and we have learned so much about the role of incarceration.
Those of us who do work around prisons, and let me say that that was, that has been my first connection with Palestine political prisoners and struggles around issues of imprisonment and our effort to create an abolitionist movement in, in, in this country that has benefited so much from the experiences and from the theorizing of the role of incarceration in in, in Palestine the role of administrative detention, as you were pointing out, the vast numbers of.
Of Palestinian men the majority of whom have had some connection with the apparatus of incarceration. But we learned also that imprisonment is not an isolated phenomenon that it is not simply about placing people within Institutions of jails and prisons that, that that the society that is that has been created by the, by Zionism, by the occupation, that it is a carceral society that we learned many years ago that we can't, Simply consider the issue as one of incarcerating individuals in a particular inside of a particular institution that carcerality gets expressed and the checkpoints.
It gets expressed in. And the fact that Gaza has long been represented as the largest open air prison in the world that Palestine has been represented as an open air prison. I think. The all over the world we've benefited from the experience of Palestinians with respect to the various modes of ality.
And let me, you mentioned this in the beginning but I'll emphasize the fact that when I was myself incarcerated back in the. Early 1970s one of the most memorable moments of that period was a solidarity message that I received from Palestinian prison prisoners the message had been smuggled out by their attorney, and it was brought in to my jail cell by my attorney and I I've always considered myself an internationalist but moments like that emphasize and re emphasize how important it is for us to feel connected across oceans, across geographical boundaries for us to recognize that That in that we are one people, we really are particularly considering the fact that we live on a planet that is one of billions of other planets in the universe and beyond and.
The fact that it's often so difficult as a consequence of systems like racial capitalism and Zionism and colonialism to experience the affinity we should all have with each other is is one of the saddest experiences and the saddest consequences of capitalism.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Speaking of unity and oneness, last night, an Israeli friend sent me a YouTube link to a ceremony that was held in Israel, I think a couple of days ago by a group called Combatants for a piece. And these were mothers, there was a mother who spoke, whose son went dancing on October the 7th, ended up dying in a bomb shelter, a beautiful young man.
Palestinian mothers who'd lost their sons. And these people had all come together, to mourn together. And to pledge to work for peace together and to pledge to respect and honor one another. And these are Palestinians and Israelis coming together in this unity of grief, but also of commitment to peace.
And it was mesmerizing. and beautiful and heart rending, but ultimately so full of truth and peaceful possibility.
I just want to mention that positive note Angela, I want to come back to one more issue that you mentioned is progressive about everything else with Palestine. There's so many fellow Jews that are now, that are decent, really good hearted people who do wonderful work in the world, commit themselves to healing and to humanity.
Yeah. Absolutely. And on this issue, particularly if they're in a certain generation, they cannot see the forest for the trees. They just cannot. I know wonderful JewI have wonderful Jewish friends fromwho lived through apartheid in South Africa, who are totally clear about the injustice of the system that they grew up under.
But who cannot see the parallels, despite the fact, and you mentioned this yourself, that Mandela was very clear that as long as Palestine is not free, South Africa can't be free. And you talk about the scientification of Mandela. And what's interesting is, it's a very selective sanctification.
They sanctify some aspect of Israel, but they don't much mention how clear he was on the issue of Palestine. And can you just talk about this phenomenon? You mentioned it of progressive on everything else and being able to see injustice everywhere else, but not on this one. I think it's I think it's a trauma outcome. I think it's people stuck in a kind of traumatized view of the world, but I wonder how you've dealt with it in your life.
Angela Davis: First of all, I think it's really important to point out that progressive and Radical Jewish people have given leadership to the movements of this moment and historically, my experience has been that that, Progressive Jews, including people who have the experience of the Holocaust in their background, have been the ones who recognize how important it is to express solidarity.
With Palestine. I was on the Russell Tribunal for Palestine. And, of course, that's an example of a formation that is, that came into being precisely because of the fact that progressive Jewish people felt that something urgent had to be done. So I don't think that we need to assent to the assumption that to be Jewish is to be in line with the policies of the state of Israel and and, but on the other hand, as you pointed out precisely because of the ideologies of the last decades so many people assume that to be opposed to the state of Israel is to engage in anti Semitic activities.
That is ideological. That is what we have to challenge. And I think that when we see the consequences of the work that has been done over the last decades now there have been occupations. 2 days ago, there were occupations that were still existing on I shouldn't say, I shouldn't use the word occupation because of its connection with the occupation of Palestine but what is the word that they've, encampments, there have been, there are encampments in 180 universities in this country what has happened Over the last months has been absolutely incredible and it also lets us understand how we must go about challenging Zionism.
The fact that you, as you pointed out, the New York Times has had a couple of very extensive articles on the occupation, which is unprecedented for the New York Times.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes.
Angela Davis: And these articles didn't appear because the New York Times certainly began to rethink themselves in isolation what their coverage had been and made a decision to change it.
It's the impact of all of the protests all over this country but all over the world because protestors in the U. S. were not the first to stand up, to stand in solidarity with Palestine. And I think you mentioned Nelson Mandela South Africa has been in the forefront of the global solidarity movement for, so many years I can remember that I attended the UN conference against racism that took place in Durban in 2001. And it was the South Africans who were arguing for And an awareness of the apartheid nature of the oppression of the Palestinian people. This struggle has a very long history.
And for those who are accustomed to immediate results, instant results it has not borne very many fruit. But at the same time, those of us who see the protracted nature of struggle and are willing to recognize that it is important to pass on from one generation to the next generation the the importance of standing with Palestine that eventually it does bear fruit.
And we do see the consequences of that very long and protracted struggle. That is why they, New York Times articles appear, I said, I want to give credit where credit is due. It's not the New York Times that independently decided to do that. They recognize that if they are going to be on the right side of history, they have to respond to the demands of the millions and millions of people all over the world who are saying We want to see freedom in Palestine now.
We want justice for Palestine right now.
Dr. Gabor Maté: You mentioned South Africa's advocacy for justice in Palestine, and I was watching the South African lawyer advocate at the International Court of Justice speak yesterday, and this is a subjective point, but When I heard her speak or when I hear one of the Irish representatives speak and the Irish show are a uniquely interesting example in Europe because they've suffered British colonialism, imperialism for hundreds of years.
So when you go to island, there's a lot of support for Palestine. 'cause those people know on their own skins what it's like to be colonized. But anyway, when you listen to these Irish people speak, or the South African, then you're, they're not just reciting. dry facts or statistics or viewing history, you can actually feel on the human level, on the heart level, here's a real person speaking with real emotions.
And the South African lawyer, fairly young woman, was talking about the situation of children at some point gets very emotional and nearly into tears. And then when you listen to the Western spokesman and Israeli spokesman, you hear this dry, Voices, devoid of emotion, full of supercilious sense of superiority.
You people don't understand, we understand. I'm just saying that, even if you didn't understand the words that were being uttered, on the human level, there's such an exchange of there's such an expression of reality and heart centeredness. On the one side and a refuge into the cold calculating mind on the other.
You can't help but be struck by it, even if you don't know the facts.
Angela Davis: Absolutely. And I think Gabor that we've missed over the last decades a sense of what it means to be emotionally connected. To people who are suffering in other places because of the nature of the media, the role of mass media, we and the way, as you pointed out and which oftentimes it's about numbers, it's about facts but I had been thinking before October 7th that we haven't, in a very long time, experienced a movement where we felt that kind of emotional connection, and I remember the struggle for this, the struggle around Vietnam When we were allowed to experience our humanity, our expansive humanity as involving people who were suffering from U.
S. militarism in Vietnam. And I think that's that's so essential and I don't want to underestimate all of the horrendous suffering that has happened in Gaza and on the West Bank and elsewhere in Palestine, but I do want to point out that vast numbers of people now Have that emotional connection and therefore have experienced a much more expansive sense of their own humanity.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes. Let me ask you about how you see the world, like back in the 70s, or in the 60s, when you and I were. Same age, only, as I said, only three weeks apart in birth terms. In that youth of mine, I did think naively that if we only work idealistically enough and hard enough, this world's going to change for the better.
And there was that same sense of triumphant expectation around the civil rights movement as well and so on. And for a while, things seemed to be just Expanding and opening up and then to quote a Hollywood movie, the empire struck back and we've seen almost the opposite happening over the last. A couple of decades, the movements have lost some degree of momentum unions are much more suppressed the press has become much more monolithic, and people have become more passive.
Now we're seeing, then as George Floyd happens and Trayvon Martin, and There's periodic expressions of solidarity and resistance. Again, we've seen a surge of that over Gaza, and maybe this will catalyze something more long lasting. But how do you see it going overall, since you're enthusiastic, and maybe sometimes, not, I don't want to say naive, but You're an enthusiastic youth, are you able to maintain the same enthusiasm, do you still partake of that same momentum, or do we acknowledge that there are setbacks and sometimes it recedes and sometimes it moves forward, what is your sense of this whole thing?
Angela Davis: Those of us who have spent , more than eight decades on this earth of course, the perspective is different from those who have spent two decades,
But I I value that sense of urgency that comes from youth and that that assumption that we have to act now.
In order to save the planet, we have to act now in order to guarantee that more people are not sacrificed on the altar of racial capitalism, colonialism. I oftentimes people ask me what would you say to your younger self? What would you say to yourself, the self that believed that was possible for revolution to happen in our lifetime?
And I often respond by saying, I'm not so much interested in in, And schooling my younger self. I'm much more interested in what my younger self would think about what I'm doing now. So that I try to maintain a connection with with young people, both as an educator, and especially as an activist.
I remember. When I was young, the older people I was most impressed with were those who were willing to have serious conversations with those of us who were younger, those who believed in egalitarian relationships across generations. And I try my best to do that now. I don't know whether I succeed, but I think we do need The the urgency that young people feel without that our movements don't have an engine.
They don't have the capacity to push themselves forward. And, of course, We believe that revolution was possible, that it would happen in, during that period and and of course it didn't in the way we imagined it those of us who imagined the downfall of capitalism and racism and, all of that But in the process of fighting for those lofty goals, we brought about change, and I hold on to that.
We would not be here today with our notions of how important it is to stand up against racism, and the fact that racism is global, that it's connected to the world. Settler colonialism which as you point out Israel continues to try to expand. If we had not done that during that period, we would not be where we are now.
So we may not have, we may not have achieved the revolution we thought was on the horizon. But we did make the kinds of changes that have, Allow people to become much more aware of about the interrelationships between racism and heteropatriarchy and homophobia and why it is that traumas as your work has pointed out.
Trauma moves from one generation to the next, and that oftentimes traumatized people may repeat, may engage in the kind of violence that was inflicted on them. Think we've learned so much. I often point out that at the beginning, Of my trajectory in this struggle. I was convinced that what we had to do was free the black man because that is what we were told.
And now we know that we can't talk in those gender terms. That is not only about the. The man and the woman, but it's a challenge to the binary structure of gender. And so I could talk about so many insights, so much consciousness that has occurred as a consequence of those struggles. But, oftentimes it takes decades.
It takes Hundreds of years who are the beneficiaries of enslaved people's refusal to accept slavery. And, they stood up against slavery. They could not have imagined. that we would be where we are now. But we are only here by virtue of their commitment
to
struggle for freedom.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Thank you, beautifully put. To conclude this, and I know you have to leave two things spring into mind that I've been quoting quite a bit recently. One is from the Bhagavad Gita, where it says that you're entitled to your work, but not to the fruits of it. Your labor, so you do it because you do it.
You don't do it because you're expecting a certain outcome. Number one, number two, there's a Jewish rabbi, a hundred years before Jesus, who said that the task of healing the world, the task is not yours to finish. But neither are you free not to take part in it. So I do think that those of us engaged in this work cannot be discouraged by temporary setbacks or apparent lack of result, as you point out.
We're contributing to something. And those of you who are listening, who may feel overwhelmed by the forces ranged against the truth, as I understand it, don't be. You're part of something much greater, much more historical, and much more essential. And I think that's what Angela's words just all pointed to.
Angela Davis: And also, if I can make a statement regarding the importance of being aware of the fact that those who came before us created the foundation for the work that we are doing oftentimes people think that they are the first, That they are the ones who are doing the important work, but we can do what we're attempting to do now only because of what was done by those who came before us.
I think it's so important to develop a historical consciousness that extends not only into the past, but into the future. And yeah, we won't, be able to witness what the full consequences might possibly be of the work that we're doing now. But we do know that if we do nothing there will not be a future in which the borders of freedom will expand and become inclusive for the Palestinian people.
So I also, to think of those of us who are older as you and I are as representing for those who are no longer here, for those who gave their lives to, to the struggle and made it possible for us to reach this point we are witnessing for them as well.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Absolutely.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. Thank you so much, Angela, for we honor you and for your work for the. Global Collective Struggle for Liberation, your voice of many. And thank you for keep reminding us that we're not individual. This is not an individual work. And as much as we are fighting against Zionism and colonialism and capitalism, we have to also be against individualism because this is really what's the
Maurizio Benazzo: It's the essence of creating a colonial project.
Zaya Benazzo: Allowed. I love that. That mentality, that thinking that was imposed on indigenous way of being and seeing the world as a collective whole, as one inter. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
