Commentary: Inviting Angela Davis to campus an abomination Can it really be so, Angela Davis on University-funded invitation, came to campus this past week, for pay to "preach" on rights abuses and moral and ethical and civil compasses?
Is nobody troubled by this? Her publicity states: "She worked with prisoners." Here's how: Angela Davis supplied guns to friends in 1970 that took over the Marin County, Calif., courtroom of almost retired 65-year-old Judge Harold Haley, duct-taped a cut-down, sawed-off double-barrel shotgun to his neck like a tie and terrorized him like that for several hours. When a rescue was desperately attempted, they cut short his retirement plans but ended his suffering by pulling the trigger and literally blowing his head off with both barrels. Today, Angela Davis is now an honored guest of the University of Oregon. How about the "prisoner work" she did do prison time for — trying to smuggle a handgun into Folsom Prison buried in her then beehive-styled hairdo? Is the rationalization/justification now that her actions were just a social act and not really intended to put hostages like Judge Haley or the Rocky Butte jailer shot in the head by such a smuggled-in gun at risk? Was she greeted by those self-claimed activists who will opine that Angela Davis was only misunderstood and "necessarily aggressive" in her "acting out"? Is her topic going to be how the fog of faded memories and history, however terrible but lost to time, is the ultimate Statute of Limitations? With this, the University program clearly has lost its moral compass. This is not someone with any modicum of an excuse or justification, like Patty Hearst (who robbed a bank after being kidnapped), or even Ron Eachus, later Oregon PUC director who as president of the University of Oregon student body reportedly used student funds to travel to Hanoi during the Vietnam war copying Jane Fonda to show his "solidarity." Instead, she is more like the guy who bombed the PLC who claimed to be "protesting the military-industrial complex." Angela Davis has no justification, any more than the Eugene woman who sought "relief" just because she had successfully hid out in Oregon for some 20 years after being part of an "anti-war" group that killed a bank guard, similarly the killer college-bomber of Madison, Wisc., or the guy who set off the bomb that blew up on the UO campus or, for that matter, the Trobridges claiming "No one was supposed to get hurt" referring to their bomb that both killed and maimed innocents at the bank in Woodburn last spring. She makes her living off of the tragedies she has been intimately involved in, if not outright caused. I for one have an indelible etch in my memory of the newspaper's courtroom sketch of a sorrowful and soon-dead Judge Haley with the Angela Davis-supplied shotgun permanently duct-taped around his neck. Is there is any difference between the murder acquittal of Angela Davis and that of O.J. Simpson? Both involved the best criminal defense attorneys that money could buy, clearly overpowering the local DAs; the only major difference being that afterward Angela Davis in fact went to prison. Not for this specific act but for, in her arrogance following her acquittal, actually attempting to repeat the same murderous act by smuggling into Folsom Prison a loaded pistol to facilitate an escape with deadly consequences, a certainty had she not been caught. What makes Angela Davis' struggles any more heroic, and her personal message any more press-worthy than that of Kip Kinkel, Diane Downs or the recent Woodburn bank bombers, all recently denied the same social forgiveness that seems to have graced Angela Davis? The decision-making that brought Angela Davis here, for her profit no less, and those authorizing payment to Angela Davis so she continues to profit from her crimes need to be held personally accountable. [email protected] -- http://www.dailyemerald.com/opinion/commentary-inviting-angela-davis-to-campus-an-abomination-1.1913901 Via InstaFetch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
