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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Angela Davis

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

Legendary human rights activist

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Angela Davis is internationally known for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Her work as an educator—both at the university level and in the larger public sphere—has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender equality.

Angela Y. Davis is professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, policing, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many influential books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. Her most recent publications include Abolition. Feminism. Now., co-authored with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, as well as Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1, a collection of essays.

She is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia, that works in solidarity with incarcerated women and gender-diverse people.

Like many educators, Professor Davis is deeply concerned with the societal tendency to invest more in prisons than in education. Having helped to popularize the concept of the “prison industrial complex,” she now challenges audiences to think seriously about the possibility of a world without prisons—and to participate in building a 21st-century abolitionist movement.

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Speech Topics

Social Justice

An Evening with Angela Davis

A legendary human rights activist known for her commitment to combating oppression, Angela Davis is an educator unlike any other, who draws on her own life experiences to help audiences understand the importance of fighting for justice. In her highly customizable talks, she speaks to a variety of social issues such as race, poverty, and feminism, asking audiences to envision and fight for a truly fair and equal world. Her keynotes are stirring, inspiring, and crucial for our modern social justice movement.