Angela Davis on media, race and power

Media@McGill welcomes American activist icon to deliver its annual Beaverbrook Public Lecture

Early on New Year's Day morning in 2009, 22-year-old Oscar Grant was fatally shot by a transit police officer on a train platform in Oakland, California. The incident, from many vantage points, was captured on cell phone cameras held by passengers on the train idling next to the platform. The clips were subsequently broadcast on television news and spread like wildfire across the Web, prompting an enraged community to protest and riot over the days that followed.

Coming less than three weeks before Barack Obama's inauguration - as the world's media was proclaiming the dawn of a new "post-racial America" - the case of Oscar Grant demonstrated the depth and complexity of the relationship between media, race and power in America.

Renowned author, professor, and human rights activist Angela Davis will reflect on this issue in her Media@McGill Beaverbrook Public Lecture: "Media, Race and Power: The Case of Oscar Grant." The free lecture will take place on Thurs., Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. at 855 Sherbrooke St. W., Leacock Building, Room 132.

Davis, the '60s and early '70s icon of black power politics who became known for her association with the Black Panthers, continues to work for racial and gender equality, gay rights, and prison abolition while pursuing her career as an author and professor emerita at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

On the Web:
www.media.mcgill.ca

Angela Davis Interview at an Oscar Grant demonstration Jan. '09:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl2Q1k9mS0