Home » Santa Clarita News » Editorial/Opinion » Editorial: Former Black Panther Angela Davis To Be Keynote Speaker At College Of The Canyons
Angela davis coc editorial 033023
Photo courtesy of COC

Editorial: Former Black Panther Angela Davis To Be Keynote Speaker At College Of The Canyons

Editorial by Carl Goldman

In 1970, guns belonging to then-26-year-old Angela Davis, including a shotgun she purchased two days earlier were used to take over a Marin County courthouse. Four people were murdered, including the Judge. Davis was held in jail for over a year before she was acquitted and released in 1972.

Three years earlier Davis joined the Black Panther party. Davis accepted the Communist Party USA’s nomination for vice president in 1980 and in 1984. For decades she’s been a confirmed Marxist and proud of it.

On April 15, 2023, Ms. Davis will be the featured speaker at our College of the Canyons. We’re not certain if her $25,000.00 speaking fee was paid by our taxpayer dollars or from COC’s donors. We also don’t know if her travel expenses were also covered.

We asked a COC spokesperson if plans have been made to invite a guest from the other side of the political spectrum to become a key-note speaker in the future. We were told, “no.”

What’s happening to our COC?  We’ve been huge supporters of the college for the 33 years we’ve owned KHTS. But this decision has us scratching our heads. Our editorial is being released a few days before April Fools, but unfortunately, it is not a joke.

The most upsetting aspect of Ms. Davis’s speaking appearance is the college sees nothing wrong with Ms. Davis’s invitation and has no plans, and it appears no desire, to expose our students to a different point of view.

Is this another example of our kids being indoctrinated in our schools or does COC lack the filter to understand the imbalance?

COC has created the anti-racism speaker series. We applaud their efforts. We have a long list of potential speakers with a different point of view, who are also strongly against racism. Perhaps the outcry from Santa Clarita residents will force COC to see the need for balance in choosing their future guest speakers.


Sponsored Articles


Do you have a news tip? Call us at (661) 298-1220, or send an email to news@hometownstation.com. Don’t miss a thing. Get breaking KHTS Santa Clarita News Alerts delivered right to your inbox. Report a typo or error, email Corrections@hometownstation.com

KHTS FM 98.1 and AM 1220 is Santa Clarita’s only local radio station. KHTS mixes in a combination of news, traffic, sports, and features along with your favorite adult contemporary hits. Santa Clarita news and features are delivered throughout the day over our airwaves, on our website and through a variety of social media platforms. Our KHTS national award-winning daily news briefs are now read daily by 34,000+ residents. A vibrant member of the Santa Clarita community, the KHTS broadcast signal reaches all of the Santa Clarita Valley and parts of the high desert communities located in the Antelope Valley. The station streams its talk shows over the web, reaching a potentially worldwide audience. Follow @KHTSRadio on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

KHTS AM 1220 & FM 98.1 - Santa Clarita Radio - Santa Clarita News

Editorial: Former Black Panther Angela Davis To Be Keynote Speaker At College Of The Canyons

21 comments

  1. Ms. Davis was never in the Black Panthers. She was a professor at UCLA. This article is full of inaccuracies and bias that can be cleaned up with a single google search.

    • She is a professor at UCSC, not UCLA. You are full of it. Today her actions would get her imprisoned for terrorism and being an enemy combatant. Yes, most Americans are biased against murderers trying to kill police, judges and overthrowing the U.S. government. Americans are just funny that way.
      Let’s make here our ambassador to Afganistan/Taliban.

      • Common - Time Magazine 2020

        BY COMMON
        SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 9:34 PM EDT

        Angela Davis said that at a UCLA panel we were on together, and her words stuck with me. Her love for Black people and humanity at large fuels her; you can see it reflected in her impact on our world.

        Her legacy is timeless; rooted in her truth, it encourages future generations to be courageous. As a child, her family friends were among the young girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. As a political leader, she was attacked, hunted and imprisoned; she dared to stand against a racist system. She’s seen and witnessed it all, and she continues to inspire, educate and resist oppression.

        There are certain people whose names you hear a lot in hip-hop and rap songs. Angela Davis is one of them. Hip-hop artists are the leaders of culture, speaking to and for young Black kids around the world. Whom they see as legends and pay tribute to carry a lot of weight. Angela Davis stays on the pulse of what’s important. Last year, I freestyled for her during a birthday party at her home. She spent the night enjoying jazz music on her balcony, dressed in a Colin Kaepernick jersey.

        Revolution is love

    • I believe in freedom of speech and all but I’m very disappointed and frustrated with COC. There are thousands of less controversial and healthier examples of people fighting against racism that they could have picked to come to speak at their college and influence our young adults…a communist/socialist who loves Cuba and Russia and hates Israel and the USA is not who I want influencing my children… my young adult will not be attending.

      Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author; she is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She writes extensively on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.

      Beginning in 1969, Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had tried to recruit her, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location.[21] At that time she was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA, and an affiliate of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party.

      …she was hired as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). UCLA’s governing Board of Regents soon fired her due to her membership in the CPUSA; after a court ruled the firing illegal, the university fired her for the use of inflammatory language.

      In 1970, guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County, California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital felonies—including conspiracy to murder—she was held in jail for over a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972. During the 1980s, Davis was twice the Communist Party’s candidate for vice president; at the time, she also held the position of professor of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University.

      Davis perceived Cuba as a racism-free country, which led her to believe that “only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed.” When she returned to the United States, her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles.
      In 1971, the CIA estimated that five percent of Soviet propaganda efforts were directed towards the Angela Davis campaign.[50] In August 1972, Davis visited the USSR at the invitation of the Central Committee, and received an honorary doctorate from Moscow State University.[51]

      On May 1, 1979, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.[52] She visited Moscow later that month to accept the prize, where she praised “the glorious name” of Lenin and the “great October Revolution”
      She visited the Berlin Wall, where she laid flowers at the memorial for Reinhold Huhn, an East German guard who had been killed by a man who was trying to escape with his family across the border in 1962. Davis said, “We mourn the deaths of the border guards who sacrificed their lives for the protection of their socialist homeland” and “When we return to the USA, we shall undertake to tell our people the truth about the true function of this border.”[
      In the mid-1970s, Jim Jones, who developed the cult Peoples Temple, initiated friendships with progressive leaders in the San Francisco area including…Davis.
      Davis accepted the Communist Party USA’s nomination for vice president, as Gus Hall’s running mate, in 1980 and in 1984. They received less than 0.02% of the vote in 1980.[82] She left the party in 1991, founding the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

      Davis is a major figure in the prison abolition movement.[87] She has called the United States prison system the “prison–industrial complex”[88] and was one of the founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison system.[89] In recent works, she has argued that the US prison system resembles a new form of slavery…
      Davis supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
      On January 7, 2019, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) rescinded Davis’s Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award, saying she “does not meet all of the criteria”. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin and others cited criticism of Davis’s vocal support for Palestinian rights and the movement to boycott Israel…
      Ugh!

  2. We all must call the school and get this canceled. I never thought of COC going over the edge, but they have. This nonsense has got to stop!!

  3. Thank you for informing us of what’s going on in our community. Why don’t they leave our community alone? There’s a reason SCV has remained one of the safest and best places to live in the country.

  4. Boo-hoo Carl. I’ll write an editorial when your wish of Kyle Rittenhouse speaking at COC comes true.

    Davis is the embodiment of the struggle for Black liberation, anticapitalism and feminism. A true power in social/economic equality. Long before current leaders like Bernie Sanders, there was Angela Davis, pointing our the narrative of Manifest Destiny being simply a cover for an exploitive financial system that corrupts our public life and represses our humanity.

    Power to the people, right on.

  5. Pathetic!! Couldn’t COC find a more positively influential person to speak to our young ones?

  6. This is a perfect opportunity for people to attend and support the US Constitution, Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments to the US Constitution, and our constitutional republic to this avowed Marxist Communist.

    Also, let’s work together to get Ben Shapiro to attend, as he is an experienced debater and would provide the proper challenge to this person of non-interest.

    “Change My Mind”

  7. She should be in prison for subverting the United States, and buying the gun to kill a judge.

  8. Really. A person who’s advocated murdering police officers and the violent overthrow of the government while a member of the Black Panthers. This is the chosen commencement speaker? There is something deeply wrong with our “leaders,” if they think this is appropriate.

  9. OUTRAGEOUS !
    LESS HOPE NO ONE GOES TO HEAR HER.
    WHERE IS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY.
    IS THIS ALL BECAUSE SHE IS BLACK…?
    BECAUSE OF OUR WONDERFUL CONSTITUTION SHE IS FREE TO SPEAK,
    WE DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN…HOWEVER.
    LAST TIME I DONATE TO COC!!!>

  10. Look at all the people who normally lose their marbles over cancel culture calling for some cancel culture.
    Hypocritical.

    • Exactly! Pretending like they want it balances is a load of crap. They just want her to shut up. If a super far right speaker was here, they wouldn’t be crying for balance. They’re just trying to hide it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Carl Goldman

Carl Goldman, along with his wife, Jeri repurchased KHTS AM-1220, Santa Clarita’s hometown station on October 24, 2003. They owned it from 1990-1998, and then sold it to Clear Channel Communication in 1998, buying it back from Clear Channel in 2003. Since then, they have rebuilt KHTS as a critical voice of the Valley. In 2015 the radio station moved to its new headquarters on Main Street in Old Town Newhall, in the original Newhall Hardware building. In 2018 an FM was added, 98.1, with its signal being simulcast with AM-1220. In January 2020, Carl and Jeri cruised on the Diamond Princess. Carl was one of the first Americans to come down with Covid-19. Months earlier he was impacted by Guillain Barre Syndrome as a result of a Shingles vaccine in September 2019. He is still in recovery from the vaccine.