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The first three sections of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle are interviews conducted by Frank Barat, a noted French activist and author, whose questions display a deep knowledge of Davis’s previous works. The first of the three interviews takes place via email over the course of several months in 2014. In it, Davis foregrounds the distinction between the individual and the collective, which plays into her arguments throughout the book. Davis insists here, and in the pieces that follow, that progressive struggles can only succeed when people band together to form collectives or movements.

Read the explanation of an important quote about solidarity.

Because capitalism idealizes the power of the individual to create a better life, Davis argues that social movements aimed at the shared goal of freedom must reject individualism, and with it, the emphasis on private property and other economic metrics of success. This also means rejecting views of history that celebrate exemplary individuals or believing that particular politicians (including former president Barack Obama) can be the main agents of change. The ease with which individuals can be demonized, as in the case of political prisoners, likewise reveals a limitation when movements are built on individuals. The belief that struggles are over when a hero has succeeded too often encourages movements to dissipate. Throughout this interview, Davis returns to different ways of thinking about collectives—voting, Black feminism, the Black Panther Party, international activism—juxtaposing their shared force with the power of private corporations and arguing for solidarity and unflagging commitment to a collective cause.

Read more about Main Idea #3: Davis’s rejection of capitalism and its emphasis on individualism.

The protests that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014 are a recurrent topic in the book and provide the starting point for the second interview between Davis and Barat. In this interview, which took place in September 2014 in Brussels, Belgium, Davis argues that the militarization of the police, evident in Ferguson, links this killing with the precarious situation of Palestinians, who must navigate the militarized living conditions created by Israel. Forms of state violence originate in colonialism and enslavement, she explains, and that means that all persons suffering under these conditions have more similarities than differences.

The ability to connect seemingly disparate situations is a hallmark of Davis’s thought, one that her explanation of “intersectionality” helps to clarify. A term that arose from the work of Black feminists—most notably American civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw—intersectionality refers to modes of analysis (and practices) that insist on considering how multiple identity categories, like race, class, and gender, work together. Black women developed this way of thinking to find answers to structural problems that seemed to resist analysis and to provide a vocabulary to talk about disparate freedom movements. Even as her interests range widely around the globe, Davis’s way of thinking reflects her underlying commitment to the work done by Black women as organizers and activists.

Read more about Main Idea #1: that the fight for freedom and against racism must be international and intersectional.

Davis’s third interview with Barat took place in Paris, France, in December 2014. In it, Davis ties many of the concepts they covered in previous interviews back to racism. For Davis, racism should be defined not only, or even primarily, as an individual's feeling of dislike for people who belong to a specific race. Racism on an individual level, she asserts, is only one effect of the larger network of priorities, assumptions, and privileges that comprise systemic racism. A system that has such hierarchies embedded in it will favor some people over others. Over time, such a system generates and validates the assumption that the favored group is better and deserves better. But, as Davis claims, when a system is organized to be unfair, it cannot be trusted to deliver fair results, even if it sometimes rewards individual members of the historically oppressed group. When she insists on systemic change, then, Davis is arguing that there can be no way to remedy certain social problems without radically altering the basic social systems that produce racist outcomes. Chief among them, and one of the issues Davis has focused on throughout her career, is the disproportionately high rate of incarceration of Black people.

Read more about Main Idea #2, which describes mass incarceration, police brutality, and systemic racism as new forms of slavery.

Next section Sections Four, Five & Six

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