Iconic political and social activist Angela Y. Davis addressed a near-capacity crowd in SF State’s Jack Adams Hall on March 1.

The speech opened “California Prison Culture: art, issues, and dialogue,” a day-long conference of workshops and visual and performance art billed by the event’s organizers as a means to encourage dialogue on how incarceration affects California’s population.

Davis cited Pew Report findings released Feb. 28 that stated one out of every 100 adults in the United States is in prison.

“We now know that there’s something like 2.3 million people behind bars [in America], and here in California there are over 170,000 prisoners in facilities that are designed to hold 100,000 prisoners,” she said.

Davis said that building more prisons in California has led only to more overcrowding. The problem lies, she said, in the upwards of $8.75 billion California spends to support the prisons already in operation.

“It draws resources away from education and housing and health care, and all the services that might prevent people from being incarcerated in the first place,” she explained.

Davis, who said she had been involved in the anti-prison movement for most of her life, began and ended her keynote speech to standing ovations.

“I’m in awe of her presence. She’s almost godlike,” said Johnny Richardson, 28, a graduate student of education at SF State. He said he has heard Davis speak several times and described Saturday’s speech as “empowering” and Davis herself as “a woman of impeccable integrity.”

Davis, who is currently a professor of feminist studies and history of consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, became a public figure in September 1969 when University Regents at UCLA fired her from her position as a philosophy professor because of her membership in the Communist Party.

Less than a year later, Davis became internationally known when authorities suspected her of involvement in a conspiracy to take a Marin County Superior Court judge hostage to secure release for three prisoners known as the Soledad Brothers from California’s Soledad Prison.

The kidnapping attempt, for which Davis was not present, led to a shoot out in front of the Marin County courthouse resulting in the deaths of the judge, his kidnapper and two freed inmates. Davis was accused of supplying the guns used in the hostage attempt.

Police pursued Davis for several weeks as one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives and she was ultimately arrested and charged with kidnapping, murder and criminal conspiracy.

Davis was held in prison for over a year leading up to the trial that eventually cleared her name. She capitalized on her celebrity and public support during and after the trial to raise awareness of the racial and social inequalities she sees as inherent in the American justice system.

In her writings, Davis distances herself from the prison reform movement, saying that to focus solely on the goal of making prison conditions more palatable takes attention away from the more important idea of “decarceration,” or bringing “as many imprisoned women and men as possible back into what prisoners call ‘the free world.’” Davis notes decriminalizing drug use and the sex trade as means to this end.

Davis urged her listeners to consider abolition of the prison system by considering a justice system that isn’t based on exile.

“Can we imagine a justice that doesn’t assume that one mistake should ruin an entire lifetime? Can we imagine a justice that calls for accountability and compensation by the persons who do harm and patience and perhaps forgiveness by the persons to whom harm is done?” she asked. “Can we imagine a justice that helps us move forward toward a society free of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental violence and war?”

The symposium came near the end of a year-long series of art, lectures and programs, and was a collaborative presentation by Intersection for the Arts, SF State’s International Center for the Arts, Associated Students Inc., the criminal justice studies department and the Poetry Center.

Andrea Parra, 22, is a psychology major at SF State and is involved with California Prison Focus, an organization she describes as “investigating and exposing human rights abuses against prisoners.”

Parra wore a white tee-shirt with the words “No More Prisons,” hand-written in black marker. She waited after the speech in a crowd of several dozen people who wanted to greet and pose for pictures with Davis. Para had her copy of Davis’s 2003 book “Are Prisons Obsolete?” signed by the author.

Parra said she was moved by the speech and that the anti-prison movement held a personal connection for her ever since her uncle served seven years in Pelican Bay State Prison, a super-maximum security prison in Northern California.

“It was extremely inspirational,” she said. “It makes me want to keep fighting.”