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Assata Shakur: Advocate for Revolutionary Change

Taken from: The New York Hands Off Assata Coalition

Assata Shakur is a mother, grandmother, and activist who follow in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and all of those sisters and brothers who risked their lives so that Black people may one day be free. Assata is not a terrorist; she is a victim of the American government’s internal terror campaign, directed against the Black Liberation Movement. Popularly known as COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program), this onslaught against Black people in America resulted in the assassination of, unlawful imprisonment of, and exile of hundreds of Black activists during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among the casualties and victims were Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fred Hampton, who were both murdered with the complicity of the government; and Geromino Pratt and Dhoruba bin Wihad, who spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

As part of the FBI’s campaign against the Black Panther Party, Assata was labeled the “Queen of the Black Liberation Army,” and falsely accused of bank robberies and other crimes up and down in the East Coast in the early 1970s. Fleeing from these false allegations, she was captured while traveling the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973 with two other members of the Black Panther Party--Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli--after their car was stopped for an alleged faulty taillight. A shoot-out erupted that resulted in deaths of Zayd and a state trooper, Werner Forster.

Following her arrest, New Jersey State Troopers delighted in torturing Assata and, after his arrest, Sundiata, as well. While shackled and chained to a bed, arms paralyzed, and bullet wounds in her chest, Assata was beaten with shotgun butts by New Jersey State Troopers shouting Nazi slogans and threats to kill her. In the history of New Jersey, no woman pretrial detainee has ever been treated as she was, continuously confined to a men’s prison, under twenty-four surveillance of her most intimate activities, without intellectual sustenance, adequate medical attention, or exercise, and without the company of other women for all the years she was in their custody.

Following detentions and trials riddled with egregious human rights violations and constitutional errors (e.g., massive negative publicity and exclusion of African people from the jury), Assata and Sundiata were both found guilty, in separate trials, of the murder of Trooper Weiner and sentenced to life in prison. Prior to her New Jersey trial, Assata was tried six times on the various flimsy, false charges for which she was being sought. Each time she was acquitted.

In 1979, in one of the boldest and most righteous actions in the history of the 20th century Black Liberation Movement, Assata was liberated from a New Jersey jail. In 1986, she was granted asylum by the government of Cuba, where she has continued to speak out for the right of African people in the United States to freedom and self-determination.

Thirty-two years later, Sundiata, now sixty-eight years old, remains in prison and, despite a near stellar prison record, has twice been denied parole because of his continuing commitment to speaking out for the freedom of Black people, and against the vindictiveness of the law enforcement agencies in New Jersey.

To get involved you should:
1) Sign the Cuba- Assata Shakur Petition in suppport of Asssata and direct others to the Hands Off Assata website.
2) Take every opportunity to talk and educate others about Assata Shakur.
3) Contact & support the NY Hands Off Assata Coalition or a collective near you.
4) Organize others in your community, town, church, union, etc…
5) Donate money to the NY Hands Off Assata Coaliton.

-Visit: Hands Off Assata.
-Read "Assata: An Autobiography," written by Assata Shakur.
-Read "Inadmissible Evidence: The Story of the African-American Trial Lawyer Who Defended the Black Liberation Army," by Evelyn Williams, a relative of Assata Shakur.
Source: The New York Hands Off Assata Coalition, 2005; http://handsoffassata.org/