An Open Letter From Assata

Posted on May 3, 2013 by reed

Originally on Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle

My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984.

I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.

In 1978, my case was one of many cases bought before the United Nations Organization in a petition filed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, exposing the existence of political prisoners in the United States, their political persecution, and the cruel and inhuman treatment they receive in US prisons. According to the report:

(VIDEO) Machete Attack on Police Station – Uyghur Autonomous Region

Video and Excerpts from Sina July 8

Autnomous Uyghur Region, Turkestan

“Surveillance video showing rioters with machetes attacking a local police station on June 26 in Shanshan county of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was released Saturday.

Reports stated that 24 people, of which 16 were ethnic Uyghurs and eight were Han, were killed. The attacks also left 21 others injured.”

June 26th, Uyghur Autonomous region

watch video here

[BAI Note] The clashes in “Turkestan” have been going on for decades as the Muslim Uyghur population has been in a decolonial struggle against the Chinese state and the Han Chinese. The Hans have been flooding and settling the region which is often called “Xinjiang,” which means “New Frontier” or “New Colony,” by the Chinese state and global mainstream media. The security forces in the region are Han Chinese as well and any act against the settlers is considered an act against the state. Since 9/11, the Chinese government has taken to calling the Uyghur rebels “insurgents” and the uprisings acts of “terror.”  The Muslim Uyghur community, now an ethnic minority group in the region, has also been banned by the Chinese state from observing Ramadan. Other Muslim activities such as visits to the masjid (mosques) have also been curbed.

The Incomprehensible Black Anarchist Position

[BAI NOTE:Last night our brother in struggle Hannibal Abdul Shakur was arrested by the Oakland Police Dept in the middle of street rebellions which started Saturday night after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the murderer of Trayvon Martin.

Today is Assata Shakurs birthday. It is also the anniversary of the SFPD murder of Kenneth Harding.

It is also going to be another night of rebellion in Oakland as the people have made calls for a gathering at 9pm at Oscar Grant Plaza.

In an instant everything has become connected.

We are asking those who know him and those who don’t to dig deep and donate to his case and help avoid  complications in his battle against Cancer. The following is a piece written by Hannibal Abdul Shakur. Raw and unapologetic the piece speaks to the anger we’ve see in the streets over the past few days and nights.

PLEASE DONATE TO THE TRAYVON 2: GO FUND ME]

Oakland, CA: reposted from Unflinching Antagonisms:

“Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.  I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots that protect them and their property.” –Assata Shakur

“I was born into the flames of slave insurrection.  My first recorded ancestor was a runaway slave named Felix.  In between him and me have been several butchered half lives.  My grandfather, the oldest ancestor I’ve had the pleasure and privilege to interact with, was, as a young man, captured and tortured with “electro-shock therapy” for months on end as a consequence of his very material defiance and resistance to this “constitutional violence” that Wilderson describes in “the vengeance of vertigo”.  As a result he was introduced to this “performative contingent violence” forever carving into our family tree the scars of his/our subjugation.  In the same way that many families pass down the stories of how grandparents met and the idiosyncrasies of ancestors long past, I was passed a narrative, a framework for my own identity, of pure unflinching antagonism.  I can only imagine this is part and parcel of the reason Michigan pigs pumped 40 bullets into my cousin’s chest a few months ago or why my other cousin is serving a life sentence.  It’s difficult to make distinctions between Oakland and Monroe, between prison and plantation when past and present meet in these spaces and moments.  What joins us, stronger than our own blood even, are the subjective and objective vertigos.