assata banner

$1 million for Assata Shakur

Read and sign the online petition authored by Rosemari Mealy and Joan P. Gibbs! www.PetitionOnline.com/assata/

Goals & Outcomes

Go to full alert: www.assatashakur.org/1105.htm 

Feedback

Go to www.assatashakur.org/1105.htm to take the Follow-up Poll 

News Coverage

Share Your News Items

If you have articles, photographs, video or other news coverage or commentary related to a monthly Action Alert Please contact us http://assatashakur.org/contact.htm. 

Remember, we are striving for 5,000 Participants STRONG every Action! If you have ever wondered how you can make an impact, its in sheer numbers. Please Participate and Share this action with at least 5-10 others.

JoAnne Chesimard, widely known as Assata Shakur, has a $1 million bounty on her head for her capture issued by the government. This comes 30 years after she escaped a maximum-security jail and found political sanctuary in Cuba. For those not familiar with Tupac’s godmother’s past, Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party and was involved in a highly controversial shootout in New Jersey that left two dead and two incarcerated.

The announcement ironically comes on the 32nd anniversary of the incident. Artists such as Paris, Chuck D and Common have made songs supporting Shakur and her noble cause. The fateful incident involved a supposed routine pullover of Assata, Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli’s vehicle for a broken taillight. Temperatures escalated and various versions of the story have been told but in the end Zayd Shakur and Trooper Werner Foerster were left dead while Officer Harper and Assata were injured. Authorities state that Shakur murdered Foerster executioner style even though she herself was severely wounded being shot twice. She ended up convicted and spent 6½ years in the maximum-security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey. She escaped in 1979 and found asylum in Cuba.

Many believe that she was set up for her involvement in the Black Panther Party and became one of many political prisoners. The 57 year old still maintains her innocence.

"She is now 120 pounds of money," State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes said to the NJ Star-Ledger. "[This new initiative] is going to exert pressures that weren't in place nationally and internationally before. And we're going to follow up to make sure everybody is aware of this both inside and outside of Cuba."

For more information on Shakur, check out her autobiography titled “Assata,” and her website www.assatashakur.org

Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998

Statement by Sundiata Acoli to Demonstrations 

Against House Resolution 254

pic of sundiataGreetings! Thank you all for coming to the Nation's capitol to demonstrate your opposition to, anger and disgust at Res. 254, calling for the extradition of Assata Shakur from Cuba. The resolution states "Assata and the driver [i.e. me] opened fire with automatic pistols, striking Trooper Werner Foerster twice in the chest and Trooper James Harper in the left shoulder ... then turned Trooper Foerster's own weapon on him, firing an additional two bullets into his head execution style ..."

pic of assataThose are very emotional words, but to any humane person all such deaths are tragic. Zayd Shakur, the other passenger and our companion, also died from trooper gunfire during the same incident. His death is equally tragic, but these tragedies are compounded by Gov. Whitman's attempt to use Assata and the trooper's death to whip up hysterics solely to revive her faded-out political career. And it's particularly tragic that many Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members meekly went along with Whitman's charade. Some didn't and I commend all those who did not.

Those CBC members who did vote for the resolution acted as though they have forgotten the real history of African people in this country or the real way African motorists and other people of color are treated on the New Jersey Turnpike even today. It was worst in 1973 when Assata, Zayd and I were stopped there.

In the same manner, New Jersey State Troopers recently opened fire, without provocation, on three basketball try-out students, two Blacks and one Puerto Ricans, in a van: Trooper Harper opened fire on Assata sitting in the car with her hands in the air. Trooper Foerster opened fire on me and shot me in the hand as I struggled to prevent him from killing me. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that, since he fired one bullet into my hand, and his weapon, which was recovered at the scene, was found to have been fired only twice, that it's mathematically impossible for two bullets from his own weapon to be found in his head. They did find two bullets in his head, though, and both were revolver bullets. The only two revolvers on the scene belong to Troopers Foerster and Harper. The other three weapons recovered at the scene and attributed to me and my passengers were each semi-automatic pistols.

The continuing tragedy is the twenty-five years of lies, hysteria and cover-up to hide what really happened on the turnpike in May 1973. But truth crushed to earth will rise again. Assata, Zayd and I were only three of many Black Panther Party (BPP) members and other political activists of the 1960s, 1970s and beyond who were targeted by COINTELPRO, then branded as criminals so that we could be hunted down, shot and killed like animals; or if we survived, imprisoned for life. But that is a price many of us willingly paid during that era to struggle for our people's freedom. Its because of the struggle and sacrifices of people like Assata that many CBC members and other middle-class blacks are where they are today.

Instead of voting for a resolution demanding Assata's extradition, the CBC should be sponsoring a resolution demanding that the charges against Assata be dropped and calling for a congressional investigation, not only into the 1973 turnpike incident, but also into an investigation of COINTELPRO's dirty hands in setting up so many political activists of that era: many who are still in prison today and must be freed if we are ever to bring a principled closure to the 1960s. Anything less is a sell-out.

And last, Assata has given and gives so much to us. It was recently brought to my attention how little we give back to Assata. So I want your participation in an upcoming national fundraiser to give something back to Assata. The details of this fundraiser will be provided you. The gist of it involves a national fundraiser to provide Assata's daughter and her family with funds to travel frequently to see Assata and to maintain frequent telephone contact with her when away. I know its a gift that's dear to her heart and I urge you to give the max so that Assata can see/talk with her children and her grandchild as often as possible. It will make her very happy.

I thank you.

Hands Off Assata!

Free Mumia & All Political Prisoners & Prisoners of War!

Sundiata Acoli

pic of assata

U.S., keep your hands off Assata!

Interview with Assata Shakur

Pan-African News Wire: What happens to old Black Panthers? Some wind up dead, like Huey P. Newton. Some join the Moonies and the Republican Party, like Eldridge Cleaver. Some, like Mumia Abu Jamal, 

languish in prison.

But a few, like Assata Shakur, have taken the path of the" maroon," the runaway slave of old who slipped off the plantation to the free jungle communities known as "palenques." Two decades ago, Shakur was described as "the soul of the Black Liberation Army," an underground, paramilitary group that emerged from the rubble of East Coast chapters of the Black Panther Party. Among her closest political comrades was Afeni Shakur, Tupac Shakur's mother.

Forced underground in 1971 by charges that were later proved false, Assata was accused of being the "bandit queen" of the BLA, the "mother hen who kept them together, kept them moving, kept them shooting." The BLA's alleged actions included assassinating almost 10 police officers, kidnapping drug dealers—one of whom turned out to be an FBI agent—and robbing banks from coast to coast.

Throughout 1971 and 1972, "Assata sightings" and wild speculation about her deeds were a headline mainstay for New York tabloids. Then, on May 2, 1973, Shakur and two friends were pulled over by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike. During the stop, shooting erupted. A trooper and one alleged BLA member were killed, another trooper was slightly hurt and Assata—or Miss Joanne Chesimard, as authorities preferred to call her—was severely wounded by a blast of police gunfire.

Left to die in a paddy wagon, she survived only to be charged for the trooper's death and sentenced to life in prison. During the next six years—much of it spent in solitary confinement—Shakur beat a half dozen other indictments.

In 1979, after giving birth in prison, only to have her daughter taken away in less than a week, Assata Shakur managed one of the most impressive jailbreaks of the era. After almost a year in a West Virginia federal prison for women, surrounded by white supremacists from the Aryan Sisterhood prison gang, Shakur was transferred to the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Center in New Jersey.

There she was one of only eight maximum security prisoners held in a small, well-fenced cellblock of their own. The rest of Clinton—including its visiting area—was medium security and not fenced in. According to news reports at the time, Shakur's Nov. 2 escape proceeded as follows: Three men—two black, one white—using bogus driver's licenses and Social Security cards, requested visits with Assata four weeks in advance, as was prison policy. But prison officials never did the requisite background checks.

On the day of the escape, the team of three met in the waiting room at the prison entrance, where they were processed through registration and shuttled in a van to the visiting room in South Hall. One member of the team went ahead of the rest. Although there was a sign stating that all visitors would be searched with a hand-held metal detector, he made it through registration without even a pat-down.

Meanwhile, the other two men were processed without a search. As these two were being let through the chain-link fences and locked metal doors at the visiting center, one of them drew a gun and took the guard hostage. Simultaneously, the man visiting Shakur rushed the control booth, put two pistols to the glass wall, and ordered the officer to open the room's metal door. She obliged.

From there, Shakur and "the raiders," as some press reports dubbed them, took a third guard hostage and made it to the parked van. Because only the maximum security section of the prison was fully fenced in, the escape team was able to speed across a grassy meadow to the parking lot of the Hunterdon State School, where they met two more female accomplices and split up into a "two-tone blue sedan" and a Ford Maverick.

All the guards were released unharmed, and the FBI immediately launched a massive hunt. But Shakur disappeared without a trace. For the next five years, authorities hunted in vain. Shakur had vanished. Numerous other alleged BLA cadre were busted during those years, including Tupac's step-father, Mutula Shakur.

In 1984 word came from 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The FBI's most wanted female fugitive was living in Cuba, working on a master's degree in political science, writing her autobiography and raising her daughter.

Cut to 2001. It's a stunningly hot summer afternoon in Havana, Cuba, the ultimate palenque, and I am having strong, black coffee with Assata Shakur, who just turned 54 but looks more like 36. She keeps a low profile; security is still a big concern. She's finishing her second book. Given how much the feds want this woman locked up, I feel strange being in her house, as if my presence is a breach of security.

Q: How did you arrive in Cuba?

A: Well, I couldn't, you know, just write a letter and say, "Dear Fidel, I'd like to come to your country." So I had to hoof it—come and wait for the Cubans to respond. Luckily, they had some idea who I was. They'd seen some of the briefs and UN petitions from when I was a political prisoner. So they were somewhat familiar with my case, and they gave me the status of being a political refugee. That means I am here in exile as a political person.

Q: How did you feel when you got here?

A: I was really overwhelmed. Even though I considered myself a socialist, I had these insane, silly notions about Cuba. I mean, I grew up in the 1950s when little kids were hiding under their desks, because "the communists were coming." So even though I was very supportive of the revolution, I expected everyone to go around in green fatigues looking like Fidel, speaking in a very stereotypical way: "The revolution must continue, Compañero. Let us triumph, Comrade."

When I got here people were just people, doing what they had where I came from. It's a country with a strong sense of community. Unlike the U.S., folks aren't as isolated. People are really into other people. Also, I didn't know there were all these black people here and that there was this whole Afro-Cuban culture. My image of Cuba was Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. I hadn't heard of Antonio Maceo (a hero of the Cuban war of independence) and other Africans who had played a role in Cuban history.

The lack of brand names and consumerism also really hit me. You go into a store and there would be a bag of "rice." It undermined what I had taken for granted in the absurd zone where people are like, "Hey, I only eat Uncle So and So's brand of rice."

Q: So, how were you greeted by the Cuban state?

A: They've treated me very well. It was different from what I expected. I thought they might be pushy. But they were more interested in what I wanted to do, in my projects. I told them that the most important things were to unite with my daughter and to write a book. They said, "What do you need to do that?"

They were also interested in my vision of the struggle of African people in the United States. I was so impressed by that—because I grew up, so to speak, in the movement, dealing with white leftists who were very bossy and wanted to tell us what to do and thought they knew everything. The Cuban attitude was one of solidarity with respect. It was a profound lesson in cooperation.

Q: Did they introduce you to people or guide you around for a while?

A: They gave me a dictionary, an apartment, took me to some historical places, and then I was pretty much on my own. My daughter came down, after prolonged harassment and being denied a passport, and she became my number one priority. We discovered Cuban schools together, we did the sixth grade together, explored parks and the beach.

Q: She was taken from you at birth, right?

A: Yeah. It's not like Cuba where you get to breastfeed in prison and where they work closely with the family. Some mothers in the U.S. never get to see their newborns. I was with my daughter for a week before they sent me back to the prison. That was one of the most difficult periods of my life, that separation. It's only been recently that I've been able to talk about it. I had to just block it out. Otherwise I think I might have gone insane. In 1979, when I escaped, she was only five years old.

i believe in living 

by Assata Shakur

i believe in living.

i believe in the spectrum

of Beta days and Gamma people.

i believe in sunshine.

In windmills and waterfalls,

tricycles and rocking chairs;

And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.

And sprouts grow into trees.

i believe in the magic of the hands.

And in the wisdom of the eyes.

i believe in rain and tears.

And in the blood of infinity.

i believe in life.

And i have seen the death parade

march through the torso of the earth,

sculpting mud bodies in its path

i have seen the destruction of the daylight

and seen bloodthirsty maggots

prayed to and saluted

i have seen the kind become the blind

and the blind become the bind

in one easy lesson.

i have walked on cut grass.

i have eaten crow and blunder bread

and breathed the stench of indifference

i have been locked by the lawless.

Handcuffed by the haters.

Gagged by the greedy.

And, if i know anything at all,

it's that a wall is just a wall

and nothing more at all.

It can be broken down.

i believe in living

i believe in birth.

i believe in the sweat of love

and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,

steered by tired, seasick sailors,

can still be guided home to port.

Q: You came to Cuba how soon after (escaping from prison)?

A: Five years later, in 1984.

Q: I know it's probably out of bounds, but where were you during the intervening years?

A: I was underground. But I don't talk about that period. To do so would put a lot of people who helped me in jeopardy.

Q: Right, I hear you. You've talked about adjusting to Cuba, but could you talk a bit about adjusting to exile.

A: Well, for me exile means separation from people I love. I didn't, and don't, miss the U.S., per se. But black culture, black life in the U.S., that African American flavor, I definitely miss. The language, the movements, the style—I get nostalgic about that.

Adjusting to exile is coming to grips with the fact that you may never go back to where you come from. The way I dealt with that, psychologically, was thinking about slavery. You know, a slave had to come to grips with the fact that "I may never see Africa again." Then a maroon, a runaway slave, has to—even in the act of freedom—adjust to the fact that being free or struggling for freedom means, "I'll be separated from people I love."

So I drew on that and people like Harriet Tubman and all those people who got away from slavery. Because, that's what prison looked like. It looked like slavery. It felt like slavery. It was black people and people of color in chains. And the way I got there was slavery. If you stand up and say, "I don't go for the status quo." Then "we got something for you. It's a whip, a chain, a cell." Even in being free, it was like, "I am free, but now what?" There was a lot to get used to. Living in a society committed to social justice, a third world country with a lot of problems. It took a while to understand all that Cubans are up against and fully appreciate all they are trying to do.

Q: Did the African-ness of Cuba help? Did that provide solace?

A: The first thing that was comforting was the politics. It was such a relief. You know, in the States you feel overwhelmed by the negative messages that you get and you just feel weird, like you're the only one seeing all this pain and inequality. People are saying, "Forget about that. Just try to get rich. Get your own. Buy. Spend. Consume."

So living here was an affirmation of myself. It was like, "Okay, there are lots of people who get outraged at injustice." The African culture I discovered later. At first I was learning the politics, about socialism—what it feels like to live in a country where everything is owned by the people, where health care and medicine are free.

Then I started to learn about the Afro-Cuban religions—the Santeria, Palo Monte, the Abakua. I wanted to understand the ceremonies and the philosophy. I really came to grips with how much we—Black people in the U.S.—were robbed of, whether it's the tambours, the drums or the dances.

Here, they still know rituals preserved from slavery times. It was like finding another piece of myself. I had to find an African name. I'm still looking for pieces of that Africa I was torn from. I've found it here in all aspects of the culture. There is a tendency to reduce the African-ness of Cuba to the Santeria. But it's in the 

literature, the language, the politics.

Q: When the USSR collapsed, did you worry about a counter-revolution in Cuba and, by extension, your own safety?

A: Of course. I would have to have been nuts not to worry. People would come down here from the States and say, "How long do you think the revolution has—two months, three months? Do you think the revolution will survive? You better get out of here." It was rough.

Cubans were complaining every day, which is totally sane. I mean, who wouldn't? The food situation was really bad, much worse than now—no transportation, eight-hour blackouts. We would sit in the dark and wonder, "How much can people take?" I've been to prison and lived in the States, so I can take damn near anything.

I felt I could survive whatever—anything except U.S. imperialism coming in and taking control. That's the one thing I couldn't survive. Luckily, a lot of Cubans felt the same way. It took a lot for people to pull through, waiting hours for the bus before work. It wasn't easy.

But this isn't a superficial, imposed revolution. This is one of those gut revolutions. One of those blood, sweat and tears revolutions. This is one of those revolutions where people are like, "We ain't going back on the plantation, period. We don't care if you're Uncle Sam, we don't care about your guided missiles, about your filthy, dirty CIA maneuvers. We're this island of 11 million people, and we're gonna live the way we want and if you don't like it, go take a ride." And we could get stronger with the language. Of course, not everyone feels like that, but enough do.

Q: What about race and racism in Cuba?

A: That's a big question. The revolution has only been around 30- something years. It would be fantasy to believe that the Cubans could have completely gotten rid of racism in that short a time. Socialism is not a magic wand: wave it and everything changes.

Q: Can you be more specific about the successes and failures along these lines?

A: I can't think of any area of the country that is segregated. Another example, the Third Congress of the Cuban Communist Party was focused on making party leadership reflect the actual number of people of color and women in the country. Unfortunately, by the time the Fourth Congress rolled around, the whole focus had to be on the survival of the revolution.

When the Soviet Union and the socialist camp collapsed, Cuba lost something like 85 percent of its income. It's a process, but I honestly think that there's room for a lot of changes throughout the culture.

Some people still talk about "good hair" and "bad hair." Some people think light skin is good, that if you marry a light person you're advancing the race. There are a lot of contradictions in people's consciousness. There still needs to be de-Eurocentrizing of the schools, though Cuba is further along with that than most places in the world.

In fairness, I think that race relations in Cuba are 20 times better than they are in the States and I believe the revolution is committed to eliminating racism completely. I also feel that the special period has changed conditions in Cuba. It's brought in lots of white tourists, many of whom are racists and expect to be waited on subserviently.

Another thing is the joint venture corporations which bring their racist ideas and racist corporate practices—for example, not hiring enough blacks. All of that means the revolution has to be more vigilant than ever in identifying and dealing with racism.

Q: A charge one hears, even on the left, is that institutional racism still exists in Cuba. Is that true? Does one find racist patterns in allocation of housing, work or the functions of criminal justice?

A: No. I don't think institutional racism, as such, exists in Cuba. But at the same time, people have their personal prejudices. Obviously these people, with these personal prejudices, must work somewhere and must have some influence on the institutions they work in. But I think it's superficial to say racism is institutionalized in Cuba.

I believe that there needs to be a constant campaign to educate people, sensitize people and analyze racism. The fight against racism always has two levels: the level of politics and policy, but also the level of individual consciousness. One of the things that influences ideas about race in Cuba is that the revolution happened in 1959, when the world had a very limited understanding of what racism was.

During the 1960s, the world saw the black power movement, which I, for one, very much benefited from. You know "black is beautiful," exploring African art, literature and culture. That process didn't really happen in Cuba.

Over the years, the revolution accomplished so much that most people thought that meant the end of racism. For example, I'd say that more than 90 percent of black people with college degrees were able to do so because of the revolution. They were in a different historical place. The emphasis, for very good reasons, was on black-white unity and the survival of the revolution. So it's only now that people in the universities are looking into the politics of identity.

Q: What do you think of the various situations of your former comrades? For example, the recent releases of Geronimo Pratt, Johnny Spain and Dhoruba Bin Wahad; the continued work of Angela Davis and Bobby Seale; and, on a downside, the political trajectory of Eldridge Cleaver and the death of Huey Newton?

A: There have been some victories. And those victories have come about from a lot of hard work. But it took a long time. It took Geronimo 27 years and Dhoruba 19 years to prove that they were innocent and victimized by COINTELPRO. The government has admitted that it operated COINTELPRO, but it hasn't admitted to victimizing anyone. How can that be?

I think that people in the States should be struggling for the immediate freedom of Mumia Abu Jamal and amnesty for all political prisoners. I think that the reason these tasks are largely neglected reflects not only the weakness of the left, but its racism.

On the positive side, I think a lot of people are growing and healing. Many of us are for the first time analyzing the way we were wounded—not just as Africans, but as people in the movement who were, and still are, subjected to terror and surveillance. We're finally able to come together and acknowledge that the repression was real and say, "We need to heal."

I have hope for a lot of those people who were burnt out or addicted to drugs or alcohol, the casualties of our struggle. Given all that we were and are up against, I think we did pretty well.

Listen to Mumia's commentary on Assata, titled Assata Shakur: Terrorist or Victim of Terrorism?

Read the National Jericho statement on Assata Shakur and what YOU can do to help!