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• Featured Episode

  Assata Radio

  Black Unity Host

  Date / Time: 4/5/2009 4:00 PM UTC

  Category: History

  
  

  This program is a tribute show dedicated to Queen Mother Assata Shakur and all political prisoners/prisoners of war. Revolutionaries past & present. Pan-Afrikan Nationalism in Action can be found here! 04/05/09: The Afrikan Fallacy Called, Separation of Church and State. Historically Africans are a spiritual people, yet in the community there is a current separation of spirituality (Church, Mosque, and African Traditional Religions) and our political, cultural and economic aspects of our movements. This insanity imitates the Euro-Centric world view and has caused much damage to us as a people. How can we solve this issue? Hosted by Majadi Baruti& Moorbey

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• On Demand Episodes           33141          

  Date / Time: 11/27/2008 5:13 AM UTC

  Armchair Revolutionary, What is it? Are You One? How Do We Break The Cycle?

  There is a strange creature that lurks, behind the ebony colored typed words that fill you with angst, fear, excitement and the fire of longing for Mama Afrika. This creature has motivated you to action with its decisive words of Afrikan togetherness and the need for change; you jump from your chair with great jubilance amazed at what you have just read! You begin swiftly researching the source of this creature’s power, the movement of the creature throughout the earth. You began frantically looking for footsteps across the information superhighway, you attempt locate the creature’s alleged base of operation, its cave if you will, you search and search and you find…nothing. This mighty slayer of Global White supremacy, this being that magically whisked you away into a fog-filled land of esoteric teachings and higher spiritual consciousness, that monster that was able to move you through anger, through sadness, through joy that expressed how you had thought you found a kindred spirit in warfare. Yes, that great and mysteriously, beautiful creature you had fallen in love with is no more than a wisp of smoke, a shadow of Afrikan understanding, a small bit of steam and still lit embers of a fire that no longer exists. You have found that creature, its name….The Armchair Revolutionary!

   

   

  "Armchair revolutionary is a pejorative term, generally used within the Radical Left and other left-revolutionary movements, to describe a person who endlessly criticizes the thoughts, ideology or practice of social movements or armed groups from a metaphorical armchair — i.e., from a mostly or totally inactive, theoretical position. When someone is referred to as, or accused of, being an "armchair revolutionary," it is always a term of abuse, intended to invoke a defensive reaction on the part of the accused, or to discredit the political ideas and/or practices that person subscribes to, or both.

  Inherent in the meaning of armchair revolutionary is the idea that the person knows that their ideas require them to be physically involved in political struggles, but that instead the person chooses to be intentionally ignorant or dismissive of real-world issues and problems, in an attempt to continue believing in the false reality their views create. In this way the armchair revolutionary is often regarded to see the world in at least a quasi-idealist manner, i.e., one relative solely to his or her own perceptions, rather than bothering with what s/he should really do — to absorb the physical and practical reality s/he would be compelled to see around him/her if s/he stopped the alleged "political posturing" and became an activist in actual political causes.

   

  revolutionary, when used as a noun, is a person who either actively engages in some kind of revolution, or advocates the revolution, with recognition from some government or party which is effectively carrying out a revolution of the same category ^[1]. The term is usually applied to political revolutionaries or social revolutionaries, and less frequently used to revolutionary scientists, inventors, and artists. In the political context, the term "revolutionary" is often used in contrast to the term reformist. While a revolutionary is someone who supports abrupt change, a reformist is someone who supports more gradual change. When used as an adjective, revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor."

  From Wikipedia (Armchair Revolutionary and Revolutionary definitions) 

  
  How Do we break the cycle?

   

  The Armchair Revolutionary must do a few things:

  1. Look at themselves and ask the serious question of commitment, Do I have the commitment to take action?

  2. They must also commit to a study of revolutionaries from the past and today, Assata Shakur, Nat Turner, Maria Stewart, David Walker, Harriet Tubman, Denmark Vesey, by doing this they can find their fire and see how actual work is to be done. Take this reading list found on AssataShakur.org

   

  Recommended Reading List for Black Revolutionaries
  compiled by Assata Forums Members (Updated once a year)

  Assata: An Autobiography
  Assata Shakur

  Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton
  Bobby Seale

  Ready For Revolution : The Life and Struggle Of Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael)
  Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael)

  Inadmissible Evidence: The Story of the African-American Trial Lawyer Who Defended the Black Liberation Army
  Evelyn A. Williams

  Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare
  Kwame Nkurmah

  From Plan to Planet: Life Studies: The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions
  Haki R. Madhubuti

  Afrocentricity
  Molefi Kete Asante

  Black Power: The Politics of Liberation In America
  Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton

  How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society
  Manning Marable

  Metu Neter Vol. 1 & 2
  Ra Un Nefer Amen

  All Things Censored
  Mumia Abu-Jamal

  Destruction of Black Civilization
  Chancellor Williams

  The Huey P Newton Reader
  Huey P. Newton

  The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Or, Africa for the Africans
  Marcus Garvey

  Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (New Marcus Garvey Library)
  Tony Martin

  The Creature From Jekyll Island
  G. Edward Griffin

  By Any Means Necessary
  Malcolm X

  Soul On Ice
  Eldridge Cleaver

  Black Skins, White Faces
  Frantz Fanon

  Ijo Orunmila
  Fasina Falade

  Two Thousand Seasons
  Ayi Kwei Armah

  Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism
  Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)

  The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient African Teachings in the Ways of Relationships
  Sobonfu Some

  Notes for an African World Revolution
  John Henrik Clarke

  The African Origin Of Civilization: Myth Or Reality
  Cheikh Anta Diop

  Enemies: The Clash of Races
  Haki R. Madhubuti

  Cultural Unity of Black Africa
  Cheikh Anta Diop

  Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys series
  Jawanza Kunjufu

   

  3. They should examine themselves and what talents, skills and abilities they may have that can assist the upliftment of our people!

  
  4. They should lastly join or start right where they are, a movement of actual movers and shakers in the revolution, like the folks at Black Unity, Assata Shakur.ning, Assata Shakur.org, Something to show a commitment and stop simply complaining!

  
  We can collectively eliminate the Armchair Revolutionary syndrome! We can collectively promote Black Unity!  
  
  Despite what some may say!

  • Tags:
  • Black Power
  • Black Revolutionary
  • Black History
  • Black Culture
  • Culture
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• Original Air Date: 11/27/2008 4:00 AM UTC

  Assata Radio

  Tonight's program will feature a discussion of our brother Moorbey's concepts of the Armchair Revolutionary, What it is, and how to break the cycle! Hosted by Majadi Baruti and the powerful vibration of our temporarily down brother MOORBEY! featuring our Powerful Sister Sankofa Uhuru!
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  • Tags:
  • Assata Shakur
  • Revolutionary
  • POW/Political Prisoners
  • Black Liberation Army
  • Black Panther Party
  Comments (1)

• Original Air Date: 11/20/2008 4:00 AM UTC

  Assata Radio

  A tribute show dedicated to Queen Mother Assata Shakur and all political prisoners/prisoners of war.Revolutionaries past & present. Hosted by Moorbey and Majadi Baruti
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  • Tags:
  • Assata Shakur
  • Revolutionary
  • Pow/pp
  • Afrikan
  • Our-story
  Comments (1)

• Date / Time: 11/20/2008 12:33 AM UTC

  Dhoruba Bin-Wahad On Obama’s ascendency to the U.S. presidency

  
  PITTFALLS OF RACE CONSCIOUSNESS: SUBSTITUTING POLITICAL REFORMATION OF WHITE FINANCE CAPITALISM FOR BUILDING AN INDEPENDENT POLITICAL MOVEMENT
  
  Obama’s ascendency to the U.S. presidency has been consistently portrayed as the culmination of the African-Americans protracted struggle for “equality” in America. In a sense it is, because all advancements secured by Africans in America have enhanced the rights of all people, but those advancements have seldom moved the majority Africans in America out of the economic and political doldrums. The brutal truth is this portrayal is both facetious and inaccurate.
  While it is true that for the first time white Americans in significant numbers have voted for a “Black” man as President, it is of course inaccurate to say that Barack Obama represents or even reflect the historical or contemporary experience (legacy) of African-Americans who are connected at the Hip to White America. After all, with the exception of Tiger Woods (who has tried to invent a Race to match his background) how many Africans in America were raised in Hawaii by white Grandparents and went to Harvard Law School? Clearly those whites who voted for Obama voted for him based on the “American Story” version of “Dreams of My Father” rather than Nightmares of my Ancestors. Hence, it is facetious to claim the majority of white voters consciously voted for an “African-American” descendant of the slaves their forebears terrorized and exploited for centuries– they voted for an African-American without that baggage, perhaps trusting that he couldn’t experience a DNA induced flashback to the bull-whip days on the plantation and go buck-wild as commander-and-Chief because he had no cultural-social connection to that past. I think this was at the basis of the claim by many whites (especially from among “undecided” and neo-liberal Whites) that they “didn’t really know Obama or who he really was”. I am sure many will consider such distinctions “playa hating”, or another knock on a Black mans achievements. Quite the contrary. Such distinctions are often the strand of thread upon which history hangs in the balance. I know for a fact white lefties, Blacks of all classes are disconcerted by the above view. But those same lefties and Blacks wouldn’t express such disconcertion with a similar analysis of Roosevelt (whose disability was an important subjective factor in his political career) or perceive a critique of John F. Kennedy’s relationship to his Quasi-Gangster Dad and Clan Patriarch as inappropriate in ascertaining what influenced the character of JFK.
  
  Clearly Obama is an extraordinary individual and is to be commended for his success. His success has opened up plenty African minds to their own self-value. But just feeling good about ones self won’t stop others who don’t feel so good about you from pursuing their nefarious ambitions.
  That the Obama campaign was able to effectively avoid entirely the influence of a Race based power paradigm in formulation of U.S. Foreign policy in no small part was due to the McCain camp’s absolute lack of racist subtlety. The racist and reactionary Rightwing supporting McCain attacked Obama with excerpts from the sermons of his family Pastor Jeremiah Wright, an activist and Liberation Theologian, in an attempt to associate the ideology of Black Nationalism, the noble legacy of Black militancy with Obama and thereby frighten white voters into knee jerk racist apoplexy. Not a difficult task for a nation that has never confronted the true legacy of its history. As if “thinking Black, thinking African, or viewing history from the experiences of one’s own peoples was a form of subversive moral blasphemy. Perhaps it is. Michelle Obama (who does have the Bullwhip days in her family DNA memory) was attacked as “un-American” for saying “for the first time” she felt proud of America” – a sentiment shared by 90 % of African-Americans - when Obama received the Democratic nomination. To reassure White folks that African history in America was not his legacy, his basis of analysis and frame of reference, Obama renounced all association with Rev. Wright and defined Wright’s views as “divisive” rather than worthy of challenge by American historians. Moreover, Obama didn’t take the Wright imbroglio as an opportunity to educate America about Race; instead he merely distanced himself from the issue and moved on to win the ultimate political prize in the land, the Presidency of the United States. To many of course this was “strategy” after all, you can’t scare “white people” who believe they have an innate right to piss on the rest of the world while whistling the battle hymn of the republic and expect to win a national election. Only a monumental crisis that threatened everyone’s livelihood could shake up white folks more than the prospect of a Black President, and lo and behold, finance capitalism’s October surprise – economic meltdown. America woke up to the reality of debt-based prosperity as the American empire tumbled into financial distress. Fannie and Freddie were on Viagra and the pharmacy wasn’t taking any more credit. Of course this opportunistic view in itself is deprecating because it also presumes that White Americans are a bunch of historically challenged and ignorant Hoogies and can’t be trusted to think beyond their narrow self-interests. So the economy Gave Obama boost – but he probably would have won anyway.
  
  Even if McCain had ran his campaign like the Clintons, he may have still lost, but he would have had a broader spectrum of undercover racist whites on his side, and conservative self-hating Negroes applauding his virtues. Indeed up until the Democratic convention disgruntled Hillary supporters were anti-Obama and mumbled their support for McCain ostensibly because of his “inexperience”. Hanoi Shorty tried to exploit this discontent among white female Democrats by appointing “Muffy” from Alaska, Sarah Palin as his running mate. She was a true political Palindrome – an airhead spelled the same backwards as forward- an affront to any thinking woman, White or Black. Few could believe it! Obama couldn’t have chosen a better opposition to run against if he wanted too. The McCain – Obama contrasts were so stark and glaring that they could have illuminated Ray Charles way to Georgia were he still alive. Clearly the only way Obama could lose was if the Republicans “butched-off” the elections as they did the previous two national elections. Of course the rest is “history” (his-story) and as George Will the erudite right-wing pundit explained, the Obama campaign has relieved white America of the lodestone of race – “Obama is white America’s emancipation proclamation”. I would suppose George Will envisions a different reconstruction scenario from the one that took place at the end of the civil war.
  
  The Obama rise to political imminence has given Bigots and White supremacy a pass - straight to the gun shops. White supremacy is going back underground for awhile – to resurface in opposition to the grass roots struggles against racist cops; the war on urban communities financed by the government as “Drug Wars, and gentrification; domestic colonialism (subjugation of entire communities to Criminal Justice systems that feed Black flesh into the economic matrix of a Prison Industrial complex that enriches rural white communities) soon to be transformed by Obama and his Kool-drunk minions into “District Anti-Terrorism Committees” under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security. “Now that we found love what are we going to do with it? Build more jails? Kill more Muslims? Gentrify culturally Black communities?
  
  Weeks after the historic U.S. election we have some glimpse of the quality of “Love” we’ve just found by electing America’s first Black President. Not encouraging. It’s as though like most Africans in America, President Elect Barack Obama is looking for love in all the wrong places. President Elect Obama, advocate of a fresh approach to government, after his historical triumph turns to former Clinton appointees to manage his transition to State power and fill out his cabinet. Least we be reminded by images of Black women from Harlem’s roughest projects singing “stand by your man” when Hillary appeared at Harlem’s historical Abyssinian Baptist church at the height of the Lewinski scandal, former President Clinton is considered by many wanna be middle-class Blacks as the first Black President in all but hue only. Clinton was a consummate manipulator of the Black gatekeeper class – those Blacks who derive income and status off of America’s race politics and exploitation of African-American marginalization. Clearly continuation of Empire cloaked in the rhetoric of change looms on the horizon not real change. Least we forget it was both Democrats and Republicans that have presented us with this historical moment of global economic crisis, foreign interventionist wars, and collapse of urban infrastructures. To transcend the myopia of his social being and truly move America in a new direction President elect Barack Obama is going to have to be as “Black” he can, rather than as white as the position requires. An extremely difficult challenge made all the more impossible by Obama’s failure to educate whites to the simple notion that African experience in America could embrace both the “Rosetta stone” to the Republics salvation and the chronicle of its fall
  In Search of One’s Identity: In the Land of the Blind the person with the one eye is King.
  The overwhelming majority of African-Americans are descendants of the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. At best it can be said that African history in the U.S., (the Black Experience in America) obliquely relates to Obama’s social existence – indeed it is probably the social and psychological disconnect that many offspring of mixed-racial unions experience and strive in their personal lives to reconcile that inspired Obama to settle in Chicago and do work in the Black communities there. Rather than the altruistic sacrifice of a brilliant Harvard Law graduate who shunned corporate (and hence a successful) law career as popularly portrayed. Perhaps Barack was trying to find his roots as a Black man. Only President Obama can honestly answer whether this is true or not, and how much political ambition flavored his reconciliation with his “Africaness”, for he has clearly renounced any connection to the ontological Black American experience when he denounced Reverend Jeremiah Wright to appease white bigotry. Again and again Obama, directly and indirectly insinuated that the “African” experience in America is in fact the “American” experience – hence there is no legitimacy to African-American claims of sovereignty – to sovereign thinking or Africans in America charting their own political destiny based on that experience. In an almost African soap opera twist, both the historical debt of post slavery reconstruction and emancipation, as well as the concept of post-industrial reparations has been neutered by the first successful Presidential campaign of a Black person.
  
  Clearly jingoistic American nationalism has achieved its greatest victory over the ideology of African self-determination. It follows that because “race” is purportedly no longer a factor, (relegated to the dustbin of history by Obama’s election) there can be little legitimacy to the proposition that Africans in America constitute a distinct people who were culturally and socially traumatized by successive systems of chattel slavery, feudal share-cropping, wage slavery, and now the prison-industrial plantation system. Clearly, the Barack Obama success marks the absolute distortion of African history in America and its appropriation by the state and dominant white culture. It is as if during the centuries long horror of White supremacist domination, our struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs were really fought by Blacks to enrich the humanity of the White majority and burnish the imagery of the “American Dream”. When in fact we have always sought independence, self-sufficiency, dignity and freedom for ourselves in a world dominated by Europeans.
  However, many will argue that Obama’s upbringing doesn’t mattter now because people of all racial and class persuasions voted for the 44th President of the U.S. But it is precisely because Obama’s personal history rise that he has risen to political superstardom in this historical moment – when white America still infected with the ignorance of white supremacy is so frightened, fed-up, and hungry for change that they would throw their weight behind the vision of an extraordinary Black man for the chief-executive post of the Nation.
  
  African history, once confined to the back of American textbooks, has now, in its revised and sanitized version become a major text of the great melting pot myth – that bouillabaisse of ethnic mingling that Newark mayor Corey Booker (himself a light-skin former law school whiz who moved to the Hood for political positioning, described as a “delicious” mixture of ethnic blending). Unfortunately the Black experience on America’s soup line was less like a flavorful meal and more like force feeding at Guantanamo.
  
  African history in what was once the European settler-state of America conferred the experience of both de facto and de jure predatory discrimination, consigned generations of Africans to feudal share-cropping, discriminatory wage slavery, criminalization of culture, and predatory discrimination. All of this is what has brought us to this moment in time, and while we must not dwell in the past, we must understand it to inform the present and help prepare us for the future. Should we let go of our legacy, born of resistance and nurtured with the blood of countless African heroes and she-roes (of whom white America would define as terrorists and radicals)? Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, Malcolm, Marcus, were heroes of our cause as are Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, and dozens of others – not the cause of white supremacist America. President elect Obama when asked did he think, if Dr. King were alive today whether he would have endorsed Obama for President; Barack wisely commented that he would probably have endorsed neither he or McCain, but would have been in the street organizing poor people. Perhaps Obama is more acutely aware of his real historical legacy than the millions of African-American who voted for him, and distilled their dreams and hopes in him. He does not so much represent the culmination of the Black experience in America merely because he’s dark skinned by European standards, as he represents the attempt of an entire culture, state, and economic system to redefine itself in the 21st century without being held accountable for its historic crimes. In a way President Obama is the bridge between the known and the unknown of that process – he stands astride the historic moment of global realignment between the powerful and the powerless, between the dispossessed and the rich, and he knows it.
  His foreign and domestic policies will tell us exactly how powerfully he is influenced by the countless African bones at the bottom the Atlantic Ocean that have enriched Europe and the Americas, or how strongly he is tied to the very forces that have enslaved and exploited the African world and peoples of color around the globe. While the first Black President figures this out, we, poor people, ordinary people, activists, educators, opinion makers must not tiptoe around issues to burnish the image of the First Black President. This is no time for platitudes of shallow good will, but the time to organize a true peoples movement for change in America, a movement led by the millions of victims of Americanism. As Black Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks once wrote in the second sermon on the Warpland: “we are the last of the loud…so have your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind”…..
  
  Dhoruba Bin-Wahad
  November 2008
  • Tags:
  • Dhoruba Bin-Wahad
  • Political Prisoners
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• Date / Time: 11/20/2008 12:10 AM UTC

  From The Mind of Queen Mother Assata Shakur!!!

  My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Shakur ("the thankful one"), 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. I was falsely accused in six different "criminal cases" and in all six of these cases I was eventually acquitted or the charges were dismissed. The fact that I was acquitted or that the charges were dismissed, did not mean that I received justice in the courts, that was certainly not the case. It only meant that the "evidence" presented against me was so flimsy and false that my innocence became evident. This political persecution was part and parcel of the government's policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.
  
  
  On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a "faulty tail light." Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zayd and I remained in the car. State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became "suspicious." He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back. Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Forester was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Forester. Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Forester was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths. Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial. We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. I
  
  n 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison. In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life. The U.S. Senate's 1976 Church Commission report on intelligence operations inside the USA, revealed that "The FBI has attempted covertly to influence the publics perception of persons and organizations by disseminating derogatory information to the press, either anonymously or through "friendly" news contacts." This same policy is evidently still very much in effect today. On December 24, 1997, The New Jersey State called a press conference to announce that New Jersey State Police had written a letter to Pope John Paul II asking him to intervene on their behalf and to aid in having me extradited back to New Jersey prisons. The New Jersey State Police refused to make their letter public. Knowing that they had probably totally distort the facts, and attempted to get the Pope to do the devils work in the name of religion, I decided to write the Pope to inform him about the reality of’ "justice" for black people in the State of New Jersey and in the United States.
  
  
  In January of 1998, during the pope's visit to Cuba, I agreed to do an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza around my letter to the Pope, about my experiences in New Jersey court system, and about the changes I saw in the United States and it's treatment of Black people in the last 25 years. I agreed to do this interview because I saw this secret letter to the Pope as a vicious, vulgar, publicity maneuver on the part of the New Jersey State Police, and as a cynical attempt to manipulate Pope John Paul II. I have lived in Cuba for many years, and was completely out of touch with the sensationalist, dishonest, nature of the establishment media today. It is worse today than it was 30 years ago. After years of being victimized by the "establishment" media it was naive of me to hope that I might finally get the opportunity to tell "my side of the story." Instead of an interview with me, what took place was a "staged media event" in three parts, full of distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies. NBC purposely misrepresented the facts. Not only did NBC spend thousands of dollars promoting this "exclusive interview series" on NBC, they also spent a great deal of money advertising this "exclusive interview" on black radio stations and also placed notices in local newspapers. DISTORTIONS AND LIES IN THE NBC SERIES In an NBC interview Gov. Whitman was quoted as saying that "this has nothing to do with race, this had everything to do with crime." Either Gov. Whitman is completely unfamiliar with the facts in my case, or her sensitivity to racism and to the plight of black people and other people of color in the United States is at a sub-zero level.
  
  In 1973 the trial in Middlesex County had to be stopped because of the overwhelming racism expressed in the jury room. The court was finally forced to rule that the entire jury panel had been contaminated by racist comments like "If she's black, she's guilty." In an obvious effort to prevent us from being tried by "a jury of our peers the New Jersey courts ordered that a jury be selected from Morris County, New Jersey where only 2.2 percent of the population was black and 97.5 percent of potential jurors were white. In a study done in Morris County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country, 92 percent of the registered voters said that they were familiar with the case through the news media, and 72 percent believed we were guilty based on pretrial publicity. During the jury selection process in Morris County, white supremacists from the National Social[ist] White People's Party, wearing Swastikas, demonstrated carrying signs reading "SUPPORT WHITE POLICE." The trial was later moved back to Middlesex County where 70 percent thought I was guilty based on pretrial publicity I was tried by an all white jury, where the presumption of innocence was not the criteria for jury selection. Potential jurors were merely asked if they could "put their prejudices aside, and "render a fair verdict." The basic reality in the United States is that being black is a crime and black people are always "suspects" and an accusation is usually a conviction.
  
  
  Most white people still think that being a "black militant" or a "black revolutionary" is tantamount to being guilty of some kind of crime. The current situation in New Jersey's prisons, underlines the racism that dominates the politics of the state of New Jersey, in particular and in the U.S. as a whole. Although the population of New Jersey is approximately 78 percent white, more than 75 percent of New Jersey's prison population is made up of blacks and Latinos. 80 percent of the women in Jersey prisons are people of color. That may not seem like racism to Gov. Whitman, but it reeks of racism to us. The NBC story implied that Governor Christie Whitman raised the reward for my capture based on my interview with NBC. The fact of the matter is that she has been campaigning since she was elected into office to double the reward for my capture. In 1994, she appointed Col. Carl Williams who immediately vowed to make my capture a priority. In 1995, Gov. Whitman sought to "match a $25,000 departmental appropriation sponsored by an "unidentified legislator." I watched a tape of Gov. Whitman's "testimony" in her interview with NBC. She gave a very dramatic, exaggerated version of what happened, but there is no evidence whatsoever to support her claim that Trooper Forester had "four bullets in him at least, and then they got up and with his own gun, fired two bullets into his head." She claimed that she was writing Janet Reno for federal assistance in my capture, based on what she saw in the NBC interview. If this is the kind of "information" that is being passed on to Janet Reno and the Pope, it is clear that the facts have been totally distorted. Whitman also claimed that my return to prison should be a condition for "normalizing relations with Cuba".
  
  
  How did I get so important that my life can determine the foreign relations between two governments? Anybody who knows anything about New Jersey politics can be certain that her motives are purely political. She, like Torrecelli and several other opportunistic politicians in New Jersey came to power, as part time lobbyists for the Batista faction - soliciting votes from right wing Cubans. They want to use my case as a barrier for normalizing relations with Cuba, and as a pretext for maintaining the immoral blockade against the Cuban people. In what can only be called deliberate deception and slander NBC aired a photograph of a woman with a gun in her hand implying that the woman in the photograph was me. I was not, in fact, the woman in the photograph. The photograph was taken from a highly publicized case where I was accused of bank robbery. Not only did I voluntarily insist on participating in a lineup, during which witnesses selected another woman, but during the trial, several witnesses, including the manager of the bank, testified that the woman in that photograph was not me. I was acquitted of that bank robbery. NBC aired that photograph on at least 5 different occasions, representing the woman in the photograph as me. How is it possible, that the New Jersey State Police, who claim to have a detective working full time on my case, Governor of New Jersey Christine Whitman, who claimed she reviewed all the "evidence," or NBC, which has an extensive research department, did not know that the photograph was false? It was a vile, fraudulent attempt to make me look guilty. NBC deliberately misrepresented the truth. Even after many people had called in, and there was massive fax, and e-mail campaign protesting NBC's mutilation of the facts, Ralph Penza and NBC continued to broadcast that photograph, representing it as me. Not once have the New Jersey State Police, Governor Christine Whitman, or NBC come forth and stated that I was not the woman in the photograph, or that I had been acquitted of that charge. Another major lie and distortion was that we had left trooper Werner Forester on the roadside to die. The truth is that there was a major cover-up as to what happened on May 2, 1973. Trooper Harper, the same man who shot me with my arms raised in the air, testified that he returned to the State Police Headquarters which was less than 200 yards away, "To seek aid." However, tape recordings and police reports made on May 2, 1973 prove that not only did Trooper Harper give several conflicting statements about what happened on the turnpike, but he never once mentioned the name of Werner Forester, or the fact that the incident took place right in front of the Trooper Headquarters.
  
  
  In an effort to hide his tracks and cover his guilt he said nothing whatsoever about Forester to his superiors or to his fellow officers. In a clear attempt to discredit me, Col. Carl Williams of the New Jersey State Police was allowed to give blow by blow distortions of my interview. In my interview I stated that on the night of May 2, 1973 I was shot with my arms in the air, then shot again in the back. Williams stated "that is absolutely false. Our records show that she reached in her pocketbook, pulled out a nine millimeter weapon and started firing." However, the claim that I reached into my pocketbook and pulled out a gun, while inside the car was even contested by trooper Harper. Although on three official reports, and when he testified before the grand jury he stated that he saw me take a gun out of my pocketbook, he finally admitted under cross examination that he never saw me with my hands in a pocketbook, never saw me with a weapon inside the car, and that he did not see me shoot him.
  
  
  The truth is that I was examined by 3 medical specialists: (1) A Neurologist who testified that I was immediately paralyzed immediately after the being shot. (2) A Surgeon who testified that "It was absolutely anatomically necessary that both arms be in the air for Mrs. Chesimard to receive the wounds." The same surgeon also testified that the claim by Trooper Harper that I had been crouching in a firing position when I was shot was "totally anatomically impossible." (3) A Pathologist who testified that "There is no conceivable way that it [the bullet] could have traveled over to hit the clavicle if her arm was down." he said "It was impossible to have that trajectory. "The prosecutors presented no medical testimony whatsoever to refute the above medical evidence. No evidence whatsoever was ever presented that I had a 9 millimeter weapon, in fact New Jersey State Police testified that the 9 millimeter weapon belonged to Zayd Malik Shakur based on a holster fitting the weapon that they was recovered from his body. There were no fingerprints, or any other evidence whatsoever that linked me to any guns or ammunition. The results of the Neutron Activation test to determine whether or not I had fired a weapon were negative. Although Col. Williams refers to us as the "criminal element" neither Zayd, or Sundiata Acoli or I were criminals, we were political activists. I was a college student until the police kicked down my door in an effort to force me to "cooperate" with them and Sundiata Acoli was a computer expert who had worked for NASA, before he joined the Black Panther Party and was targeted by COINTELPRO. In an obvious maneuver to provoke sympathy for the police, the NBC series juxtaposed my interview with the weeping widow of Werner Forester. While I can sympathize with her grief, I believe that her appearance was deliberately included to appeal to peoples emotions, to blur the facts, to make me look like a villain, and to create the kind of lynch mob mentality that has historically been associated with white women portrayed as victims of black people. In essence the supposed interview with me became a forum for the New State Police, Forester's widow, and the obviously hostile commentary of Ralph Penza. The two initial programs together lasted 3.5 minutes - me - 59 seconds, the widow 50 seconds, the state police 38 seconds, and Penza - 68 seconds. Not once in the interview was I ever asked about Zayd, Sundiata or their families. As the interview went on, it was painfully evident that Ralph Penza would never see me as a human being. Although I tried to talk about racism and about the victims of government and police repression, it was clear that he was totally uninterested. I have stated publicly on various occasions that I was ashamed of participating in my trial in New Jersey trial because it was so racist, but I did testify. Even though I was extremely limited by the judge, as to what I could testify about, I testified as clearly as I could about what happened that night. After being almost fatally wounded I managed to climb in the back seat of the car to get away from the shooting. Sundiata drove the car five miles down the road carried me into a grassy area because he was afraid that the police would see the car parked on the side of the road and just start shooting into it again. Yes, it was five miles down the highway where I was captured, dragged out of the car, stomped and then left on the ground. Although I drifted in and out of consciousness I remember clearly that both while I was lying on the ground, and while I was in the ambulance, I kept hearing the State troopers ask "is she dead yet?" Because of my condition I have no independent recollection of how long I was on the ground, or how long it was before the ambulance was allowed to leave for the hospital, but in the trial transcript trooper Harper stated that it was while he was being questioned, some time after 2:00 am that a detective told him that I had just been brought into the hospital. I was the only live "suspect" in custody, and prior to that time Harper, had never told anyone that a woman had shot him. As I watched Governor Whitman's interview the one thing that struck me was her "outrage" at my joy about being a grandmother, and my "quite nice life" as she put it here in Cuba. While I love the Cuban people and the solidarity they have shown me, the pain of being torn away from everybody I love has been intense. I have never had the opportunity to see or to hold my grandchild. If Gov. Whitman thinks that my life has been so nice, that 50 years of dealing with racism, poverty, persecution, brutality, prison, underground, exile and blatant lies has been so nice, then Id be more than happy to let her walk in my shoes for a while so she can get a taste of how it feels. I am a proud black woman, and I'm not about to get on the television and cry for Ralph Penza or any other journalist, but the way I have suffered in my lifetime, and the way my people have suffered, only god can bear witness to. Col. Williams of the New Jersey State Police stated "we would do everything we could go get her off the island of Cuba and if that includes kidnapping, we would do it."
  
  
  I guess the theory is that if they could kidnap millions of Africans from Africa 400 years ago, they should be able to kidnap one African woman today. It is nothing but an attempt to bring about the re-incarnation of the Fugitive Slave Act. All I represent is just another slave that they want to bring back to the plantation. Well, I might be a slave, but I will go to my grave a rebellious slave. I am and I feel like a maroon woman. I will never voluntarily accept the condition of slavery, whether its de-facto or ipso facto, official, or unofficial. In another recent interview, Williams talked about asking the federal government to add to the $50,000 reward for my capture. He also talked about seeking "outside money, or something like that, a benefactor, whatever." Now who is he looking to "contribute" to that "cause"? The ku klux klan, the neo nazi parties, the white militia organizations? But the plot gets even thicker. He says that the money might lure bounty hunters. "
  
  There are individuals out there, I guess they call themselves ‘soldiers of fortune ’ who might be interested in doing something, in turning her over to us." Well, in the old days they used to call them slave catchers, trackers, or patter rollers, now they are called mercenaries. Neither the governor nor the state police say one word about "justice." They have no moral authority to do so. The level of their moral and ethical bankruptcy is evident in their eagerness to not only break the law and hire hoodlums, all in the name of "law and order." But you know what gets to me, what makes me truly indignant? With the schools in Paterson, N.J. falling down, with areas of Newark looking like a disaster area, with the crack epidemic, with the wide-spread poverty and unemployment in New Jersey, these depraved, decadent, would-be slave masters want federal funds to help put this "n-word wench" back in her place. They call me the "most wanted woman" in Amerikkka. I find that ironic. I've never felt very "wanted" before.
  
  
  When it came to jobs, I was never the "most wanted," when it came to "economic opportunities I was never the "most wanted, when it came to decent housing." It seems like the only time Black people are on the "most wanted" list is when they want to put us in prison. But at this moment, I am not so concerned about myself. Everybody has to die sometime, and all I want is to go with dignity. I am more concerned about the growing poverty, the growing despair that is rife in Amerikkka. I am more concerned about our younger generations, who represent our future. I am more concerned that one third of young black are either in prison or under the jurisdiction of the "criminal in-justice system." I am more concerned about the rise of the prison industrial complex that is turning our people into slaves again. I am more concerned about the repression, the police brutality, violence, the rising wave of racism that makes up the political landscape of the U.S. today. Our young people deserve a future, and I consider it the mandate of my ancestors to be part of the struggle to insure that they have one. They have the right to live free from political repression. The U.S. is becoming more and more of a police state and that fact compels us to fight against political repression.
   
  
  I urge you all, every single person who reads this statement, to fight to free all political prisoners. As the concentration camps in the U.S. turn into death camps, I urge you to fight to abolish the death penalty. I make a special, urgent appeal to you to fight to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the only political prisoner who is currently on death row. It has been a long time since I have lived inside the United States. But during my lifetime I have seen every prominent black leader, politician or activist come under attack by the establishment media. When African Americans appear on news programs they are usually talking about sports, entertainment or they are in handcuffs. When we have a protest they ridicule it, minimized it, or cut the numbers of the people who attended in half. The news is big business and it is owned operated by affluent white men. Unfortunately, they shape the way that many people see the world, and even the way people see themselves. Too often black journalists, and other journalists of color mimic their white counterparts. They often gear their reports to reflect the foreign policies and the domestic policies of the same people who are oppressing their people. In the establishment media, the bombing and of murder of thousands of innocent women and children in Libya or Iraq or Panama is seen as "patriotic," while those who fight for freedom, no matter where they are, are seen as "radicals," "extremists," or "terrorists."
  
  
  Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech, no real freedom of expression and very little freedom of the press. The black press and the progressive media has historically played an essential role in the struggle for social justice. We need to continue and to expand that tradition. We need to create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds. I am only one woman. I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerikkka. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in truth, freedom To publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless.
  
  FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS,
  Wish I could be there,
  Assata Shakur
  Havana, Cuba
  • Tags:
  • Assata
  • Political Prisoners
  • Cointelpro
  • Black Panther Party
  • Black Liberation Arm
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• Original Air Date: 11/13/2008 4:00 AM UTC

  Assata Radio

  A tribute show dedicated to Queen Mother Assata Shakur and all political prisoners/prisoners of war.Revolutionaries past & present. Hosted by Majadi Baruti and Moorbey
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  • Tags:
  • Assata Shakur
  • Revolutionary
  • Pow/pp
  • Afrikan
  • Our-story
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• Date / Time: 11/13/2008 3:39 AM UTC

  A Message From Our Revolutionary Sistarr, NattyReb!!!

  Support our Sista in Struggle, Shiriki Unganisha

  Warm Greetings all,
  
  i'm shocked and deeply saddened to report that Eric Flowers, the only son of our beautiful and hard-working Sista in struggle, Shiriki Unganisha, was found slain on Saturday in Kansas City, MO. This Sista has completely dedicated her life to our people's struggle and regularly puts out liberation information via micro-radio, e-mail and every means available throughout her community. This Sista is so dedicated that she painted her house red, black and green and regularly hosted many young people there, in addition to all of her other community, political and journalistic work. Her organization, STAC (Stop Targetting the Afrikan Community) was bold and fearless and exposed many issues within the community that brought much-needed pressure to bear on the police and all others who bear us ill will. She worked closely with me many times on projects involving PP/POW's, particularly for Bro. Sundiata Acoli, whose support committee she once headed up and with whom she shares an extremely close bond.
  
  POW Bro. Sundiata Acoli writes:
  
  "Sis. Shiriki is a close comrade of mine who has shared many struggles with me, particularly duriing my stay at USP Leavenworth, where she was instrumental in organizing the KC Mo. community and region. She built much support for me and the prisoners in general at USP Leavenworth, and prisoners at the Ft. Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks and the various Mo. State prisons and beyond. She is co-host of KCBLR micro-radio and hosted the initial conference in KC Mo. in the late '90s that months later founded the New Afrikan Liberation Front, presently headed by Herman and Iyaluaa Ferguson. Shiriki is a very strong sister who has given her all to our people's struggle for freedom, so send condolences to the sister at shiriki@sbcglobal.net ." She needs our love.
  
  Please send some support to our Sista, we must be there for one another in times like these!
  
  Sis. Shiriki Unganisha
  P.O. Box 320441
  Kansas City, MO 64132-0441
  
  Services will be Saturday, 11/15/08, at Duane E. Harvey Funeral Directors, 9100 Blue Ridge Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64138. 816-763-9100. Viewing from 4:00pm-6:00pm Service at 6:00pm.

  • Tags:
  • Revolutionary
  • Assata Shakur
  • Sundiata Acoli
  • Political Prisoners!
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