On the legacy of Assata Shakur

Assata Shakur was a fighter for freedom and an icon of the Black liberation movement. She came of age during the struggles of the 1960s and 70s, and everything that was good and powerful about that time, Assata embodied. The deep understanding that a better world is possible, and most importantly, the conviction to never give up. Never surrender.

Assata began as someone searching and questioning why life was so hard for Black people in the U.S. Over time, through her experiences in the streets and her study of revolutionary movements in Africa and the Caribbean, she became a Marxist. She came to understand capitalism was at the bottom of the problem and committed herself to the fight to pull it up from the root.

This clarity made her dangerous in the eyes of the U.S. government. Assata was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. For that, she was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which spied on, framed and tried to destroy Black activists. She was harassed, hunted and finally captured after a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Evidence against her was thin but she was convicted anyway and locked away. The government wanted to make an example out of her to show what happens when Black women dare to fight back.

But Assata refused to be broken. In 1979, she made a daring escape from prison. Socialist Cuba wrapped its arms around her and protected her. She lived out her years with dignity, surrounded by friendship and love.

Assata’s life was not easy. She paid a heavy price for her steadfastness: years in prison, exile and separation from her family. But she made the choice to stand on the side of liberation.

Assata is alive in the struggle for liberation for all oppressed people today. At the end of many demonstrations around the world, people still gather to raise their voices in her words: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” She is alive wherever people resist oppression and refuse to bow down to the existing order of things. She is alive in the fight for a better world.

She showed us what it means to be unbroken, and because of her, we know that the struggle for liberation cannot be stopped.

Assata Shakur teaches, inspires and lives always, in the fight for freedom.

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