Harry Targ
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 toward people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and
I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984….
People
get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your
tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the
normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of
being a slave.” (from “An Open Letter from Assata Shakur:
‘I Am Only One Woman,’ ” Colorlines, May 6, 2013)
To the credit of The National Conference of Black
Lawyers, The National Lawyers Guild, The Black Commentator, The Nation,
Democracy Now, The Huffington Post, and an array of blog essays the FBI
decision to place Assata Shakur on its “Most Wanted Terrorists” list and the
State Department decision to keep Cuba on the list of “state sponsors of
terrorism” have been roundly condemned.
Assata Shakur was an activist in the Black Panther Party, the student and anti-war movements, and human rights causes in the 1960s. Her activism made Shakur a prime target of the violent FBI COINTELPRO program designed to arrest, convict, and assassinate those who worked against U.S. racism, classism, and war. She was stopped in a car on the New Jersey turnpike on May 2, 1973. Police engaged in a shooting which led to the death of a passenger in the car. Also a police officer was killed in the shootout.
Shakur and another comrade were charged with the
police killing even though she also was shot and was incapable of shooting a
weapon because of her injuries. Shakur was subsequently charged and convicted
for killing the police officer, though she was unarmed, and sentenced to life
plus 33 years. On November 2, 1979 she escaped from the New Jersey prison where
she was serving her sentence. In 1984 she fled to Cuba, was granted political
asylum, and has been living there ever since.
Expressions of outrage about the policies toward
Assata Shakur and the government of Cuba need to be raised again and again
because these policies get to the heart of racism, repression, and imperialism.
The United States government, from civil rights organizing against Jim Crow in
the South to urban Black liberation movements in the North sought to divide, repress,
and crush demands for an end to institutionalized racism. The same police and federal security
apparatuses complicit in the hosing of protesters in the South, refused to
vigorously investigate racist murderers in Alabama and Mississippi. State and
federal authorities launched a nationwide campaign during the Nixon
administration to falsely charge, arrest, sentence, and murder militants
fighting racism. From Chicago, to Oakland, California, to Detroit to the New
Jersey turnpike police and FBI shootouts were initiated to eliminate those who
were challenging the political and economic status quo. At the ideological
level activists for change were labeled
“communists,” “terrorists,” common “criminals,” and foreign agents.
Let’s be clear: the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and many police departments were agents of a policy of state
terrorism. The first targets were African Americans.
In addition, what happened to Assata Shakur and untold
thousands of others sent a clear message to activists, particularly young ones,
that public protest would lead to
violent repression. In 1970 the killings at Jackson State and Kent State
Universities communicated to college students that protest might be life
threatening.
Raising the issue of “terrorism” again in reference
to Cuba and now Assata Shakur also serves to link the COINTELPRO violence
against the people of the 1970s to the “war on terrorism” in the 21st
century. Everyone knows that as economic crisis grows, demands for change are
likely to increase. From a systemic point of view the tools of repression must
be reinvigorated. Raising the case of
Assata Shakur now and framing it as an issue of terrorism links the political
mobilizations of the 1970s to the Occupy Movement, the horrific bombings in
Boston to the demands for change all around the world. Putting Shakur on the
terror list and keeping Cuba on a similar list is a metaphor for all that economic
and political elites regard as a threat. It seeks to reinforce the theme of the
linkage of terrorism and people of color.
Finally, adding Assata Shakur to the terrorism list,
and keeping Cuba on the state list, provides ready cover for a possible future
military strike against targets on the island. It is conceivable that, unless
massive voices are raised to protest these lists, some adventurist
administration could launch a drone strike against targets in Cuba. And, in the short run, associating Assata
Shakur and Cuba with terrorism continues the argument that the U.S. blockade of
Cuba needs to be maintained, which many of us would regard as a real act of
terrorism against eleven million Cubans.
Lennox Hinds, Shakur’s lawyer and National Lawyers
Guild member, summarized the current meaning of the Shakur case. “Clearly, the federal
government is continuing the unrestrained abuse of power by which it attempted
to destroy Assata Shakur and other Black individuals and groups by
surveillance, rumor, innuendo, eavesdropping, arrest and prosecution,
incarceration, and murder throughout the sixties and seventies.”
