e ech and h rob rvatio on I4v ry- 0
reprinud on this pa -are from her autobio mph"
A tao
BI broth�r , Bl k i r, i nt you to know that i 10 you
and i hope that omewhere in your h arts you h love for m . My
name i A ata Shakur (sla name joanne ch imard), nd i am a
revolution rye A Bl k revolutionary. By th tim n that i have
declared war on all force that h raped our women, castrated our
m n, and kept our babies empty-bellied.
I have decla d war on the rich ho prosp r on our poverty, the
politicians who lie to us with miling fac , and all the mindless,
heartles robot who protect them and their property.
I am a BI ck revolutionary, and, as uch, i am a victim of all the
wrath, hatred.and slander that amerika is capable of. Like all other
Black revolutionaries, amerika is trying to lynch me.
I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have
been charged, with and accused of every alleged crime in which a
woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crim s in
which only men were supposedly involved, i have b en accused of
planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post
offices, airports, hotels, police cars,' subways, banks, television, and
newspapers. They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards
for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and
shoot to kill. '
I am a Black revolutionary, and, by definition, that makes me a
part of the Black Liberation Army. The pigs have used their news­
papers and TVs to paint the Black Liberation Army as vicious,
brutal, mad-dog criminals. They have called us gangsters and gun
molls and have compared us to such characters as john dillinger and
ma barker. It should be clear, it must be clear to anyone who can
think, see, or hear, that we are the victims. The victims and not the
criminals.
It should also be clear to us by now who the real criminals are.
Nixon and his crime partners have murdered hundreds of Third
World brothers and si ters in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique,
Angola, and South Africa. As was proved by Watergate, the top law
enforcement officials in this country are a lying bunch of criminals.
The president, two attorney generals, the head of the fbi, the head of
the cia, and half the white house staff have been implicated in the
, Watergate crimes.
They call us murderers, but \W did not murder over two hun­
dred fifty unarmed Black men, women, and children, or wound
thousands of others in the riots they provoked during the sixties. The
rulers of this country have always considered their property more
important than our lives. They call us murderers, but we were not
responsible for the twenty-eight brother inmates and nine hostages
murdered at attica. They call us murderers, but we did not murder
and wound over thirty unarmed Black students at Jackson Stare-s-or
Southern State, either. .
They call us murderers, but we did ot murder Martin Luther
King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson,
Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless other . We did not murder,
by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-ol Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old
Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us mur-
derers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and
oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World peo­
ple. Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen per­
cent of the total amerikkkan 'population, at least sixty percent of
murder victims are Black. For every pig that is killed in the so-called
line ci duty, .there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the
police.
Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do
their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in
fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters 00 daily from heroin
and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of
Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is
murder. But they have got the gall to call us murderers.
They call us kidnappers, yet Brother Clark Squire (who is
accused, along with me, of murdering a new jersey state trooper) was
. kidnapped on April 2, 1969, from our Black community and held
on one million dollars' ransom in the New York Panther 21 conspir­
acy case. He was acquitted on May 13, 1971, along with all the
others, of 156 counts of conspiracy by a jury that took less than two
hours to deliberate. Brother Squire was innocent. Yet he was kid­
napped from his community and family. Over two years of his life
was stolen, but they call us kidnappers. We did not kidnap the
thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika's con­
centration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this
country are Black and Third World people who can afford neither
bail nor lawyers.
They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was
not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of
Africa. We were robbed of our language, of our Gods, of our culture,
« our human dignity, of our labor, and of our lives. They call us
thieves, yet it is not we who rip off billions of dollars every year
through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer
. fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet
every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being
robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are
being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a
gun into our ribs. ' .
They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of
Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselve pioneers.
They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia,.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Assata Shakur
Lawrence Hill Books
uww·_ es h COlnurutu�
i ory. They
o ld be d m
o judg m, CI or any other Bl pe on on tri in
people hould nd, inevi bly, mu de rmin our d
E ry lution in hi tory h b n compli ed by on ,
Ithough rd are nece rye mu t ere hield th protect u
nd pe th t penetr our enemie . BI k people mu t learn how
to truggle by truggling. e mu t le rn by our mi t k •
I nt to pologize to you, my Bl ck brothers and i ter , £Or
being on the new [e ey turnpike. I hould h known better. The
turnpike i checkpoint where Black people re topped, rched,
h ras ed, and ulted. Revolutionari mu t never be in too much
of hurry or make carele decision. He who run when the un i
sleeping will tumble many tim •
Every time Black Freedom lighter i murdered or captured,
the pig try to create the impre ion that they have qu hed the
movement, de troyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution.
The pig also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are
responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika.
That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionarie do not drop
from the moon. We are created by our condition . Shaped by our
oppression. We are being manufactured in dl'OYe in the ghetto
streets, places like attica, an quentin, bedford hill , le nworth,
and sing sing. They are turning out thousand of u . Many joble
Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers
and sister from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively,
make up the BLA.
There is, and always will be, until eYery Black man, woman, and
child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the
Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples, to
struggle for Black freedom, and to prepare for the' future. We must
defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We. must gain our
liberation by any means necessary.
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains:
In the spirit of:
Ronald Carter
William Christmas
Mark Clark
Mark Essex
Frank "Heavy" Fields
Woodie Changa
Olugbala Green
Fred Hampton
We must fi�t on.
Lil' bby Hutton
George .Jack on
Jonathan Jackson
James McClain
Harold Russell
Zayd Malik Shakur
Anthony Kumu Olugbala
White
Assata on Modern Slavery
Assata makes the following observations foUowing a food prot.. III tit.
prison wher« she was incarceraUd. .
Most of the women benefited from the "riot," though. Over
the next few days almost everybody was released or sent to ome
kind of program. The jail was practically empty. It's strange how
things work. When it suits the government' interest, they put
people in jail for rioting. And when it suits their interests, they let
them out of jail for the same thing. Afterward, the outer door to my
cage remained shut at all times. This was no great deprivation since
it had remained closed most of the time before anyway.
One day they brought me a big bushel of stringbeans. (They
grew a lot of their food at the workhouse. The men worked in the
field.) "Here, we want .you to snap these stringbeans."
"How much" are you gonna pay me?" i asked.
"We don't pay no inmate notbin', but if you snap these beans
we'll let your door stay open while you snap them."
"I don't work for nothing. I ain't gonna be no lave for
nobody. Don't you know that slavery was outlawed?"
"No," the guard said, "you're wrong. Slavery was outlawed
with the exception of prisons. Slavery i legal in prisons."
1 looked it up and sure enough, he was right. The Thirteenth
• Amendment to the Constitution say : .
Neither sla�ry nor involuntary servitude, except as a puni h­
ment for crime wheIeOf the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jail
and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black
and Third World people, why so many Black people can't find a
job on the �treets and are forced to urvive the best way they know
how. Once you're in prison, there are plenty of job , and, if you
don't want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole.,If
. every state had to pay workers to do the job prisoners are forced to
do, the salaries would amount to billions. License plates alone
would amount to millions. When Jimmy Caner was governor of
Georgia, he brought a Black woman from prison to dean the tate
house aad babysit for Amy. Prison are a pr06table busines . They
are a way of legally perpetuating lavery. In every tate more nd
more prisons are being built and even more are on the draWin�
board. Who are they for? They certainly aren't planning to put
white people in them. Prison are part oi thi goyerriment' .gen­
ocidal war again t Black and Third World people.
