Assata Shakur has joined the pantheon of revolutionary ancestors, leaving a legacy of deep love for the people, resistance, and steadfastness in the fight for liberation. Her life was an indictment of white supremacy, capitalism and U.S. imperialism, and stands as a testament to the unbreakable will of oppressed people to resist.
Born JoAnne Byron in 1947, she grew up amid the rising tide of the struggle against segregation, poverty, and U.S. imperialist war. It was a time where millions of Black people moved from the rural South to urban cities in the North and West to escape Jim Crow laws, only to find segregation in housing and schools, poverty, and police brutality. Her life became a direct response to the contradictions of the era she was born to. Assata, the name and the revolutionary, was born through the struggle for Black liberation. She lived a life dedicated entirely to the freedom of her people during one of the most repressive periods in the history of the United States.
She dared to serve her community, to study and teach about liberation struggles, to protest imperialist war, to stand against police brutality, and to imagine and contribute toward building a world beyond exploitation. This made her a target. It was her commitment to organized struggle and her leadership in the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army — organizing for dignity, survival and self determination — that made her a “threat” to the U.S. government.
Like many progressive leaders and freedom fighters of her time, she was targeted, harassed and criminalized by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program — designed to crush Black, Indigenous, and other people’s movements. She was falsely accused and convicted for a crime she did not commit, and imprisoned under terrible conditions. Yet the people refused to let her die behind bars. Assata was freed from prison by her comrades in 1979 and granted political asylum in Cuba in 1984.
She continued to be a voice for liberation from exile. For this, she remained a target of the U.S. government and ruthlessly pursued. For people’s movements around the world, Assata became a living emblem of hope and resilience.
Her story is not merely one of individual defiance but a narrative deeply woven into the fabric of the Black liberation struggle. Assata’s life is a reaffirmation that the truth cannot be jailed, and no bounty can erase that. In fact, it is the U.S. government — with its wars, its prisons, its repressive instruments, and its exploitative economic system — that is the real threat to humanity. She reminds us that the path to liberation is difficult, but urgently necessary; that resistance is not only survival, but love. Resisting oppression, repression and exploitation is not only our human right, but our duty.
Assata’s legacy speaks directly to the world we live in today. From Ferguson to Gaza, to Haiti and across Africa, the U.S. continues its wars for profit, its attacks against people’s movements and its deadly sanctions on approximately one-third of the world’s population. At home, billionaires and their politicians escalate attacks on working class people, increase levels of repression and surveillance, strip away healthcare, education and basic dignity while expanding prisons and police budgets. Assata’s life reminds us that liberation will never be granted by the oppressors – it must be constructed by the people.
Assata is and will continue to be one of the most revered and beloved revolutionaries of our time. For freedom-loving people, organizers, and revolutionaries who have been taking to the streets against racism, police brutality, mass incarceration and imperialist war — Assata Shakur is a mirror, not a distant historical figure. Her physical loss is profound, and it is also a rallying cry.
To honor Assata is not simply repeating her words, but to continue the struggle. It is to build socialist consciousness, to defend the rights of oppressed people for self-determination and freedom. To honor Assata is to understand her rejection of a system built on genocide and slavery – on stolen land, with stolen lives, and stolen labor. It is to uplift the names and join the struggle to free all political prisoners. It is to choose a path of revolutionary transformation in a counter-revolutionary time. It is to fight against the U.S. economic and commercial blockade on Cuba. It is choosing to dedicate our life to the liberation of Black people and the working class. It is to choose internationalism and solidarity in a time of U.S. imperialist aggression and war.
We look to her life to strengthen us. We carry her words as an affirmation. We continue her legacy as a promise to the future.
Assata lives and our struggle continues, until liberation.
