As news broke of the release of the three remaining members of the Cuban Five and the “normalization” of relations between the United States and Cuba, the fate of another former political prisoner came to many people’s minds.
Assata Shakur, who was a leading member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, was one of many Black revolutionaries of the 60s to come under fire from COINTELPRO. By making the Black Panther Party one of its primary targets, COINTELPRO, the Counter Intelligence Program, was one of many manifestations of how this racist system of capitalism doesn’t respect that “#BlackLivesMatter.” By targeting, arresting and killing many of those who committed themselves to the total liberation of Black people the U.S. government then, just as it does today, made clear its disregard for Black life.
The traffic stop that ended with the capture of Assata Shakur and eventually another Black Liberation Army member, Sundiata Acoli, and the killings of both fellow BLA member Zayd Malik Shakur and New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, was itself the product of racist police practices. On May 2, 1973 Assata, along with Zayd and current political prisoner Sundiata Acoli, was pulled over for a supposedly faulty tail light, although it’s been stated that Trooper James Harper actually pulled them over because of his raised suspicions of three Black people driving with a Vermont license plate.
While certain details of the incident are difficult to pin down, what is clear is that Assata was unarmed and shot twice while holding her hands up and Zayd Malik Shakur was shot and killed– both at the hands of New Jersey State Police. In a disgusting move by the state, during the trial, they not only pinned Trooper Foerster’s murder on Assata and Sundiata, but also that of their dear friend and fallen comrade Zayd. Prior to her capture, with little to no evidence, the FBI attempted to tie Assata to numerous robberies and violent crimes that happened anywhere throughout the state of New York involving a Black woman; in all of theses cases, for lack of evidence, she was either acquitted or had the charges dismissed. At trial, these lies continued.
In stark contrast to the recent non-indictments of Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo (though there was never a question of whether or not they had respectively killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner), Assata and Sundiata were eventually convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years with little evidence they had even committed any crimes. This wasn’t the first time Assata faced this sort of oppression, but rather, the reason she began struggling for liberation in the first place–a struggle that continues to be a guiding force in her life today.
Fearing for her life and knowing that she’d always be denied justice under this system, on November 2, 1979 she managed to escape with the help of comrades in the Black Liberation Army. In the years after Assata’s escape, the FBI’s tactics in their hunt were not unlike those we continue to see today in the so-called “War On Drugs;” sweeping through entire neighborhoods in New York on a regular basis and surveilling anyone with even peripheral contact to the movement.
It would be nearly five years before Assata fled the country to seek refuge and protection in Cuba. In 1984, the same year she arrived there, the revolutionary government of Cuba granted her political asylum and the Cuban people welcomed her with open arms.
This week, as news spread of the possibility of ending the inhumane and decades-long blockade the U.S. has forced on the Cuban people, a wave rose up of just concern over Assata’s safety. All across social media and progressive Black news sites, many activists worried about whether or not she would be extradited. These concerns seemed to be justified when the NJ Attorney General’s office released a statement of its own, stating that the FBI is continuing its pursuit of ‘”justice” and its hopes that the thawing in U.S.-Cuba relations would bring them closer in their quest to extradite Assata.
It’s important to take this with clear perspective and knowledge of past extradition attempts made by the U.S., otherwise this news could sound a little disheartening. In 1997, a year before Pope John Paul II’s visit to the island, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police wrote a letter to the Pope asking him to bring up the extradition of Assata in his talks with then-president Fidel Castro. In 1998, it’s rumored that the U.S. State Department offered to go so far as to end the blockade in exchange for 90 political exiles, including Assata. If true, it’s quite clear that there was swift rejection of this deal. That same year, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution asking for Cuba to return Assata. In 2005, on the 32nd anniversary of her initial capture, the FBI classified her as a domestic terrorist which raised the award for aiding her capture to $1,000,000– the largest amount placed on an individual in the history of New Jersey.
Assata came back into public consciousness when, over the summer of 2013, it was announced that she would be the first woman to be placed on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list and the reward for her capture was doubled to $2,000,000. The background of this announcement was the report, put together by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, which showed that in the U.S. a Black person is killed by police or security forces every 28 hours–the very same conditions Assata and the Black liberation movements of the past sought to change through actions that left many either imprisoned or dead.
Throughout it all, Cuba has remained steadfast in its protection of Assata’s freedom, further solidifying their solidarity with the global struggle for Black liberation. Their own nation has seen billions funneled into countless failed projects of the United States to break the revolutionary process of the Cuban people, direct military attack, hundreds of assassination attempts on their political leaders,and an outright economic blockade. Meanwhile the Cuban people–and the revolution they continue to advance–have become the epitome of resistance and resilience.
In response to new calls from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, urging President Obama to demand Assata’s return before fully restoring relations, Josefina Vidal, Cuban foreign ministry’s head of North American affairs, has stated “Every nation has sovereign and legitimate rights to grant political asylum to people it considers to have been persecuted, we’ve explained to the U.S. government in the past that there are some people living in Cuba to whom Cuba has legitimately granted political asylum.”
The announcement of Cuba’s continued stance in solidarity with Assata and its declaration of a continued path of socialism have proven only to be a step forward in, not away from, Cuba’s revolutionary process. Resisting imperialism and building a new revolutionary society just 90 miles from the US, Cuba has proven time and time again that it truly is, in the words of Assata Shakur, “One of the largest, most resistant and most courageous Palenques(Maroon Camps) that has ever existed on the face of this planet”.
