Assata Shakur was falsely accused of a long string of crimes in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when she was a member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. She was one of many black activists targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO project to destroy all such movements, often by literally murdering their leaders (as happened to Fred Hampton in Chicago). Finally in 1973 she was convicted of murdering a New Jersey policeman in a travesty of justice (the evidence showed clearly that she never touched a gun, but rather raised her hands and then was shot twice). Beaten and mistreated both during her hospitalization and later in a series of horrific prison experiences, she finally arranged her escape in 1979 and eventually made her way to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum and has lived quietly ever since. In May 2013 she was, bizarrely, added to the FBI’s list of ten most-wanted terrorists, and the reward—read ‘bounty’—for her capture was raised to $2 million. Since Obama’s announcement that the U.S. would resume diplomatic relations with Cuba after half a century, there have been renewed calls for Shakur to be returned to the U.S. to be re-imprisoned. Her story, though particularly dramatic, is only one from that era. Many of her peers from the 1970s were killed; many others are still in prison and are largely forgotten. As Dr. King said, justice delayed is justice denied. The least we can do is to retell their stories and try to do better. https://youtube/watch?v=kpbZ7cuwEMg
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 02:41:24 +0000
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