Quotes from Assata Shakur

When i think of how racist, how Eurocentric our so-called education in amerika is, it staggers my mind. And when i think back to some of those kids who were labeled "troublemakers" and "problem students," i realize that many of them were unsung heroes who fought to maintain some sense of dignity and self-worth.

I had grown up believing the slaves hadn't fought back. I remember feeling ashamed when they talked about slavery in school.

Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other peoples' freedom as well.

Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren't planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government's genocidal war against Black and Third World people.

from Assata's time cooking at the free breakfast program for kids: One little girl came over to me and tapped me on the back. 'There's something wrong with your pancakes.' 'What's wrong with them?' 'They don't taste good.

We do not have the right in the name of social justice to bore anyone to death.

They went up against white mobs, water hoses, vicious dogs, the Ku Klux Klan, trigger-happy nightstick-wielding police, armed only with their belief in justice and their desire for freedom.

And, If I know anything at all/Its that a wall is just a wall/And nothing more at all/It can be broken down.

I'm not quite sure what freedom is, but i know damn well what it ain't. How have we gotten so silly, i wonder.

Fascist governments do not permit revolutionary or progressive operation groups to exist, no matter how peaceful or nonviolent they are. It doesn't matter whether the fascist government simply outlawed the groups like in Nazi Germany or mounts a counterintelligence campaign to destroy opposition groups like in the U.S.

Everything you love is from a different world. Hungry, you turn your nose up at my peas and rice.

I wondered how i would feel going into some museum and seeing the houses and stolen artifacts of my people stuck away in some exhibition hall. As i spoke i realized that most of the "history" i had been taught about the Indians was probably lies invented by the white man.

The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn't working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldn't working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich business men owned the wealth, while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it.

What made me maddest was the media treatment of the BPP, which gave the impression that the Party was racist and violent. And it worked. The pigs would burst into a Panther office, shoot first, and ask questions later. The press always reported that the police had "uncovered" a large arsenal of weapons. Later, when the "arsenal" turned out to be a few legally registered rifles and shotguns, the press never printed a word. The same thing goes on today.

As far as i was concerned, the police in the Black communities were nothing but a foreign, occupying army, beating, torturing, and murdering people at whim and without restraint. I despise violence, but i despise it even more when it's one-sided and used to oppress and repress poor people.

And I believe that a lost ship/steered by tired, seasick sailors/can still be guided home/to port

The world, in spite of oppression, is a beautiful place.

I knew i didn't know what the hell communism was, and yet i'd been dead set against it. Just like when you're a little kid and they get you to believe in the bogeyman. You don't know what the hell the bogeyman is, but you hate him and you're scared of him.

But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

He was the only witness who claimed he could positively identify me, because i "had spent weekends at his house." But he didn't know the color of my eyes.

One little girl broke up the whole kourtroom when she asked out loud, "Is that the fascist pig, Mommy?" pointing up at the judge.

My neighbors ask me what the u.s. is like, and they accuse me of lying when i tell them about the hunger and cold and people sleeping in the streets. They refuse to believe me. How can that be in such a rich country?

And i had turned into a crochet fiend. My poor mother was the unfortunate recipient of my early "creations." Brave, devoted person that she was, she thought they were pure genius.

I thought about it all the way home. Of all the things I had wanted to be when i was a little girl, a revolutionary certainly wasn't one of them.