Quotes from Assata Shakur

Love is contraband in hell/cause Love is an acid/that eats away bars

were alive and we were excited and we believed that we were going to be free someday.

He said he had a plan, something he wanted to check out, but he didn't want to discuss it and raise my hopes prematurely. That was the last time i saw Stanley Cohen.

The one thing we do know is that after his death, all the legal papers on my case came up missing. Evelyn talked to Phyllis, Stanley's widow, and she gave her every legal paper she could find that had something to do with my case, but the bulk of the material was still missing. Finally, Evelyn found out that the New York City police had my legal papers. "How did they get them?" i asked her. "I don't even want to think about it," she answered.

The trial began on January 17, 1977, the same day Gary Gilmore was shot in Utah. Gary Gilmore was the first person legally executed since the death penalty was struck down by the u.s. supreme kourt in the early 1970s. His execution set the climate for the trial.

Even though the National Jury Project had done a study of Middlesex County and had found that eighty-three percent of the people had heard about my case in the media and seventy percent had already formulated an opinion about my guilt, the kourt maintained that i could receive a fair trial.

History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privileges, then they are "liberals." But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you're talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.

Wear your scars like jewelry cause they were bought with blood.

I decided on Assata Olugbala Shakur. Assata means "She who struggles," Olugbala means "Love for the people," and i took the name Shakur out of respect for Zayd and Zayd's family. Shakur means "the thankful.

Anytime you're talking about a ladder, you're talking about a top and a bottom, an upper class and a lower class, a rich class and a poor class. As long as you've got a system with a top and a bottom, Black people are always going to wind up at the bottom, because we are the easiest to discriminate against. That's why i couldn't see fighting within the system.

Acquittal. The kourtroom broke into a loud cheer. The judge just gave up calling for order. He had to wait for the shouting to die down. It was a long time coming. All the spectators were jumping around hugging each other. The marshals led me out of the courtroom and handcuffed me. They brought me back to Rikers Island where i was put into solitary confinement.

Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized.

Just because you believe in self-defense doesn't mean you let yourself be sucked into defending yourself on the enemy's terms.

Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting together against a common enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about who had the right line.

To win we have got to wear down our oppressors, little by little, and at the same time, strengthen our forces, slowly but surely.

It turned out that he was a specialist in paleontology and had spent a lot of time studying rocks. He tried to claim that his expertise at examining rocks made him able to identify people. Under cross-examination, all his carefully constructed "expertise" turned into a pile of rocks, and this new technical breakthrough in crime fighting proved to be nothing but a fraud.

She made one mistake," he kept repeating. "She forgot to change her earrings. She has the same earrings on." The prosecutor was so dramatic. The scene was straight out of the movies. You could tell he had been watching the late show. Both the woman in the bank and i had on hoop earrings. When Stanley summed up, he just said, "Will all the women in the courtroom who have on hoop earrings, please stand up?" Half the women rose to their feet.

Several years later, after the Freedom of Information Act was passed, it was revealed that Cotton had been working undercover for the police.

Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other peoples' freedom as well. The victory of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a victory for Black people. Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation.

No one i knew had ever heard of Ronald Myers, and no one understood why he had been targeted for this particular frame-up. In fact, i wondered if he was some kind of plant. It all seemed so strange.

When i heard on the radio that the New York Panthers had been busted, i was furious. The so-called conspiracy charges were so stupid that even a fool could see through them. The police actually had the audacity to charge them with plotting to blow up the flowers in the Botanical Garden.

The capper came when the manager of the bank came forward to testify in my behalf. He said that i was definitely not the woman who robbed the bank and that the robber was a different height and weight from mine.

They lock you in the hole and they don't let you out until you consent to be searched internally.

Won't you at least call a gynecologist in to see me? You're not a specialist in this area." "I don't need you to tell me what my specialties are," he said angrily. "It would be best for everybody concerned if you have an abortion, no matter which way you have it.