JERSEY PANTHERS FETE ASSATA, SUNDIATA SLAM BLACK HEAD OF STATE TROOPERS
THE NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY
THE NEW YORK-NEW JERSEY CHAPTERS
P.O.BOX 25332
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 07101
973-776-3901, EXT. 2966July 20, 2001
On Monday evening, July 16th, the New Jersey chapter of the New Black Panther Party proudly sponsored a spirited, community-based birthday celebration and teach-in in Newark in defense of political prisoner in-exile, Assata Shakur. It was called 'For The Love Of Assata/For The Freedom Of Sundiata.'
The teach-in was a response to a renewed call for this valiant freedom fighter's head by the newly appointed superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, Carson Dunbar, the first African-American to head the 'upsouth' state's top law enforcement agency, notoriously known for starting and institutionalizing racial profiling. Dunbar made the comments at a press conference for NJ Congressman Steven Rothman several weeks ago. Rothman called for a new congressional bill that he is calling 'The No Save Haven In Cuba Act.' The bill says basically that the United States would not recognize any democratically-elected government without Cuba first turning over "fugitives" like Shakur.
Shakur, still referred to as Joanne Chesimard by her former captors and their agents, was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. On May 2, 1973, in what call 'The Turnpike Massacre,' the car she and two other colleagues were riding in was stopped and fired upon by NJ state troopers on the NJ Turnpike in New Brunswick. When it was all over, she was critically wounded. Another colleague Zayd Shakur and a state trooper Werner Foerster were dead. Later, Shakur was tried and convicted along with Sundiata Acoli, the other surviving colleague, by an all-white jury in a very prejudiced and sensational atmosphere for being responsible for Foerster's death and was sentenced to life plus 30 years.
That all changed dramatically on November 2, 1979, Black Solidarity Day, however, when Shakur was liberated from what is now known as the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, NJ. She has since lived in asylum in revolutionary Cuba.
The teach-in began with a moving libation to some of the bold Black revolutionary ancestors in the tradition of Afrikan Nationalism, including necessarily Shakur's comrade who did not survive 'The Turnpike Massacre,' Zayd Shakur, and the New Black Panther Party's recently fallen leader, Khallid Abdul Muhammad.
The organizers then presented a warm, holistic picture of Shakur, one that was almost opposite of that always given by the media. They painted a picture of her as a grandchild of proud landowning and enterprising grandparents from Wilmington, North Carolina, as the daughter of a fiercely independent Black woman, the late Doris Johnson, and how a bright and talented young woman who was roundly introduced to the great art traditions of Black New York and to the whole city in general by her aunt Evelyn Williams, a pioneering black female attorney, as a hardworking, understated, courageous young woman who joined the Black Panther Party and who heroically, but painfully, emerged as a singular target for FBI COINTELPRO operations. Operation Newkill was cited as a special COINTELPRO initiative against Panthers from New York. This initiative was most responsible for the capturing and framing of a host of New York Panthers, such as The Queens Two, The NY 3, among others. Operation Chesrob was named and described as being particularly aimed just at Shakur. The organizers explained that even though Assata proved at her trial that she was shot with her hands up and critically wounded, her all-white Morris County jury convicted her anyway. The organizers also presented a bold open letter to Dunbar "explaining just who Assata is because obviously he doesn't know."
The teach-in also included a moving tribute to Sundiata Acoli, Shakur's co-defendant in the turnpike incident. They told how Acoli was a gifted mathematician who graduated from the historically Black college Prairie View University and who even worked for a short while at NASA because of his exceptional gifts, but when he "heard the drum of struggle, he answered in a very real way, and joined the Black Panther Party in 1968,"explained Muhammad, the Party's regional chief of staff, and a longtime supporter of Shakur and Acoli.
"Look at what Sundiata had going for him. He could easily be living a comfortable, cushy, bourgeoisie life, but he put it all on the line, still is, so things could be better for us and our babies," Muhammad stressed.
He then called for the development of a strong, community-based Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign in New Jersey to provide critical support for Acoli should he be considered for parole.
Acoli is now in his 28th year of incarceration, making him one of the longest held political prisoners in the United States.
Elder Inuni of Afrikan Echoes did a strong historical presentation on the historical background to the United States blockade of Cuba, describing how the obsession with Cuba actually goes back to the early days of the American Republic.
Ras Baraka, a hip hop activist running for Newark City Council, had his own impressions of Shakur. "One thing that Assata taught me that I'll never forget is that she learned that is was important not just to organize for the people, but to organize with the people, and that's what we gotta learn to start doing," explained the son of Black Arts legend Amiri Baraka.
"Wherever the people are, and whenever the people are doing things, we have to be there with them, and then we can show how take what they're doing somewhere else," he said.
They finished by presenting a huge birthday cake to the children and the elders in the audience, which warmly read "We love you, Assata," from what they called the 'Assata Welcome Table.' This was a kente-cloth covered table arrayed with a host of Assata memorabilia, including a framed picture of the Black Liberation Army poster which read 'Assata is Welcome Here,' that surfaced in New York's Black community once Shakur was liberated from prison.
The Panthers next event will be a Black August Hip Hop Community Forum on Saturday, August 11th at 6p.m. at Waset Kommuniversity, 271 So. 9th Street, Newark. For more information, please call 973-776-3901, ext. 2966. # Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign ~~ www.afrikan.net/sundiata
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: mailto:iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: iac-cai@action-mail.org
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal: http://www.millions4mumia.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
Make a donation to the IAC and its projects
The International Action Center
Home ActionAlerts Press
Share this page with a friend