Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

I sat next to a pregnant woman who was doing ninety days for taking a box of Pampers and watched on TV the pardoning of a president who had stolen millions of dollars and who had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of human beings. For what? For peace with honor? Nixon was pardoned without ever standing trial or being found guilty of a crime or spending one day in jail. Who else could commit some of the most horrendous, destructive crimes in history and get paid 200,000 tax dollars a year? Ford stated that he pardoned Nixon because Nixon’s family had suffered enough. Well, what about thousands of families whose sons gave their lives in Vietnam? And what about the millions of people who have been sentenced at birth to poverty, to live like animals and work like dogs. What about the families who have sons and daughters in prison, who cannot afford bail or even lawyers for their children? Where is justice for them? What kind of justice is this? Where the poor go to prison and the rich go free. Where witnesses are rented, bought, or bribed. Where evidence is made or manufactured. Where people are tried not because of any criminal actions but because of their political beliefs. Where was the justice for men at Attica? Where was the justice for Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, Clifford Glover? Where was the justice for the Rosenbergs? And where is the justice for the Native Americans who we so presumptuously call Indians?