Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

Meanwhile, we in this society must remind ourselves again how we threaten our own interests and rights when we condone by our silence the government’s use of surveillance, attacks on the legitimacy of political activists, and the use of the criminal law to suppress and punish political dissent.

Fine print and white lawyers have a way of robbing Black people of what is theirs.

The Revolutionary War was led by some rich white boys who got tired of paying heavy taxes to the king. It didn’t have anything at all to do with freedom, justice, and equality for all.

They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of Africa.

They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselves pioneers.

They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia, and Latin America of their natural resources and freedom while the people who live there are sick and starving.

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.

White people’s fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it’s because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people—their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid.

And, i reasoned, how could i be expected to love and worship a god whose “master plan” included the enslavement, torture, and murder of Black people?

What had my ancestors thought when they brought their babies into this world, only to see them flogged and raped, bought and sold.

“I’m gonna live as hard as i can and as full as i can until i die. And i’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.

Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.

always decide who your enemies are for yourself, and never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

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?

where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

I do not understand a government so willing to spend millions of dollars on arms, to explore outer space, even the planet Jupiter, and at the same time close down day care centers and fire stations.

Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.

As long as we expect amerika’s schools to educate us, we will remain ignorant.

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?

the true history of any oppressed people is impossible to find in history books.

If you are deaf, dumb, and blind to what’s happening in the world, you’re under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what’s happening and you don’t do anything but sit on your ass, then you’re nothing but a punk.

humble. You can’t claim that you love people when you don’t respect them, and you can’t call for political unity unless you practice it in your relationships.

Nobody gets upset about white people having guns, but let a Black person have a gun and something criminal is going on.

The only time white amerika is in favor of Black people having guns is when we are using them to do amerika’s dirty work.

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