Day 5: National Women's history month (long post)

Day 5: Today we are talking about Assata Shakur born Joanne Deborah Byron. I would like to say that we need to free her( but we'll get to that later). Born on July 16, 1947 in Flushing, Queens she earned a GED with the help of her aunt and attended BMCC and CCNY in the mid 1960s where she participated in sit-ins, protests and rallies. She was arrested for the first time in 1967 where she and other BMCC students chained themselves to the school and blocked the entrance to protest against lack of black faculty and no black studies program. She also married Louis Chesimard that same year before ending it in 1970 due to different views of gender roles(basically her husband wanted her to be submissive and she was not with it so he had to go). After graduating CCNY, she became a member of the black panther party and changed her name to Assata Olugbala Shakur, her first name comes from the arabic name Aisha which means "she who struggles" while. Shakur means "thankful one" in Arabic and Olugbala means "savior" in Yoruba. She felt that her birth name (Joanne) felt like a slave name. She later joined the black liberation movement because the Black panther party “lacked knowledge about black history” also the men were very macho. The Black liberation party was out here murdering police, drug dealers and robbing banks. On April 6, 1971 she was shot in the stomach during a struggle with a guest at a hotel while she demanded money. Later she was booked on charges of attempted robbery, felonious assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of a deadly weapon, then released on bail. On August 23, 1971 she was brought in for a bank robbery, On december 23, 1971 the cops named her as one of the people who threw a hand grenade at a police car injuring the two officers. In 1972, the FBI led a manhunt for her because they believed she led a Black Liberation Army cell that killed four police officers execution style. The New York Police Department and the FBI said that Assata was “the soul of the gang and the mother hen who kept them all together”. She was also targeted by the FBI COINTELPRO. On May 2, 1973 she, along with  Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli  were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike for a broken tail light by a state trooper.  Acoli was driving the two-door vehicle, Assata Shakur was seated in the right front seat, and Zayd Shakur was in the right rear seat.Trooper Harper asked the driver for identification, noticed a discrepancy, asked him to get out of the car, and questioned him at the rear of the vehicle. According to initial police statements, at this point one or more of the suspects began firing with semiautomatic handguns and Trooper Foerster fired four times before falling mortally wounded. Assata Shakur was also wounded. Shakur testified that Trooper Harper shot her after she raised her arms to comply with his demand. She said that the second shot hit her in the back as she turned to avoid it, and that she fell onto the road for the duration of the gunfight.  It is believed that she helped fire the gun killing both state troopers. Between 1973 and 1977, in New York and New Jersey, Shakur was indicted ten times, resulting in seven different criminal trials. Shakur was charged with two bank robberies, the kidnapping of a Brooklyn heroin dealer, the attempted murder of two Queens police officers stemming from a January 23, 1973, failed ambush, and eight other felonies related to the Turnpike shootout. Of these trials, three resulted in acquittals, one in a hung jury, one in a change of venue, one in a mistrial due to pregnancy, and one in a conviction; three indictments were dismissed without trial. She was convicted of two murder charges and six assault charges in 1977 although the medical evidence does not show that she pulled the trigger and was shot with her hands up. After the Turnpike shootings, Shakur was briefly held at the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility  in Yardville, Burlington County, New Jersey, and later moved to Rikers Island Correctional Institution for Women in New York City where she was kept in solitary confinement for 21 months. she was beaten and restrained by several large female officers and even had to do vaginal and anal searchs. On November 2, 1979 she escaped with the help from the Black Liberation Army and was a fugitive for several years before receiving political asylum from Cuba in 1984 where she currently is. Assata Shakur has been on the FBI most wanted terrorist list since 2013. She was also the first woman to be put on this list and as of today there is a 2,000,000 reward for her capture. So today, I want to talk about Assata Shakur because she was more than Tupac’s godmother, she was an activist and she was willing to do whatever it takes by any means necessary to get black liberation. Also, I personally feel that the government had it out for her because she has been tracked down and on the watch by the FBI for years. She shouldn’t have been charged for the crimes because the medical evidence shows that she was shot with her hands up. So before you say I’m glorifying a cop killer and a “terrorist” I’m not. I'm glorifying and honoring a black revolutionist.