On Thursday, September 25, 2025, at 1:15pm (the time according to her daughter Kakuya Shakur) former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur made her physical transition in Havana, Cuba at the age of 78. For Black nationalists, Pan-Africanists, and radical activists/thinkers, Assata was a symbol of resistance to U.S. imperialism. She participated in the underground Black Liberation Army (BLA) in the early 70s. The BLA was never shy about their mission. They even arranged to have petitions filed with the World Court to substantiate that they were a military operation at war against the U.S. government. The BLA claimed that under the decisions of the Geneva Convention, the BLA and all African liberation fighters, had the right to declare all U.S. police, military, and other armed agents of the state, as enemies of the people who they had the international right to wage armed struggle against (just as the U.S. declared its rights to not only go to war with, but invade Europe, North/South Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, as well as supporting such efforts all over Africa and the rest of the world).
Assata Shakur became that symbol of resistance after comrades calling themselves the May 19th Brigade, a collection of radicals/revolutionaries from the BLA and Weather Underground, staged a successful prison break, freeing Assata on November 2, 1979. She spent five years moving around underground before surfacing in Cuba where the Cuban socialist revolution provided her safe haven from 1984 until her transition on September 25, 2025.
Of course, Assata was in prison in the first place because of the shootout on the New Jersey turnpike with state troopers in 1973 in which former BPP and BLA comrade Zayd Shakur was killed and former BPP and BLA comrade Sundiata Acoli was captured and imprisoned for over four decades. Regarding this incident, for the defenders of the capitalist state, the many political opportunists who jump at every opportunity to dance when the system says move, and any and everyone who relies on capitalist news sources to shape their political perspectives, Assata is seen today as a cop killer and escaped convict.
Also, the story of Assata Shakur, and all African liberation fighters, can never be told without discussing the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) infamous counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO). This program, according to the introductory document produced by then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1967, was dedicated to stopping the rise of a “Black Messiah” who could “electrify and ignite the Negro masses.” Hoover was never shy about expressing his racist fueled belief that “the greatest threat to American security is the unity of the negro masses.” Consequently, the FBI and COINTELPRO were committed to stopping at nothing to meet their objectives, including murder.
The mistake any activists make today is assuming that COINTELPRO discontinued the aggressive physical attacks of the 60s/70s that saw the murders of Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the framing of Panther leaders Gerinomo Ji Jaga (Pratt) and Erika Huggins, and the fanning of artificial internal conflict which led to the murders of Panthers Alex Rackley, Lil Bobby Hutton, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, and John Huggins to name just a few as well as the imprisonment of Mumia Abu Jamal and others. That shootout on the New Jersey turnpike also falls within these categories.
Today, the FBI isn’t doing as much on the ground sabotage of the movements, although that does still occur (the installation of a violent FBI informant into the active, yet inexperienced Black Lives Matter chapter in Denver, Colorado in 2020). COINTELPRO in 2025 and beyond is much more about surveillance of activist activities, particularly on social media. There is a major influx of new and inexperienced activists and while this is a great thing, it has great challenges like so many people providing the FBI all the tea on weaknesses within our movements due to these people avoiding principled ideological struggle within the activist circles they participate in, opting instead to trash talk people online. Another much more subtle, yet overwhelmingly effective, FBI tactic today is discrediting the people and principles that surround our movements. This is where and how the attacks against the legacy of Assata Shakur are coming and why they should be absolutely no surprise to any of us who have studied the approaches of the enemies of humanity.
Just a day after it was confirmed by Assata’s daughter and the Cuban Foreign Ministry, that Assata had made her transition, the discrediting ratcheted up. There are hit pieces on Assata that are appearing in major news outlet sites that trumpet up the fact Assata was convicted of the death of New Jersey State Trooper Warren Forrester in 1973. Forrester’s family, always useful to the FBI’s efforts to discredit Assata, are trending again, calling her an escaped con and murderer. The unfortunate thing that most untrained eyes will miss is these attacks against Assata’s legacy rely on her conviction, while either ignoring and/or dismissing (just as the FBI influenced jury did during Assata’s trial) the medical examiner’s reports that the injuries Assata suffered from gunshot wounds inflicted by the state troopers were only possible from a physiological standpoint if her arms were raised (in surrender) which would have made it impossible for her to fire any weapons. In other words, the work of the FBI over the last 52 years against Assata Shakur is being raised up by them again right now. That Assata killed that cop, regardless of the fact the only real thing indicating that is the FBI repeatedly saying it.
The other element of the current FBI effort, which was also largely anticipated by those who study their methods, was the attempts they are making to criminalize the Cuban Revolution and the fact Assata spent the last 41 years of her life in that socialist country instead of doing so in a U.S. prison. To attempt to accomplish this, these current efforts at discrediting Assata rely on the same old tired and consistently disproven Cold war allegations against the Cuban Revolution about it being undemocratic and violating the human rights of the Cuban people.
One such article produced over the weekend after Assata’s passing, made the argument that Cuba was a dictatorship using the example of the so-called “Ladies in White” a group of family members to people jailed in Cuba for confirmed anti-government activities in 2006. The article mentioned, doesn’t even make an effort to inform those reading it that this group was discredited when they came out in 2006 after it was confirmed that they received training and funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
With Assata’s passing, what needs to be said over and over is that we as independent thinking people will determine who we love, support, and are inspired by and the U.S. government, which has been an enemy to Africa and African people since its colonized inception, will have no say in any of that. We have to yell from the highest mountains, especially where our youth can hear, that Assata was our freedom fighter. She is and should be beloved by African people and all peace and justice loving people everywhere. She stood up to the capitalist system and won (and this is really the reason they don’t want us to be inspired by her example). Any African who stands up against this system should be loved by us and we have to resist the pressure to submit to the anti-African narrative that we need to mourn our enemies. Objectively, police of any kind, anywhere, regardless of who they are – your family, etc. – are enemies to African people and all of humanity. The police all over this country participated in an illegal assault against African revolutionaries and we have dozens of bodies that verify that, thousands of families and people who have been devastated by this and they expect us to stop the presses because of the death of that state trooper. We have to resist that and any and all efforts to discredit the Cuban Revolution. For anyone serious about African liberation, you would be very hard pressed to find any entity on earth who has supported our quest for freedom harder than the Cuban Revolution. From Che Guevara physically fighting with African combatants from Cuba and the Congo in the Congo in 1964 against neo-colonial efforts, to Fidel Castro directing 500,000 Cuban troops to fight against racist apartheid in Southern Africa in the late 80s and early 90s, to Cuba being a safe haven for African freedom fighters from the U.S. from Robert Williams in 1962 to Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Assata Shakur, and many others, anyone still saying we are all alone in our struggle is just someone who clearly flunked any real history of the world.
In truth, all of this can be summed up by looking at the statement released by chief U.S. police terrorist Kash Patel (current FBI Director). He issued a statement calling on people not to commemorate Assata Shakur in the wake of everyone from the Chicago Teacher’s Union to Democratic Socialists of America, acknowledging Assata Shakur’s contributions and life. He called Assata a terrorist. For anyone who has even the slightest understanding of the terrorism the FBI (formally the Justice Department) has historically carried out against African liberators for the last 100 years, this should be laughable. It’s the equivalent of a cat calling for everyone to condemn the mouse for standing up for their right to live.
Absolutely not. Celebrate the life of Assata Shakur and be inspired by it. If you don’t have much information about her, start by reading the two books that are most connected to her existence – her autobiography “Assata” and “Inadmissible Evidence” a book written by her auntie Evelyn Williams, who was Assata’s attorney who worked on her case in the 1970s. Continue to raise up Assata’s name as well as all freedom fighters who refused or refuse to bow down. And, make a commitment to get engaged in the very same struggle Assata represented because we all know the absolute best and only way to truly honor someone is to continue their work. Assata’s physical body is no more, but her impact on all of us will continue and there is nothing at all our enemies can do about that unless we let them.
Assata Shakur became that symbol of resistance after comrades calling themselves the May 19th Brigade, a collection of radicals/revolutionaries from the BLA and Weather Underground, staged a successful prison break, freeing Assata on November 2, 1979. She spent five years moving around underground before surfacing in Cuba where the Cuban socialist revolution provided her safe haven from 1984 until her transition on September 25, 2025.
Of course, Assata was in prison in the first place because of the shootout on the New Jersey turnpike with state troopers in 1973 in which former BPP and BLA comrade Zayd Shakur was killed and former BPP and BLA comrade Sundiata Acoli was captured and imprisoned for over four decades. Regarding this incident, for the defenders of the capitalist state, the many political opportunists who jump at every opportunity to dance when the system says move, and any and everyone who relies on capitalist news sources to shape their political perspectives, Assata is seen today as a cop killer and escaped convict.
Also, the story of Assata Shakur, and all African liberation fighters, can never be told without discussing the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) infamous counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO). This program, according to the introductory document produced by then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1967, was dedicated to stopping the rise of a “Black Messiah” who could “electrify and ignite the Negro masses.” Hoover was never shy about expressing his racist fueled belief that “the greatest threat to American security is the unity of the negro masses.” Consequently, the FBI and COINTELPRO were committed to stopping at nothing to meet their objectives, including murder.
The mistake any activists make today is assuming that COINTELPRO discontinued the aggressive physical attacks of the 60s/70s that saw the murders of Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the framing of Panther leaders Gerinomo Ji Jaga (Pratt) and Erika Huggins, and the fanning of artificial internal conflict which led to the murders of Panthers Alex Rackley, Lil Bobby Hutton, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, and John Huggins to name just a few as well as the imprisonment of Mumia Abu Jamal and others. That shootout on the New Jersey turnpike also falls within these categories.
Today, the FBI isn’t doing as much on the ground sabotage of the movements, although that does still occur (the installation of a violent FBI informant into the active, yet inexperienced Black Lives Matter chapter in Denver, Colorado in 2020). COINTELPRO in 2025 and beyond is much more about surveillance of activist activities, particularly on social media. There is a major influx of new and inexperienced activists and while this is a great thing, it has great challenges like so many people providing the FBI all the tea on weaknesses within our movements due to these people avoiding principled ideological struggle within the activist circles they participate in, opting instead to trash talk people online. Another much more subtle, yet overwhelmingly effective, FBI tactic today is discrediting the people and principles that surround our movements. This is where and how the attacks against the legacy of Assata Shakur are coming and why they should be absolutely no surprise to any of us who have studied the approaches of the enemies of humanity.
Just a day after it was confirmed by Assata’s daughter and the Cuban Foreign Ministry, that Assata had made her transition, the discrediting ratcheted up. There are hit pieces on Assata that are appearing in major news outlet sites that trumpet up the fact Assata was convicted of the death of New Jersey State Trooper Warren Forrester in 1973. Forrester’s family, always useful to the FBI’s efforts to discredit Assata, are trending again, calling her an escaped con and murderer. The unfortunate thing that most untrained eyes will miss is these attacks against Assata’s legacy rely on her conviction, while either ignoring and/or dismissing (just as the FBI influenced jury did during Assata’s trial) the medical examiner’s reports that the injuries Assata suffered from gunshot wounds inflicted by the state troopers were only possible from a physiological standpoint if her arms were raised (in surrender) which would have made it impossible for her to fire any weapons. In other words, the work of the FBI over the last 52 years against Assata Shakur is being raised up by them again right now. That Assata killed that cop, regardless of the fact the only real thing indicating that is the FBI repeatedly saying it.
The other element of the current FBI effort, which was also largely anticipated by those who study their methods, was the attempts they are making to criminalize the Cuban Revolution and the fact Assata spent the last 41 years of her life in that socialist country instead of doing so in a U.S. prison. To attempt to accomplish this, these current efforts at discrediting Assata rely on the same old tired and consistently disproven Cold war allegations against the Cuban Revolution about it being undemocratic and violating the human rights of the Cuban people.
One such article produced over the weekend after Assata’s passing, made the argument that Cuba was a dictatorship using the example of the so-called “Ladies in White” a group of family members to people jailed in Cuba for confirmed anti-government activities in 2006. The article mentioned, doesn’t even make an effort to inform those reading it that this group was discredited when they came out in 2006 after it was confirmed that they received training and funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
With Assata’s passing, what needs to be said over and over is that we as independent thinking people will determine who we love, support, and are inspired by and the U.S. government, which has been an enemy to Africa and African people since its colonized inception, will have no say in any of that. We have to yell from the highest mountains, especially where our youth can hear, that Assata was our freedom fighter. She is and should be beloved by African people and all peace and justice loving people everywhere. She stood up to the capitalist system and won (and this is really the reason they don’t want us to be inspired by her example). Any African who stands up against this system should be loved by us and we have to resist the pressure to submit to the anti-African narrative that we need to mourn our enemies. Objectively, police of any kind, anywhere, regardless of who they are – your family, etc. – are enemies to African people and all of humanity. The police all over this country participated in an illegal assault against African revolutionaries and we have dozens of bodies that verify that, thousands of families and people who have been devastated by this and they expect us to stop the presses because of the death of that state trooper. We have to resist that and any and all efforts to discredit the Cuban Revolution. For anyone serious about African liberation, you would be very hard pressed to find any entity on earth who has supported our quest for freedom harder than the Cuban Revolution. From Che Guevara physically fighting with African combatants from Cuba and the Congo in the Congo in 1964 against neo-colonial efforts, to Fidel Castro directing 500,000 Cuban troops to fight against racist apartheid in Southern Africa in the late 80s and early 90s, to Cuba being a safe haven for African freedom fighters from the U.S. from Robert Williams in 1962 to Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Assata Shakur, and many others, anyone still saying we are all alone in our struggle is just someone who clearly flunked any real history of the world.
In truth, all of this can be summed up by looking at the statement released by chief U.S. police terrorist Kash Patel (current FBI Director). He issued a statement calling on people not to commemorate Assata Shakur in the wake of everyone from the Chicago Teacher’s Union to Democratic Socialists of America, acknowledging Assata Shakur’s contributions and life. He called Assata a terrorist. For anyone who has even the slightest understanding of the terrorism the FBI (formally the Justice Department) has historically carried out against African liberators for the last 100 years, this should be laughable. It’s the equivalent of a cat calling for everyone to condemn the mouse for standing up for their right to live.
Absolutely not. Celebrate the life of Assata Shakur and be inspired by it. If you don’t have much information about her, start by reading the two books that are most connected to her existence – her autobiography “Assata” and “Inadmissible Evidence” a book written by her auntie Evelyn Williams, who was Assata’s attorney who worked on her case in the 1970s. Continue to raise up Assata’s name as well as all freedom fighters who refused or refuse to bow down. And, make a commitment to get engaged in the very same struggle Assata represented because we all know the absolute best and only way to truly honor someone is to continue their work. Assata’s physical body is no more, but her impact on all of us will continue and there is nothing at all our enemies can do about that unless we let them.
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