Quote

As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were 'baaaaaad.' The Party was more than bad it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them.

Assata Shakur

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Assata Shakur
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 14
Activist
Jamaica
Queens
Joanne Deborah Byron
Made
Party
Onto
Long
Black
California
Panthers
People
Back
Defense
Audacity
Look
Bear
Rifles
Self
Bears
Demanding
Looks
Concerned
Sheer
Take
Walking
Floor
Right
Arms
Senate

More quotes by Assata Shakur

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I think that in order to struggle you have to be creative. In my life, creativity has been something that has sustained me it awoke my spiritual struggle.
Assata Shakur
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People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.
Assata Shakur
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Racism had grown out of slavery and exploitation and was very hard to eradicate quickly and completely.
Assata Shakur
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I had grown up at a time when people were being lynched, being attacked with water hoses. Becoming active and learning a different way of viewing my life was a healthy reaction to what I was seeing every day.
Assata Shakur
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People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the whites only signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.
Assata Shakur
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When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.
Assata Shakur
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I think that any time anybody gets rid of oppression, intervention, exploitation, cruelty - that's positive.
Assata Shakur
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Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.
Assata Shakur
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I don't have to live up to that Superwoman myth. I can cry and be human and lean on people who take care of me. That can be very liberating.
Assata Shakur
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People come telling the truth. When I ask how thing are in the States, they don't give me the okeydoke. They say, Honey, things are hard. It reminds me I have to keep struggling.
Assata Shakur
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Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars. But you, me, and tomorrow hold hands and make vows that struggle will multiply. The hacksaw has two blades. The shotgun has two barrels. We are pregnant with freedom. We are a conspiracy.
Assata Shakur
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Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more.
Assata Shakur
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I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color.
Assata Shakur
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Unless you are addressing the issues people are concerned about and contributing positive direction, they'll never support you. The first thing the enemy tries to do is isolate revolutionaries from the masses of people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our people will hate us
Assata Shakur
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The government recognized immediately that Rap music has enormous revolutionary potential and politicians immediately came together to end it.
Assata Shakur
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We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active
Assata Shakur
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We're living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy.
Assata Shakur
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I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port
Assata Shakur
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Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism?
Assata Shakur
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We are pregnant with freedom.
Assata Shakur