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I trust Cuba as a principled country. Cuba's strength is that it has been steadfast in its commitment to the principles of liberation, freedom, of resistance to the kind of institutionalized terrorism that the United States government does every day.

Assata Shakur

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Assata Shakur
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 14
Activist
Jamaica
Queens
Joanne Deborah Byron
Kind
Principles
Steadfast
Freedom
Cuba
United
Liberation
Doe
Resistance
States
Terrorism
Government
Commitment
Country
Strength
Institutionalized
Every
Trust
Principled

More quotes by 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.
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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
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Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.
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I miss friends and family. If it weren't for visits from old friends and other African Americans I meet who come to Cuba, I'd probably be in some kind of time warp.
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There is something about Sundiata [Acoli] that exudes calm. From every part of his being you can sense the presence of revolutionary spirit and fervor. And his love for Black people is so intense that you can almost touch it and hold it in your hand.
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Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.
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In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only ones who can free us are ourselves.
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We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.
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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.
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The U.S. doesn't recognize the laws of Cuba. They can kidnap anybody and bring them back to the States to face the so-called justice system. There's no telling what the U.S. government will do to me. I'm in constant danger I guess I've gotten used to it.
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If you're 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
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People think that in order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice.
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The abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen.
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And if I know anything at all, it's that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down.
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The real reason Cuba poses a threat has nothing to do with my being here or anyone else being here. It's because Cuba is an example of a country that is actively fighting against imperialist domination and insists on its own right to self-determination and sovereignty.
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Black Revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. We are shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quetin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us.
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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.
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People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.
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Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other people's freedom as well. The victory of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a victory for Black people. Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation.
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People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
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