Quote

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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Assata Shakur
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 14
Activist
Jamaica
Queens
Joanne Deborah Byron
Structure
Imperialism
Beginning
Segregation
Difficult
Structures
Form
Racial
Much
Signs
Colonialism
Really
Existed
Mechanisms
People
Mechanism
Apartheid
Slavery
Whites

More quotes by 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
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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 are pregnant with freedom.
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Cubans understand that theirs is a country that provides sanctuary for people fleeing oppression. As a nation, they are very proud of this stance. They don't care how much the U.S. government badgers or attacks them.
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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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Hip Hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people's political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon, if you don't know how to use it, if you don't know where to point it, or what you're using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters or brothers.
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I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.
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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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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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A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man. If he's not about liberation, if he's not about struggle, if he ain't about building a strong Black family, if he ain't about building a strong Black nation, then he ain't about nothing.
Assata Shakur
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Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.
Assata Shakur
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There's something nice about being able to go to sleep at night saying You know, tomorrow I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that.... I think that being an activist on this planet is a privilege and a pleasure.
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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.
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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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Every person that steps up and commits to social change helps solidify the black movement cause. It is not easy for those who fill in the leader role.
Assata Shakur
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To become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
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The attitudes of many police organizations were extremely negative to the prospect of Rap, and many officials weren't afraid to say that they were against it. To them, Rappers were just criminals waiting to get caught.
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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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I think it's really hard to plan if you don't believe you can implement those plans.
Assata Shakur
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Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.
Assata Shakur