Today in Labor History October 21, 1981: Kuwasi Balagoon was finally captured following a Brinks robbery. Balagoon had been a member of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, he became disillusioned with the Panthers, became an anarchist and joined the more militant Black Liberation Army. He escaped from prison twice. In 1979, while on the lam from his second prison escape, he helped to free political prisoner Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba and who recently died their (2025). In 1986, he died in prison from AIDS. In 2019, PM Press released a collection of writings by and about Balagoon called, “Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story.” And the prison abolitionist group, Black and Pink, which supports LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners, has, since 2020, run a "Kuwasi Balagoon award" for those living with HIV/AIDS.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #blackpanthers #BlackLiberationArmy #racism #blm #newafrika #assatashakur #prison #prisonescape #politicalrisoner #author #writer #books #BlackMastodon @bookstadon

“You Whisper to Us”: Racial Justice Activists and Artists Honor Assata’s Legacy

https://murica.website/2025/10/you-whisper-to-us-racial-justice-activists-and-artists-honor-assatas-legacy/

https://blackagendareport.com/no-one-can-stop-rain

#AssataShakur #BlackPantherParty #BlackLiberationArmy #BlackRadicalism #BlackRevolutionary #BlackLiberation #Marxism #Communism #BlackMastodon

https://blackagendareport.com/letter-my-people-assata-shakur-1973

#AssataShakur #BlackPantherParty #BlackLiberationArmy #BlackRadicalism #BlackRevolutionary #BlackLiberation #Marxism #Communism #BlackMastodon

“Learning from Assata: A young Black socialist on duty and discipline
Black grassroots organizer and visual artist Rachel Domond speaks on the legacy and influence of Assata Shakur”

Natalia Marques
peoples dispatch
October 01, 2025

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/01/learning-from-assata-a-young-black-socialist-on-duty-and-discipline/

#AssataShakur #BlackPantherParty #BlackLiberationArmy #BlackRadicalism #BlackRevolutionary #BlackLiberation #Marxism #Communism #BlackMastodon

“A fugitive’s freedom: Assata Shakur’s exile in Cuba
A living testament to the possibility of resistance, Assata embodied the courage not only to think about change but to fight for a new world entirely.”

Manolo De Los Santos
peoples dispatch
September 29, 2025

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/29/a-fugitives-freedom-assata-shakurs-exile-in-cuba/

#AssataShakur #BlackPantherParty #BlackLiberationArmy #BlackRadicalism #BlackRevolutionary #BlackLiberation #Marxism #Communism #BlackMastodon

Long Live Assata Shakur, 1947-2025

On September 26, 2025, Black revolutionary Assata Shakur transitioned after leading a long and virtuous life of internationalist resistance. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes Assata’s living legacy and recognizes her lifelong struggle against global oppression as a practice to inspire countless generations to come.

Assata Shakur was the target of racist, counter-insurgent incarceration from 1973 to 1979 because of her work with the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. For years from within prison walls, she fought false accusations while bearing the brunt of settler-colonial prison and police violence. After being shot twice by New Jersey State Police, Assata testified to being choked, beat, dragged, kicked, pulled by her hair, and cuffed by her ankles so tight that the handcuffs were inside her flesh. She received inadequate medical care and was imprisoned in a men’s prison because of how “threatening” she was deemed to be by the state.

Writing of her own experience, Assata noted that political persecution and incarceration is “part and parcel of the [US] government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.”

In 1979, a unit of the Black Liberation Army liberated Assata from prison and in 1984 she travelled to Cuba where she lived in exile until her recent passing. Living in exile in Cuba under the protection of the socialist Cuban government only further expanded Assata’s analysis of anti-imperialism and the interconnectedness of global struggles for liberation. Assata was a true internationalist in every sense of the word, describing Cuba as “One of the Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) That has ever existed on the Face of this Planet.”

Since the FBI’s commencement and alleged completion of COINTELPRO — the program that targeted Assata and other Black liberation activists between 1956 and 1971— little has changed in how the settler state attacks those who fight for the oppressed masses of the world. Assata Shakur is one of many people labelled as a so-called “terrorist” by the US and other Western and allied governments.

“They wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie,” President Fidel Castro once remarked about Assata. The FBI eventually classified her as the first woman on their Most Wanted Terrorists list. A few years later, the first woman Al-Qassam Brigades member Ahlam Al-Tamimi was added to this same list illustrating the joint struggle that the Palestinian and Black liberation movements share.

Much like the case of Assata and Ahlam, Palestinian resistance factions, the Axis of Resistance, and Palestinian solidarity organizations and individual activists across the globe are designated as “terrorist[s]” for siding with the masses of the world who oppose imperialism. Those of us who recognize prisons as a colonial tool for waging warfare against a subjugated people are particularly criminalized.

Assata’s political work with the Black Panthers and the BLA specifically identified American police and prisons as racist and oppressive forces that must be eliminated. Her offerings of steadfastness remind us to continue to fight for and honour those still inside and those who have been martyred by the colonial prison system.

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Free Abdullah Barghouthi, Free Kamau Sadiki, Free Jakhi McCray, Free Malik Farrad Muhammad, Free Ahmad Sa’adat, Free Kojo Bomani Sababu, Free Casey Goonan, Free Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Free Elias Rodriguez, and Free Them All!

Long live Assata Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Sheikh Khader Adnan, Ed Poindexter, Ismail Haniyeh, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Yahya Sinwar, and many more who have been martyred and/or have joined the ancestors.

A revolutionary freedom fighter, a political prisoner, a mother, a woman in exile— Assata Shakur’s lifelong practice of militancy and sacrifice will continue to be aspirational to all who wish to see the day that imperialism receives its final blow.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Rest in Power, Comrade Assata!

Read also:

• Assata Shakur: How Black Radical Tradition Intersects with Palestinian Struggle, by Benay Blend (Palestine Chronicle)
• Interview with Assata Shakur (1947-2025), Revolutionary Communist Group
• In Honor and Memory of Assata Shakur, Black Alliance for Peace

source: Samidoun

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21720

#assataShakur #blackLiberationArmy #blackPantherParty #cuba #guerrilla #martyr #northAmerica #repression #rip #samidoun

Joanne Deborah Chesimard aka Assata Shakur, #FBI #MostWanted #BlackLiberationArmy member, and godmother of rapper #Tupac, who lived as US fugitive in exile in #Cuba dead at 78.

Her death spawns comments of scorn from current bug eyed FBI director.who was born 10 years after the bank robbery crime that made her infamous, ...

https://abcnews.go.com/US/assata-shakur-wanted-black-liberation-army-member-dies/story/

Assata Shakur and the Duty to Free Our Comrades

Assata Shakur was a radical Black feminist, revolutionary, and freedom fighter. Her life was a testament to true liberatory practice, love, and community. She taught us about the interconnectedness of our struggles as oppressed people and the necessity for resistance in the face of state and imperial violence, by any means necessary and no matter the cost to our own comforts. She also taught us that liberation cannot be negotiated; it must be seized. She stands as a hero for those of us fighting for the liberation of the global working class, and we honor the sacrifices she made to advance that cause.

After years of being targeted and hunted by police for opposing the racist, capitalist, and imperialist U.S. as a member of the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army, and after being stalked and surveilled by U.S. state agencies, including the FBI, Assata was arrested and falsely accused of murdering a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973. Despite Assata’s innocence, and the many experts who testified that her injuries during the altercation would have made it impossible for her to commit the murder, she was convicted by an all-white jury in 1977. While in state custody, the conditions under which Assata was held were nothing short of barbaric and inhumane, including solitary confinement in a men’s prison, 24-hour surveillance, and denial of intellectual nourishment and adequate medical attention, including when she became pregnant while awaiting trial in 1973.

Assata’s story is one that many living in Lënapehòkink (The Bronx) and across the U.S. empire at large may recognize or relate to. Her insistence on life and her years of fighting for the liberation of Black people living under state violence serve as a reminder to us all to remain “reluctant warriors” in the face of U.S. state terrorism. It was Assata’s militant comrades in the Black Liberation Army who liberated her from incarceration by the state; they did not abandon her after she was apprehended. They understood, as Palestinians do, that there was no future for their movement without that freedom. Let us remember the comrades who broke her out, some of whom served decades in prison and some of whom remain incarcerated. Salute to Sekou Odinga, Silas Muhammad, Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata, Winston Patterson, Silvia Baraldini, Marilyn Buck, Mutulu Shakur and other BLA comrades.

It is the militants and revolutionaries who are most repressed and incarcerated. We must learn from Assata and her comrades and apply those lessons to today. We have several comrades who are currently incarcerated and must also be liberated. Free Casey Goonan, Jakhi McCray, Tarek Bazrouk, Leqaa Kordia, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kamau Sadiki, Rev. Joy Powell, Elias Rodriguez — FREE THEM ALL!

After successfully liberating herself from prison with the help of fellow BLA members in 1979, Assata was eventually granted political asylum in Cuba by Fidel Castro, and she lived out the remainder of her years as a free Black woman on liberated land, remaining vocal and devoted to Black liberation. Thank you to our Cuban comrades who protected and embraced Assata for the 41 years she called Cuba home.

We thank Assata for her relentless sacrifice, education, and fierce love and commitment to Black people and all those oppressed around the world. May her life be a continued reminder to the struggle that although we must survive, we also deserve to live. May her memory propel us forward until we are all free. May her teachings help light the path as the struggle continues.

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”

Rest in Power, Comrade Assata.

source: Bronx Anti-War

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21635

#assataShakur #blackLiberation #blackLiberationArmy #blackPantherParty #cuba #northAmerica