Happy Birthday Assata!

Happy Birthday Assata!

May you have many many more – and may the support of people everywhere be strong enough to ensure that you have many more despite the declaration of war on you, the Black masses and other oppressed people by the sitting u.s. President.

It is well known that u.s. Presidents carry out both public and private agendas on behalf of their voting-constituencies as well as their rich powerful private benefactors.

Much of Richard M. Nixon’s Welfare Reform policies and “War of Drugs” campaigns were simply covers for his private low-intensity “War on the Black masses” and other people of color as portrayed in notes by his White House Chief of Staff in The Haldeman Diaries:

“Monday, April 28, 1969 – [Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to. Problem with the overall welfare plan is that it forces poor Whites into the same position as Blacks. Feels we have to get rid o the veil of hypocrisy and guilt and face reality.

Pointed out that there has never in history been an adequate Black Nation, and they are the only race of which this is true. Says Africa is hopeless, the worst is Liberia, which we built.” p. 53

Bill Clinton used the slogan, “To change welfare as we know it,” as his cover for continuing the “War on Blacks” and other oppressed masses. By the time he left office, Clinton had kicked more Black women off welfare and put more Black men in  prison than any other u.s. President, before or since. Also by then, the terms “crime,” “drugs” and Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” had long been crystalized in the Amerikan psyche as code words for “Black.”

The War in Iraq represented George “W.” Bush’s overt War on Terror and his treatment of the New Orleans’ flood victims adequately represented his covert “War on Blacks.”

Barack Obama took office, ended the War in Iraq and shifted the focus to the War in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Border Regions – on Al-Queda and the Taliban – and on the Islamist in the Mideast and Afrika. He now proclaims an end to the Global War on Terrorism by bringing the troops home from Afghanistan (actually a retreat from the Mideast) to “pivot toward Asia” while fomenting fratricidal wars throughout Afrika and shifting focus again, this time, to the War on Domestic Terrorism with special emphasis that it will be “a return to the status of the ’70s.” But in the ’70s the word “terrorist” was also just another code word for “Black.”

The problem today is that most perpetrators of u.s. domestic terrorism – lethal public bombings, mass-murder shootings in schools, colleges, religious sites, theaters, etc – are White or of Mideastern extraction. Still, less than 3 weeks after 2 young White men bombed the Boston Marathon, Obama put Assata Shakur, a 66 year old Black woman in Cuba 29 years, on the Most Wanted Terrorist list, the same list from which he selects his drone-kill targets. So for all who have been debating, waiting and wondering when and what, if anything, Obama will do for the poor neglected and needy Black masses, he has just given his answer! Obama’s War on Domestic Terrorism, like previous Presidents’ Reform of the Welfare system and their War on Drugs, War on Crime, War on Terror campaigns etc., will be nothing less than the resurrection of  an amped-up COINTELPRO and the continuation of a stepped up covert War on the Black masses, others of color, the poor and oppressed in attempt to keep us suppressed, impoverished, mass imprisoned and in a permanent state of dependency and second class status.

WHEN YOU TOUCH A WOMAN, YOU STRIKE A ROCK

The “up” side is that Obama’s’s declaration acted as a wake-up call to masses of Black and other oppressed. People of all nationalities and walks of life, both hi and low, are holding teach-ins on Assata’s life and and the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) has a public online petition (printed below) calling for the “Most Wanted Terrorist” designation and the $2 million bounty on Assata to be rescinded.
On July 16, 2013, Assata Shakur’s Birthday, prisoners at FCI Cumberland MD, enthusiastically signed NCBL-like Petitions for Assata and sent the list of prisoners’ signatures to NBCL’s NYC office.
We ask and strongly urge other prisoners to do likewise. Show our Sistas and fellow rades some Love. NBCL’s address is:

National Conference of Black Lawyers
P.O. Box 240583
Borough Hall, New York 11424

Thank you,

Sundiata Acoli,

July 16, 2013
FCI Cumberland