Finding liberation in exile
The story of Assata Shakur
It comes as no surprise to learn that an antonym of liberation is confinement. And of course, it makes sense. One should not and cannot be considered free while shackled and bonded to an institution, or to something or someone else. What does one do when they are caught between these crossroads? One chooses liberation. One chooses to break free.
Facing a life sentence for murder, along with a slew of other crimes, JoAnne Chesmiard (otherwise and here on referred to as Assata Shakur)with the assistance of fellow members of the Black Liberation Army, escaped from a Correctional facility in New Jersey in 1979 and would ultimately receive political asylum in Cuba in 1984. In an open letter to Pope John Paull II in 1988, she proclaimed that her escape was necessary: “not only because [she] was innocent of the charges against [her], but because [she] knew that in the racist legal system in the United States [she] would receive no justice.” However, as a Black woman, accused and wrongfully convicted of the murder of not only her associate Zayd Shakur, but the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, was she ever even capable of attaining justice? Nonetheless, where does one find justice in a life sentence?
Justice does not lie within the confines of the industrial complex. Shakur details how she was routinely beaten and assaulted immediately after she was taken into custody in her memoir. Sitting in her hospital bed with extensive injuries, she details the abuse she received at the hands of officers who relentlessly questioned her role in the murder of the Trooper and her involvement within the Black Liberation Army and Black Panther Party. Having had her medical status and her legal counsel initially unavailable to her, it was clear from the start that she was not going to receive a fair trial or even be given the benefit of the doubt.
Angela Davis, along with other Black revolutionaries speaks and writes about Shakur’s case to advocate for her release. Her charges are numerous: she has been indicted ten times, had seven different criminal trials, having received eight felonies in relation to the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, charged with two bank robberies, a kidnapping of a Brooklyn Heroin dealer, and the attempted murder of two police Queen officers. Davis writes that “by her 1977 conviction, she either had been acquitted or had charges dismissed in six other cases- upon the basis of which she had been declared a fugitive in the first place.”
It was impossible, without prejudice, to try Shakur’s case in Middlesex County where the crime occurred because of the potential for the jury to be compromised and impartial. The judge’s granting of a change in venue from Middlesex to Morris County New Jersey may have been the only justice Shakur was able to receive throughout this whole entire process. However, even with the change in venue, as she writes in her memoir, she was “tried by an all-white jury, without the pretext of impartiality, and then sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years. Is that justice?” In all fairness that is not.
Shakur was heavily guarded, not protected, throughout her trial and up until her eventual escape, in men’s prisons. Davis writes in Are Prisons Obsolete that “Shakur’s status as a Black political prisoner accused of killing a state trooper caused her to be singled out by the authorities for unusually cruel treatment.” It is important to note that Shakur was the first person ever in the state of New Jersey to be continually surveilled and confined to a men’s prison. Shakur was also notably held in solitary confinement for 21 months which caught the attention of human rights activists who believed that she was a political prisoner and that her solitary confinement was inhumane. This speaks to not only the issue of the status and discussion of incarcerated women in general but also to the fact that they believed Shakur posed a large enough threat assuming that she would not only be a danger to the other prisoners but the too herself as well. Shakur’s memoir thereby provided not only an insight into her own internal struggles but the struggles that other incarcerated women of color faced in comparison to incarcerated white women. This is evident in Shakur’s account of humiliating strip searches where guards routinely internally searched not only her but countless of the Black and Brown inmates. Davis documents how gendered punishment such as the ‘internal cavity search’ is an oppressive tactic prison utilizes to correct behaviors that they (those who run the prison industrial complex) believe women should adhere to. Incarcerated women were pressured to enter training programs that would reinforce the values of domesticity and motherhood which were designed to ultimately produce “better wives and mothers among middle-class white women effectively” and “skilled domestic servants among Black and poor women.”
Shakur and her defense attorneys have always pleaded her innocence. Although she was found to carry ammunition on her person and had knowledge that her associate Zayd Shakur had carried a weapon at all times, she still was innocent. Shakur has maintained that she had not fired a weapon at the time of the shootout and pointed to her injury to her shoulder as indicated in her medical records that she was unable of firing a weapon in the first place. Additionally, Shakur documents in her autobiography that when she was admitted into the hospital immediately after the shooting police conducted a neutron activation analysis that confirmed that she had not shot a weapon after gunpowder residue was not found on her fingers or hands. Regardless of these facts, the jury still voted to convict her on all eight counts and sentenced her to a lifetime sentence as well as 33 additional years.
Accused and convicted of a crime that she did not commit, I understand why Shakur believed it was necessary to escape. In her open letter to Pope John Paul II, she states that “justice for [herself] is not the issue [she] is addressing here; it is justice for my people that is at stake.” The New Jersey State police were relentless in their attacks on Shakur as they find her responsible for the murder of one of their own. I believe Shakur understands why that is so, however, she, like myself, cannot ignore how glaringly racist the police force was (and continues to be till this day). Prior to the shootout, Shakur and her associates were subjects of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program that illegally surveilled numerous Black Power, anti-Vietnam War activists, and other domestic political groups in the 1960s. Following her escape and being given political asylum in Cuba, Shakur has been outspoken about how she and many others were illegally targeted by the police on the basis of her being a member of the Black Liberation Army finding herself and others at the center of investigation and arrests. It is with that where I would believe Shakur would agree with Davis in saying “the notion of a prison industrial complex insists that the racialization of the prison populations is not an incidental feature.” The COINTELPRO program routinely targeted Shakur and other prominent Black activists at the time, many of whom Shakur could attest has been incarcerated since the mid-1960s and through the 1970s.
Furthermore, capitalism exploited and continues to exploit Black and Brown bodies for their own financial benefit. Bearing in mind these circumstances, I don’t think it is hard for anyone to comprehend why Shakur would have escaped these conditions. In her case, I believe her escape was indeed necessary for not only self-preservation but to expose the conditions of the prison and further advocate for the liberation of all Black people.
Although the FBI considers Shakur to be a domestic terrorist, a danger, a menace to society, to I and many others, she is le symbole de la resistance. Shakur is a revolutionary that does not and has not shuddered in the face of those responsible for her oppression. In a letter titled ‘To My People,’ written while she was in prison she states:
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.
It is with those guiding orders that I see that she has played a major role in inspiring my generations’ Black Lives Matter activists. It is also in her story where one, unfortunately, learns that liberation is considered by the public to be such a radical concept that one has to flee a country that is built on liberty to access it. However most importantly what her story teaches us is that in the battle between liberation and confinement one should choose to break free.
