June / July Monthly Action Alert Happy Birthday Assata Campaign

[JemChi]

Greetings Sistahs and Brothas, I attended the 1st 1967 Detroit Rebellion Lessons Learned conference April 20-21, 2007 and it was awesome!! The weekend opened up with the Assata Shakur Proclamation which was given by Baba Kwame Kenyatta, Detroit City Councilman and later that evening they showed Eyes of the Rainbow a film about Mama Assata.

I met some Sistahs who were apart of the Hands Off Assata Campaign and also the Happy Birthday Campaign which celebrates Mama Assata turning 60. They travel city to city collecting birthday greetings, inviting radio stations, press and others. Each person receives a bracelet and also they have happy birthday Assata shirts..nice. Folks can help by hosting a card signing event, sponsor a city, organize a group to come to an event, host a teach in or workshop (materials provided) and or donate to the Happy Birthday Campaign.

For more information, contact: hoacampaign@yahoo.com
866-244-4708
www.happybirthdayassata.org

www.happybirthdayassata.org

Uhuru

[JemChi]

Greetings Brothas and Sistahs, just want to share some photos of the Hands off Assata / Happy bday campaign. There are also pics of the first Conference for the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, which was apart of the HOA Campaign...enjoy..

Myself (2nd from the left) and Sistahs of the Assata Campaign


Uhuru

Assata Day Proclamation signed by Detroit City Council


Councilman Kwame Kenyatta


60th Mama Assata celebration t-shirt


Sistah Dara (Organizer for bday campaign)


Sistah Dara and Baba Rahman Ahman


Brotha Kefentse Bandele and me


Baba Ron Scott (longtime Warrior for police brutality), me, and Baba Ahman


Detroit Warriors


Sistah Tracye (organizer for bday campaign) and Mama Mable William (wife of Baba Robert Williams)


Brotha Kefentse, me, Sistah Tracye, and Sistah Dara


Wanted pic of Baba Robert Williams


Mama Angela Davis


Fallen Brotha Sam Napier and Mama Davis


Warrior Ancestors

[G.O.D.F.A.T.H.A.]

Thanks for sharing this with us. Uhuru for now.

[Jalili]

Beautiful event hopefully I will be able to attend one in the future

[Elisa Keisha]

great pics, great event! thank u so much for sharin

[RBG Street Scholar]

Bulletin From HANDS OFF ASSATA! @ Myspace:



Calling all Freedom Lovers!

Join us to Celebrate the Life and Freedom of:

Assata Shakur



Friday, June 8th
6 pm; Doors open at 5:30 pm

***NEW LOCATION:
Experimental Station
6100 S. Blackstone (Drive/walk down Dorchester, enter on Blackstone)
Chicago, IL 60637

Free and Open to the Public, donations accepted

Featuring:

Timuel Black
Rudy Lozano Jr.
e nina jay
Drum Divas
Guerrera Ensemble
**Special Feature: Cheryl Lynn Bruce, actress**
Assata’s Birthday Card Signing
Plus many more poets, more freedom fighters...
and DJ Sonny Daze to spin for the after party!

This is the LAST stop on the National Tour celebrating Assata’s upcoming 60th Birthday...
DON’T MISS THIS!

Let’s work to free all political prisoners and end the embargo against Cuba!

* * * * * *
www.happybirthdayassata.org
hoacampaign@yahoo.com; 866.244.4708

[BlackBodyGuard]

I'm sure the Queen will love this!!!!

[Jacuma]

Revolutionary Love to the Afrikans In The "D"

[Kefentse_Bandele]

This event was great for our revolutionary appetites but the number of young

SERIOUS activist is dwindling here in Detroit. It's to the point where u almost

have to sabatoge an event to get people involved. I believe Jefani and I were

the only Africans from Detroit to represent the community at this event.

What are we gonna do to get our youth involved without sellin' out the stuggle?

Uhuru Sasa

[RBG Street Scholar]

HOA

[Jalili]

Originally Posted by Kefentse_Bandele

This event was great for our revolutionary appetites but the number of young

SERIOUS activist is dwindling here in Detroit. It's to the point where u almost

have to sabatoge an event to get people involved. I believe Jefani and I were

the only Africans from Detroit to represent the community at this event.

What are we gonna do to get our youth involved without sellin' out the stuggle?

Uhuru Sasa

I hear what your saying where I stay it seems like no one is in to nothing that Young Jezzy or T.I. didn't say.

There is a million "dreadheads" but under the locks there seems to be no knowledge or desire to know whats going on.

It comes down to us and what we teach the few people that will listen because if we can reach a few and they have children they would hopefully pass it on to their kids.

We need to have events that many people will come to but then oce they get their we reach and teach the few that will listen. Have these type of events in multiple cities (if I would have known something like this was going on I'd be there ready to represent)

But like always we are fighting in a up hill battle so we just have to keep our heads up and feep fighting.

[Jacuma]

Asante sana to all, now lets continue to raise our People consciousness on the plight of our POW's

[Jacuma]

On July 16, 2007 our mother, sister, comrade and revolutionary s/hero turned 60 with a million dollar bounty on her head issued by the US Government. The "Happy Birthday Assata Campaign" kicked off a national tour featuring a traveling birthday card for Assata signed by thousands of activists, students, educators, journalists, artists, and freedom fighters nationwide. The tour featured Angela Davis, Mos Def, Sonia Sanchez and included a Detroit city council resolution honoring Assata.

The following is a recent statement from our mother, sister, comrade Assata Shakur:

First of all, let me say thank you, to the many people who have helped me to celebrate my 60th birthday. Thank you for your beautiful birthday cards and for your warm and eloquent messages. Thank you for your activism, your radiant energy and most of all for your love. I am sincerely grateful for your support and for your commitment to social justice, truth and freedom.

It is somehow surprising for me to realize that I have lived on this planet for 60 years. I never imagined that I would live this long. Some of those years were very hard years, other years were happier, but I have never forgotten who I am or where I came from. For as long as I can remember, I was acutely aware of my oppression and of the oppression of my people.
In some ways it was easier for my generation. Racism was blatant and obvious. The "Whites Only" signs let us know clearly, what we were up against. Not much has changed, but the system of lies and tricknology is much more sophisticated. Today young people have to be highly informed and acutely analytical, or they will be swept up into a whirlpool of lies and deception.

Freedom, justice and liberty are words that are thrown around a lot in the United States, but for most of us, it is empty rhetoric. With each and every passing day the country becomes more repressive, the police more viciously aggressive and the so-called constitutional guarantees obliterated by scare tactics. The so-called 'Conservatives' are only interested in conserving their privileges and power and helping their rich friends to become richer. Black 'Conservatives' serve their "masters" and are basically interested in grinning, shuffling and 'Uncle Tomming' all the way to the bank. This is the most corrupt administration that has ever existed. They have blatantly stolen not millions, but billions of dollars. They are actively seeking to preserve the old colonial order with a new face, where the oppressed people of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are expected to suffer happily, and sing praises to imperialism to the tune of the star spangled banner.

It is extreme arrogance to attack and occupy a country and expect its people to rejoice and lick your feet. Not even Roman Emperors were involved in such misguided conceit. The U.S. government has no right whatsoever, to force its undemocratic "democracy" on the rest of the world. I am 60 years old and I cannot remember a time when my people ever experienced true democracy. It is still the active policy of the U.S. government to use a wide variety of tactics to prevent poor people and people of color from voting. And when we do get to vote, our votes usually do not count. For the most part, there are no decent candidates to vote for, because the U.S, government is a "dollarocracy" where candidates have to beg and pander to the corporate rich in order to be elected.

I am 60 years old, and I have never in my life seen such widespread violence and cruelty. The U.S. government has more people in prison than any other country in the world, and it is now actively involved in creating prisons all over the world. Abu Gharib is only the tip of the iceberg. People all over the world are being imprisoned in secret prisons, with no formal charges being made against them. They are imprisoned under the most inhumane conditions, and detained for indeterminate periods of time, with no rights, no trials, and no justice whatsoever. In short, the leaders of this country are war criminals. All the U.S. government has to do is call them terrorists or extremists, enemy combatants or whatever and they can do anything they want to these people. I live in Cuba, and the Cuban people watch horrified, as the U.S. Army illegally occupies their land in Guantanamo and commits unspeakable acts of torture on their soil, in the name of "freedom." The U.S. government not only destroys the lives of people around the world, many mothers have cried because many of our young people have had their lives destroyed as well. I believe that this earth was meant for tenderness and not terror. The imperialist countries not only implement terrorist policies in the Third World, their actions also provoke terrorist activities and internal disputes between people. I believe that when Western governments learn to respect the sovereignty of Third world governments, and to offer solidarity and support rather that imperialist policies and exploitation, most of the world's problems will be close to being solved.

Inside the belly of the beast, conditions are also disastrous. Most of the victims of Katrina are still waiting for decent housing and public services. Schools and hospitals around the country are either deteriorating or closing down. Around the country social programs to help poor and working people are mostly a thing of the past. Our young people are being marginalized, criminalized and brutalized. It is often an act of courage to go to school, or simply drive down the street. The U.S. government's occupation of Afghanistan has produced a record increase of heroin production, and the "war on drugs" continues to be a war on poor people and people of color. The police brutality in our communities is not a simple matter of randomly "bad" cops. This government is more repressive than ever and more and more of a police state. When you have a trigger happy president, a trigger happy vice-president, a trigger happy office of homeland security, you are bound to have an increase of trigger happy police and many of our young people are bound to end up dead or imprisoned. The social policies of the United States have deteriorated from so-called benign neglect to malignant hostility or indifference.

The role the press and the media have played in all this has been increasingly malignant. There is no such thing as a free press in the United States. Journalists receive big salaries for telling "official" lies. The media both knowingly and naively became the vehicle for misinforming the people of the United States and convincing the people that it was "necessary" to go to war. Their "reporting" was based on outright lies. Now they "embedded" in the military, continuing to misinform the people, and distort the truth.

I am 60 years old and I am proud to be one of those people who stood up against the ruthless, evil, imperialist policies of the U.S. government. In my lifetime I have opposed the war against the Vietnamese people, the illegal contras – war in Nicaragua, the illegal coup in Chile, the invasion of Haiti and of Grenada, and every other illegal, immoral and genocidal war the U.S. government has ever waged. I have never been a criminal and I never will be one. I am 60 years old and in spite of government repression, in spite of the media's lies and distortions, in spite of the U.S, government's COINTELPRO Program to criminalize and demonize political opponents, I feel proud to count myself as someone who believes in peace and believes in freedom. I am proud to have been a member of the Black Panther Party although the U.S. government continues try to distort history and continues to persecute ex-members of the Black Panther Party. Just recently, the U.S. government has indicted and arrested 8 ex-Black Panthers in a case that was dismissed 30 years ago. The case was dismissed some 30 years ago when it became obvious that the most vicious forms of extreme torture were used to extract false confessions from some of the so-called defendants.

I am 60 years and it is doubtful that I will ever live to see my people free of oppression and repression. But I am totally convinced that our collective dream of freedom will some day be realized. I sincerely implore young people to develop their minds, to develop their skills, to expand their states of consciousness, and sharpen their abilities to analyze reality. Those Africans who conspired with the European slave trade to sell us into slavery were seduced by trinkets. I hope and pray that our young people will not continue to fall into the same traps. I have always loved my people and always loved our culture. The culture of my people has always been rich and always been filled with the seeds of resistance. I hope that young people hold fast to that tradition. I sincerely hope that all young people will have the courage and the wisdom to hold on tight to their humanity and their historical mission. Most people in the Americas, were either indigenous people whose ancestors were victims of genocide, or brought to this hemisphere as slaves, or came to this continent seeking freedom. I believe that it is our collective duty to make freedom a reality. I truly believe that it is possible to end oppression and repression on this planet. If we all see ourselves as citizens of this planet, and citizens of the world, it will be easier for us to save this planet and recognize the human rights of human beings around the world.

Much love, Much Solidarity,
May we all make freedom a reality,
Assata Shakur
July 2007