Call to stand by Commander Assata from Pan African News Service

[RWalker]

Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 22:59:30 -0400
From: Pan-African News Wire <ac6123@wayne.edu>
Subject: Assata Shakur Still Under Fire From the US Government

A Call to Action: Update on the Status of Assata Shakur

US Government Places $1 Million Bounty on Freedom Fighter,
Author

The situation with Mama Assata Shakur has reached a very
critical point. This is not the time to sit back and be
silent. It is time to ACT, ACT, ACT and DO, DO, DO! There is
much that can, should and must be done. If WE do not do it it
will not get done. As 'one' strategy, i would like to know
who has time/resources or does not have time/resources AND is
willing to assist me in printing, forwarding and or passing
out the flyers i've attached to increase awareness amongst
Our people and counter the racist propaganda (i.e. lies)
saturating the puppet media. Please be specific with your
responses and i thank you in advance. If you are outside the
state of illinois and have suggestions or plan to use any of
these flyers please check in and explain how. WE all WE got!

Uhuru means freedom,
Kwadwo Fodwo Gyase

FYI:

The Hands Off Assata Campaign is a coming together of
organizations and individuals who are outraged by the
heightened attempts by the federal government, congress of
the united states and the state of new jersey to illegally
force thru kidnapping a return of Assata Shakur from Cuba to
the plantation United States.

We know that Assata Shakur is a bona fide political exile
living in the island nation of Cuba. She was persecuted for
her political beliefs and tortured while in prison. We
support the international human rights and Geneva
conventions, which enabled her to seek and secure political
asylum in Cuba, and we support the right of the Cuban people
to grant it to her. We are shocked by the actions of new
jersey and the department of justice, who has issued a $1
million dollar bounty on head of Assata Shakur. Doing such a
thing is tantamount to a call to "soldiers of fortune" to
kidnap and kill Ms. Shakur and for them to engage in
international espionage against the sovereign nation of Cuba.

We are shocked by the activities of the United States House
of Representatives, which in September 1998 passed House
Resolution 254, calling on the Cuban Government to extradite
Assata Shakur. Given that there is no binding extradition
treaty between Cuba and the United States, such a request is
outside the context of international law.

In addition, we call on the Congress of the United States to
hold public hearings on the past and current impact of FBI's
Counter Intelligence Program known as COINTELPRO. Given that
Assata Shakur was not the only one politically persecuted for
her political beliefs, we demand that a full airing take
place on that program. And finally are calling on the United
States end its hostility towards the tiny nation of Cuba by
normalizing relations with the Island and ending the US
economic blockade.

Assata Shakur: Sister, Woman, Exile, Mother, Grandmother

ASSATA SHAKUR is an African woman. She is a social justice
activist, a poet, a mother and a grandmother. She has lived
in Cuba since the early 1980s. During the heady days of the
1960s and 1970s, she found herself a victim of both racial
profiling and political targeting. After being spotted on the
New Jersey turnpike on May 2, 1973, (DWB) driving while
Black, it was discovered that she and her two companions were
known members of the Black Panther Party and the Black
Liberation Army.

Like Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X, Leonard Peltier and
many members of the Civil Rights and American Indian
Movements, Assata and her companions had been watched,
their phones tapped, their families monitored, their
organizations infiltrated, and widespread disinformation
campaigns waged against them. They were like many activists
of the day targets of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program
(COINTELPRO). In fact, Assata was wanted, not for anything
she had actually done, but for a variety of crimes that
government and state officials were trying to pin on her.

This was common in the 1970s: discredit the voice of
activists by painting them as criminals, trumping up
indictments, tying them up in courts and if possible jailing
them. In the mid 1970s, The Church Committee of the Senate
Select Committee to Study Government Operations and the
Domestic Intelligence Subcommittee, headed by Senator Walter
Mondale, provided incontrovertible documentation of a
government sponsored conspiracy against the civil and human
rights of all sorts of political activists.

THUS ON THAT DAY IN MAY, Assata was a marked woman. And after
police stopped them, a shoot out occurred. When the smoke
cleared one police officer, and one of Assata's companions,
Zayd Shakur lay dead. Assata, shot in the back and dragged
from the car, lay wounded. Only belatedly taken to the
hospital, Assata was then chained to her bed, tortured and
questioned while injured. In fact, she never received
adequate medical attention even though she had a broken
clavicle and a paralyzed arm. Nonetheless, she was quickly
jailed, prosecuted and incarcerated over the next few years
for the series of trumped up cases.

Interestingly, in five separate trials, and with majority
white juries, charges were dismissed because of lack of
evidence or she was acquitted of all charges ranging from
bank robbery to murder. As the manager of one bank said at
trial - she is just not the one who robbed my bank. Only in
the final trial in 1977, where she was charged with the
Turnpike killings, was she found guilty. This even though
forensic evidence taken that day showed that she had not
fired a weapon. She was sentenced to life + 33 years in
prison. In 1979, and after nearly six years behind bars, she
escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New
Jersey and some time later emerged in Cuba where she applied
for and received political asylum.

Since being in Cuba, she has continued her college education,
published an autobiography, and writes on global issues
facing women, youth, and people of color.

DURING THE 1990S, rightist politicians and police bodies -
this time in conjunction with conservative members of the
Cuban-American community - reinvigorated their attempts to
pursue Assata Shakur. They did this even though Assata has
not tried to re-enter the United States and is, according to
international law, a political exile who should be left
alone. Linking "fear of crime" rhetoric with anti-Cuban
sentiment, New Jersey governor Christine Todd-Whitman issued
a bounty which was $100,000, on the head of Assata Shakur.

She even went as far as to announce her bounty on Radio
Marti, the US government radio station which beams anti-
Castro propaganda into the Caribbean. To do such a thing put
Assata in danger because it is tantamount to encouraging any
opportunists to kidnap and/or kill her for pay. In addition,
in 1998, Congressmen Franks and Menendez from New Jersey and
Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart of Florida introduced and got
passed - House Resolution 254 - which calls for the Cuban
government to extradite Assata Shakur as a condition to
normalizing US-Cuba relations. Interestingly, while Assata
and Cuba are portrayed as "criminal", a terrorist bombing
campaign - thought to be sponsored by ultra-rightist forces
in the United States - has been launched against Cuba,
killing and injuring Cuban citizens and foreign tourists
alike.

Elder Steering Committee (in formation): Adjoa Aiyetoro, Baye
Adofo, Vera Beaty, Lisa Brock, Kedar Coleman, Otis
Cunningham, Beryl Fitzpatrick, Cheryl Harris, Robin Hayes,
Rosemari Mealy, Kamaria Ngozi, Ahmed Obefemi, Barbara Ransby,
Walter Turner, Gail Walker

Warrior Steering Committee (in formation)

Endorsers (in formation): Black Radical Congress, Global
Exchange, Jericho, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, National
Conference of Black Lawyers, IfCO/Pastors for Peace,
Venceremos Brigade, Women's International League for Peace
and Freedom, Prisoners Of Conscience Committee, New Black
Pather Party, The Talking Drum Collective, FTPMovement, The
Pan-African News Wire

What can you do?

1) Add your organization's name to our list of endorsers/Take
petitions. [We will have them up online very shortly.]

2) Contact your Congressperson. Demand that he/she rescind
House Resolution #254 and ask them to support congressional
hearings on COINTELPRO. You can use a Congressional email
service to look up yuour rep's email:
http://www.house.gov/writerep

3) Download and print the soon to be released "Hands Off
Assata Shakur" Flyer

4) Plan a showing of the film Eyes of the Rainbow (1997).
This film portrays the life and current struggles of Assata
Shakur. Contact HOA for this: hoa@afrocubaweb.com

5) Visit http://www.assatashakur.org for current HOA-Campaign
Info.

6) Organize around The Hands Off Assata Shakur Campaign Rally
and teach In June 4, 2005 hosted by you in your respective
cities and towns

7) Send contributions: FTP Movement, P.O. Box 1720, Stone
Mountain, Ga. 30086

8) Any questions, contact us at www.assatashakur.org using
the contact us form.

This Campaign is a on going process, be patient with us as we
Agitate, Educate, Organize And Mobilize.. more information
coming...

Special thanks to http://www.afrocubaweb.com for cutting this
path for us to continue.


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