In 1996, AOUON co-founder and LSPC Executive Director Emeritus Dorsey Nunn interviewed Assata Shakur in Cuba. Read the transcript (lightly edited for brevity and clarity) below or watch the interview.
Dorsey: So my first question would be, what political ideology do you embrace at this time?
Assata: Well that’s a wide question but essentially I’m an African woman who believes in Freedom and justice: social justice, political justice, economic justice for all people. I believe that oppressed people, wherever they are, have the right to self-determination. I believe that socialism is an integral part of building social justice on this planet. I believe that the priorities of this planet have to be completely changed and instead of profits, instead of policies that destroy the Earth, that destroy the water, that destroy human beings, I believe in a policy that protects people, that makes people live in a community: a world community. That’s what I believe. That’s my basic political commitment at this moment.
Dorsey: How did you arrive at this fight? Not physically, but what brought you to that conclusion and what brought you to Cuba?
Assata: Well what brought me to that conclusion was in the process of struggling. I’ve also understood that part of struggling is learning, is studying, and my own experiences in the ‘60s led me to understand that it wasn’t just enough to ask for a piece of the pie, that the whole liberation of oppressed people in the United States had to do not with climbing up some ladder to success not for asking to be just like Rockefeller or just like Dupont or just like Ford, because that would only continue the oppression and exploitation of oppressed people in the United States and specifically African people born and raised in the United States so that I begin to understand that more and more, the condition of my people, my history, was very much connected with other oppressed people. I began to see that the same foot that was on the necks of the Vietnamese people that was on the necks of all oppressed people on the planet was the same foot that was on my neck, and so I began to understand that imperialism has to go. It is a poison that is killing people all over this world. I became more and more active, and as I became more and more active the government became more and more repressive. In the 1960s, the Black Liberation movement was the number one target of Cointelpro and the black pan party specifically was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI and the CIA, and all of the repressive forces in the United States government. I was one of those young people who was targeted by COINTELPRO because I was an activist, because I was opposed to the United States government’s policies, because I was opposed to racism, and so I ultimately had to go underground. I was ultimately captured based on being charged with false charges. I was captured, I was shot with my hand in the air, I was shot in the back. I was tortured, beaten. I spent 2 years in solitary confinement in men’s prisons because of my political beliefs. I spent 6 and a half years in prison in the United States and what I learned about prison in the United States that it’s a new form of plantations. It’s a new form of slavery. The United States is becoming more and more a police state in which prisons are nothing more than concentration camps. It’s a euphemism to call what exists now in the United States “prisons.” They are concentration camps to contain people to keep them from being productive, to keep them from having a say in their lives, and one third of young Black men right now are either in prison or under the so-called jurisdiction of the so-called criminal justice system. I was one of those people, and lucky enough I was part of a movement. My movement helped to liberate me. So in 1979 after being convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years plus 30 days I was able to escape in 1979, and in 1984 I was able to come to Cuba and the Cuban people and the Cuban government welcome me with open arms.
Dorsey: What can we say to the community so they won’t continue to abandon their young to a system that is corrupt?
Assata: I mean what saved me from probably being either a puppet a robot for the for that system or being a drug addict or just being destroyed by that system was becoming politically involved and studying. I will always say and say to anybody anywhere any time any place that being in our struggle has done more for me than I can ever do for the struggle of our people. I believe that anybody who wants to be sane and healthy on this planet has to understand that you cannot live at the bottom of a garbage can and be happy. In order to be happy, you have to start to remove the garbage and that means becoming conscious, that means becoming aware, and that means studying and struggling and loving and becoming people who love people instead of being people who are alienated from other people, who are being used by the government. We have to learn a new way of living. We have to build communities: build a sense of community, build a sense of freedom; our own space where we can sit in peace and love. I think all of that is a process. If you don’t grow, then you’re going backwards, so I think that you start out little by little. You work from wherever you are to do your bit to the liberation of oppressed people and to make this world somewhere that is livable.
Dorsey: Now you know what I’m searching for is how important it was for you to receive support in that 2-year period that you was in jail
Assata: I think that I was in prison 6 and a half years, and support made all the difference in the world. I think that as communities, we have to understand that our position cannot be the same as the US government’s position. What they’re saying is that these people are in prison: Forget them, throw them out, they’re worthless lowlife human beings. We’re saying that these are human beings that have been victimized. They might have problems, they might be unconscious, and it is our job as a community to reach out to them to say that we understand that you are a human being. We give you support, we give you love, we give you what we have: the knowledge that we have to share. I think that our communities have to be more and more involved in helping, embracing, educating, and providing support for those sisters and brothers who are in prison and preparing conditions so that they can come out and be useful not only to our communities but useful to our struggle for liberation. I think that it’s important for those sisters and brothers who are in prison to remember: we are human beings. Never let them dehumanize you. In prison you can be a father, you can be a mother, you can work to educate your children, you can work to educate yourself. Do not let anybody try to turn you into an animal. Those on the inside must understand that they are in there to grow. The United States government or the prisons cannot rehabilitate anybody, cannot educate anybody: they are criminals. How is a criminal going to rehabilitate somebody? So I think that we have got to educate ourselves and prepare ourselves to fight a repressive system and oppressive system and a system that smashes the human being to the point where people don’t even remember how to take a walk, how to say good morning, how to smile at each other. We have to take this planet back from the beasts that are controlling it right now.
I escaped from prison in 1979. Since 1979 the population of women in prison has tripled. It boggles my mind, and it should boggle everybody’s mind who understands mathematics. More and more, you’re dealing with poor women. You’re dealing with poor mothers, you’re dealing with African, Asian, Latin American, and Indigenous women who are in those prisons are being dehumanized, just snatched up off the street and given all kinds of time. I think that it is important for women to be activists in dealing with women in prison and freeing women in prison and freeing women who are political prisoners because there are quite a few women who are political prisoners. I also think that the women’s movement needs to deal with those women and to have outreach programs, support programs for those women who are in prison to help them unite with their their children and with their families. Because what is happening is there are a whole lot of children out there that have no mother, no father, that are being just thrown out into the street. So I say that if you call yourself a woman that identifies with the liberation of of women then identify with the most oppressed exploited women in the United States.
I mean, I’ll be real with you. You know one of the most I mean just raging pains that I had was being separated from my child. Was being forbidden to to hold her, to touch her, to breastfeed her. The condition of women in prison in the United States is unbearable. I mean I have seen women who have given birth and they have not been able to even see their children. Social workers can tell women if their children can visit them or not. I was in prisons where it was forbidden for children to visit the Middlesex County house where I was. It was it was pathetic it tore your insides out you see all these little children outside trying to scream and yell at their mothers. They couldn’t see their mothers. It was the most frustrating thing, the most heartbreaking thing that I’ve ever seen. I think that anybody who has any human sensibility who has any commitment to women needs to get involved in in liberating women in prison in providing support education job training etc for those sisters who are in prison.
There’s an effort to destroy our communities, to completely knock out any sense of community that we have. So drugs, crack cocaine is being pumped up into our communities and we do not have airplanes or yachts to bring that stuff. It is being bought into our communities and people are getting rich from it and the same people that are getting rich exploiting people all over the world are getting rich bringing drugs into the United States and selling a kind of mentality that tells people you cannot function on this planet so the only thing, the only option you have, is to go somewhere and drug out. Get high, spend your whole life in a death Cloud. So I think that we have to more and more understand that it’s not the the number of of women in prison is not an isolated phenomena. It is part and parcel of a policy to tell people: we don’t care if you have health care, we don’t care if you have education, we don’t care if you have access to Social Services, we don’t care if you have any safety net. All we care about is will you buy our sneakers? Will you buy our dope? Will you buy our junk? Will you buy our chains? Gold chains, silver chains, human chains. Whatever kind of chains they want to put it on you. And so I say that we have got to get rid of that consumer mentality. We have got to get rid of that mentality of being high and wanting to be high. We’ve got to stop letting people put it in our communities. I look in in magazines. I don’t care what magazine, it is if it’s four people of color they got cigarette ads in there they got billboards with Joe Camel and every other body trying to get us to to have to to to get the mentality where we want to be hooked on something, where we can’t live without something and something that is detrimental to our health. So what we need to do is get rid of the million liquor stores in our community, get rid of the liquor ads, the cigarette ads.
Dorsey: Do you hear the call on the International Community against the United un States use of slave labor because I’m not hearing it inside the country
Assata: Well I mean it’s very hard to get the message out all over the world because the United States controls the media. And so we have to really work to let people know that in the United States, prisons are being turned into plantations. It’s a new kind of plantation with a new kind of slave labor but in my book slave labor is slave labor. And so I think that we have to work to get that information out to people all over the world because even though a lot of people understand that the United States government is an imperialist country, they do not understand how repressive, how racist, and how reactionary the United States is inside of the United States.
Dorsey: Within the United States I feel like the left have somehow not developed a consistent theory surrounding the incarceration of human beings. I mean they would save whales, they will jump over and save a tree, but when it come to saving my ass it’s a whole different question.
Assata: You know when you say “the left,” I think if you don’t deal with the issue of prison today, you’re being left out of the left. Essentially, that’s just like being in Nazi Germany and not dealing with the fact that there are all these people in concentration camps. There are concentration camps in the United States right now, and I believe that it is immoral. I don’t care who you are or what your political beliefs are; whether you consider yourself left, whether you consider yourself progressive, whether you consider yourself part of the liberation movement of oppressed people, whatever your political beliefs are, if they are humanist political beliefs then you have to deal with the questions of people in prison and you have to deal with the question of crime. You have to deal with the question of justice. But if we do not do it, then the right wing just runs with it and calls for “Law and Order,” and Law and Order to them means just locking people up. It doesn’t mean eliminating the conditions that cause people to be imprisoned, it means eliminating the people. I think that young people need to find ways they can get together, I think they need to understand that they need to struggle right where they are. Deal with the issues that are stabbing them in the side, in the back, in the head, and deal from there and then build a movement. Whether it’s at your job, whether it’s on your block, whether it’s in the prison you are, whether it’s in wherever you find yourself at, you start dealing with the getting the foot off of your neck. I think that young people, whether you’re in college or whether you’re in prison, you need to do what you need to do to make the next century belong to the people. Cuz this century has been 100 years more of slavery.
Dorsey: There’s nothing free about it.
Assata: So I think that we need to be serious about building a movement for amnesty right now for those political prisoners and prisoners of war. And I don’t think yesterday it is too soon.
I just want to say, sisters I love you. I’m so proud, go out and multiply yourselves. Go out and get another sister, go out and talk to anybody and everybody that you can to raise people’s consciousness and to build a huge movement not only to free political prisoners but to free all of our people from the prison that is the United States of America.
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