Honoring Assata Shakur: “It Is Our Duty To Fight For Our Freedom, It Is Our Duty To Win”

Photos: YouTube Screenshots|Wikimedia Commons Black August hails the successes and sacrifices of Black Freedom Fighters. During this month, we must commemorate Assata Shakur, a revolutionary soldier and former political prisoner who relentlessly committed herself to the fight for Black Liberation. This Black August, it is our first with her as an ancestor, and we must honor her by taking responsibility for the inheritance of her fight. Revolution didn’t happen in her lifetime, as she lived and died in exile in Cuba, waiting. Now, in the face of genocide, antiBlack warfare and violence, and facsist state terror, we must do it for her. Assata Olugbala Skakur was a Black Liberation freedom fighter, New Afrikan revolutionary soldier, poet, comrade, mother, and grandmother. She was rooted in a deep, active love for her people, and she remained uncompromising and unflinching in her demand for complete freedom, knowing that it would not be granted by negotiations with the enemy, but through struggle. She never lost sight of her steadfastness, her strength. Growing up in Harlem and Wilmington, North Carolina, Assata participated in student movements, the anti-war movement, and the Black Liberation struggle in the United States. In her early twenties, she joined the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1970, where she worked with members to launch a medical clinic, led political education courses, and supported the free breakfast program. She left the party in 1971 to join the Black Liberation Army, which was determined to use armed struggle for Black Liberation. When J. Edgar Hoover declared the Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country,” COINTELPRO intensified, and dozens of Panthers and liberation fighters were imprisoned, many of whom are left to rot in cages today. “There is and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples to struggle for Black freedom and to prepare for the future. We must defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our liberation by any means necessary.”-Assata, “To My People,” recorded from her jail cell in 1973 In New Jersey in 1973, Assata, Sundiata Acoli, and Zayd Malik Shakur were ambushed by state troopers, resulting in the murder of Zayd and the wounding of Assata, whose hands were in the air when she was shot. She was captured and then spent months confined in hospitals, later describing the torture, harassment, and constant surveillance she faced. In 1977, she was convicted of killing a cop, armed robbery, and other “crimes,” and given a life sentence in a trial that she called a “legal lynching.” Acoli remained a political prisoner until 2022, when he was released at age 85, after serving 49 years.Throughout her life, she refused empire, refused to compromise her humanity. She maintained that she was wrongfully convicted for a crime she did not commit, and in 1979, she escaped with help from some of her comrades before arriving in Cuba, where she lived in exile until her passing on September 25, 2025.“Let me emphasize that justice for me is not the issue I am addressing here; it is justice for my people that is at stake. When my people receive justice, I am sure that I will receive it, too … I ask nothing for myself. I only ask you to examine the social reality of the United States and to speak out against the human rights violations that are taking place.” -Assata in an open letter to Pope John Paul II, during his 1998 trip to Cuba.Assata showed us how to be a loving person in revolution. Her love for her people was disciplined and practiced—a daily practice steeped in sacrifice and collective responsibility. One didn’t have to know Assata personally to feel her love for them. Though her flesh was hunted across state lines, caged, put on trial after trial, exiled from her home and people, she never gave in to the seduction of submission. In Cuba, she raised her daughter, wrote her autobiography, and stood in solidarity with freedom movements around the world, connecting the fight for liberation for Black people in the U.S. to that of Black people across the diaspora, who are impacted by the same oppressive forces of imperialism, colonization, and capitalism. I retreat to Assata’s prose as much as I return to her lessons, as it is precise and confident, but not devoid of fear. “I am still scared, but i am just as angry and evil as i am scared,” she wrote in her autobiography Assata. I fight because Assata fought. I speak, even if I am trembling. I love and love and love, letting the feeling carry me into action beyond performance, into a disciplined survival strategy.“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.”Assata taught us about discipline and duty. If we want to wi