Ideology and teachings

Revision as of 05:38, 12 December 2005

ASSATA'S IDEOLOGY AND TEACHINGS

"i am caught up in the music of struggle and i can't stop dancing." -Assata Shakur

In Her Own Words

Assata places much importance on the role of analysis and ideology in accompanying revolutionary action.

* "There were sisters and brothers who had been so victimized by amerika that they were willing to fight to the death against their oppressors. But we were to find out quickly that courage and dedication were not enough. To win any struggle for liberation, you have to have the way as well as the will, an overall ideology and strategy that stem from an analysis of history and present conditions."

("Assata: An Autobiography." This is the source for all references below unless otherwise noted.)

Freedom could only be won through sustained struggle that would have to emerge organically in response to oppression. Assata's courtroom defense of the Black Liberation Army takes this perspective.

* "The idea of a Black Liberation Army emerged from conditions in Black communities...The idea came about because Black people are not free or equal in this country. Because ninety percent of the men and women in this country's prisons are Black and Third World. Because ten-year old children are shot down in our streets...Where there is oppression, there will be resistance. The BLA is part of that resistance movement. The BLA stands for freedom and justice for all people."

Her ideology flows from her total commitment to freedom and self-determination, and her development of these ideas in the context of race, class, gender, and land.

* "It is necessary to come together...and to define ourselves and our struggle. Black self-determination is a basic right, and if we do not have the right to determine our destinies, then who does?"

Assata links each of these dimensions of oppression - and each dimension of liberation - to all the others. But she insists that every oppressed group needs space for its own struggles, in particular black women.

* "We can never be liberated in a country where the institutions that control our lives are oppressive. We can never be free...while the amerikan government and amerikan capitalism remain intact. But it is imperative to our struggle that we build a strong black women's movement. It is imperative that we, as black women, talk about the experiences that shaped us; that we assess our strengths and weaknesses and define our own history." ("Women in Prison")

Another powerful analysis of the connections between oppressions is made in Assata's discussion of the intersection of race and class, of white supremacy and capitalism:

* "As far as i was concerned, it didn't take too much brains to figure out that Black people are oppressed because of class as well as race, because we are poor and because we are Black. It would burn me up every time somebody talked about Black people climbing the ladder of success. Any time you're talking about a ladder, you're talking about a top and a bottom...As long as you've got a system with a top and a bottom, Black people are always going to wind up at the bottom."

With this understanding of how closely connected are the systems of control in America, Assata has no room in her insurgent ideology for the federal courts, the major political parties, or the corporate media:

* "All you have to do is ask yourselves, who controls the government? And who are the victims of that control?...It was plain to me that we couldn't look to the kourts for freedom and justice anymore than we could expect to gain our liberation by participating in the u.s. political system, and it was pure fantasy to think we could gain them by begging."

Given how seldom the nation listens to the voices of the oppressed, Assata's point is not an appeal to those in power, but rather the development of an independent infrastructure of media and education.

* "Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech and very little freedom of the press...We need to create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds." "Letter from Cuba"

Assata emphasizes the necessity of independent organization for Black revolutionaries within the left. Though they may share common enemies with the white left, they have to come from a position of strength and self-organization, not subordination.

* "i damn sure was not ready to accept [white people] as leaders of the Black Liberation struggle...I felt it was necessary for Black people to come together to organize our own structures and our own revolutionary political party. As long as much of the white left saw their role as organizing, educating, recruiting, and directing Black revolutionaries, i could not see how any real friendship could occur."

Her ideology is very much grounded in human relations. Her unwavering support for anti-colonial struggles comes not just from an abstract concept but from comprehension of the people struggling:

* "Once you understand something about the history of a people, their heroes, their hardships and their sacrifices, it's easier to struggle with them...For a lot of people in this country, people who live in other places have no faces. And this is the way the u.s. government wants it to be...so amerikans will not protest when they send in the marines to wipe them out."

Assata embraced armed struggle over nonviolent action, believing that the black power movement could win what the civil rights movement could not. But she did not fetishize violence, only recognized its uses.

* "Once you study and really get a good understanding of the way the system in the United States works, then you see, without a doubt, that the civil rights movement never had a chance of succeeding. White people benefit from the oppression of Black people...But the way the tide of racism is rising in this country, Black people better be more scared to not have a gun than to have one."

Yet Assata prioritizes revolutionary education first, proceeding from her understanding that the school system - let alone the prison system where so many more now find themselves - would never teach the subjects that revolutionaries needed to learn. For this reason, Assata asks them to teach each other.

* "The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created them. Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them...I am convinced that a systematic program for political education, ranging from the simplest to the highest level, is imperative for any successful organization or movement for Black liberation in this country."