Assata Shakur
We are pregnant with freedom.Collection: Pregnant
There is a down side to everything if you don't understand what the consequences of what you are saying in your music you could possibly end up getting yourself killed or hurting other people because of your carelessness.Collection: Hurt
Being in Cuba has allowed me to live in a society that is not at war with itself. There is a sense of community. It's a given in Cuba that, if you fall down, the person next to you is going to help you get up.Collection: War
Like all other Black revolutionaries, Amerika is trying to lynch me.Collection: Black
I've always been a student of different ways of looking at the world, different religions. That's been part of my survival mechanism, and also part of my curiosity as a person.Collection: Survival
In my opinion while lynchings were quite possibly the most heinous crimes ever witnessed in American history, they helped in bringing people together for a sole purpose. It was because of these lynchings that armed self-resistance was created. If white people knew black people were capable of fighting back then there was less of a chance that violence actually would break out.Collection: Fighting
People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.Collection: People
Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory.Collection: Practice
How lovely it is to live with a sense of community. To live where you can drop in the street and a million people will come and help you.Collection: People
As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were 'baaaaaad.' The Party was more than bad; it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them.Collection: Party
Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism?Collection: Sacrifice
The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody.Collection: Justice
I have been a political activist most of my life and many groups have attempted to label me as a criminal because of my outspoken beliefs. I am not a criminal and I have never been one.Collection: Political
I think that people who want to change this planet have to seriously understand that as human beings we have to work to be good.Collection: Thinking
I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color.Collection: Government
I believe in life. And I have seen the death paradeCollection: Believe
The abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen.Collection: Sick
The US government's most acute fear is that other countries are going to follow the Cuban example. They want everybody to know that if you follow this example we will attack you in every way that we can.Collection: Country
People ask me if I miss the States. I miss African Americans. But not the U.S. government or all the things they put me through. I miss African American culture, our speech, dance and cooking.Collection: Government
Racism had grown out of slavery and exploitation and was very hard to eradicate quickly and completely.Collection: Racism
The real reason Cuba poses a threat has nothing to do with my being here or anyone else being here. It's because Cuba is an example of a country that is actively fighting against imperialist domination and insists on its own right to self-determination and sovereignty.Collection: Country
I believe in self-defense and self-determination for Africans and other oppressed people in America.Collection: Determination
I stay connected in my head. I'm spiritually and psychologically connected to African-Americans. They are my people, and that will never change.Collection: People
If you're deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing but a punkCollection: Dumb
I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.Collection: Spiritual
People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.Collection: People
The U. S. is becoming more hostile to Black people and other people of color. Racism is running rampant and xenophobia is on the riseCollection: Running
The methods of peaceful protests are not capable of being effective, because in reality most people pay little attention to things that are not abrasive.Collection: Reality
In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only ones who can free us are ourselves.Collection: Running
I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we're the terrorists. It just doesn't make sense.Collection: Wall
When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.Collection: Fighting
Hip Hop can be a very effective way to reach young people and teach them about current political and social issues.Collection: Issues
To have one's race brutally treated for so many years, even after the end of slavery and segregation, people are going to rise up with violence to attain what they believe is rightfully theirs. The most important thing at this time is raising the awareness of everyone; people need to be educated everywhere about all aspects of racism and how it affects people still today.Collection: Believe
People think that in order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice.Collection: Simple
My energy just couldn’t stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to dance.Collection: Struggle
Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more.Collection: Warrior
We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being activeCollection: Beautiful
While big corporations make huge, tax-free profits, taxes for the everyday working person skyrocket. While politicians take free trips around the world, those same politicians cut back food stamps for the poor. While politicians increase their salaries, millions of people are being laid off. I do not understand a government so willing to spend millions of dollars on arms, to explore outer space, even the planet Jupiter, and at the same time close down day care centers and fire stations.Collection: Cutting
Some people spell "good" with two o's and some people spell it with one... and there shouldn't be a contradiction between that.Collection: Two
I think that the greatest betrayal that a revolutionary can participate in is to become like the people you are struggling against. To become like your persecutors. I think that is a betrayal and a sin.Collection: Betrayal
All you have to do is ask yourselves, who controls the government? And who are the victims of that control?Collection: Government
The government recognized immediately that Rap music has enormous revolutionary potential and politicians immediately came together to end it.Collection: Rap
That was one of the big problems in the [Black Panther] Party. Criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged, and the little that was given often wasn’t taken seriously. Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.Collection: Mistake
A woman’s place is in the struggle.Collection: Struggle
In my case, spirituality has been important to me because at periods in my life there's been very little else that I've had going. I've actually needed to call on, to feel the forces of good in this universe to be able to survive.Collection: Important
I think that one of the problems that exists in the United States and in many places in the world is that people don't believe that they can make a difference. So a lot of times we're defeated before we even start. We've become consumers of a world vision, of Kentucky Fried Chicken, of McDonalds.Collection: Believe
The people who are running this planet are insane - they are literally destroying it. I don't know where they think they're gonna drink water, breathe air.Collection: Running
A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.Collection: Men
My experience in the United States was living in a society that was very much at war with itself, that was very alienated. People felt not part of a community, but like isolated units that were afraid of interaction, of contact, that were lonely.Collection: Lonely