So the FBI is increasing their bounty for Assata Shakur , once known as Joanne Chesimard to $2 million and putting her the Most Wanted Terrorist list.. Making her the first female in history to be put on such a list and basically making her be on par with the likes of Osama Bin Laden..This is beyond outrageous.
How long have some in this government been fiending for Assata? 30..35 years? Can you imagine if the FBI was this diligent about going after Wall Street Bankers who defrauded millions of people and tanked the economy or if they put $2 million dollar bounties out for war criminals who live right here in the US who purposely misled us into War where over a million lives were lost.. Yes, we are looking at you George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice etc..
If were gonna talk about Assata and say she’s a ‘cop killer‘, let’s be completely honest and put such accusations into perspective.. Everyone wants to forget that in the 60s and 70s the FBI and police declared War on the Black community and organizations that formed in the community to end oppression. The police and FBI went all out to destroy Black leaders and these organizations with undaunted impunity. The reason why you had BPP (Black Panther Party), SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and BLA (Black Liberation Army) was because they responded to police terrorism. They were tired of seeing the police come into our communities and take them over like an ‘occupying army’, if I may quote Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale. These groups formed because they were tired of seeing police and FBI with white supremacist attitudes, assassinating, brutalizing or jailing Panthers and members of other Black Power organizations left and right for little or no reason..They were tired of seeing government forces foster the killing of Black leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. So if we’re gonna talk about Assata, let’s talk the police and FBI murders of unarmed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark? Let’s talk about the murder of Lil Bobby Hutton. Can we say COINTEL-PRO?
Let’s talk about Cointel-pro which was a subversive counter-intelligent war tactic used by FBI head J Edgar Hoover to ‘neutralize‘ The Chicano Movement, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Anti-War/ Free Speech Student Movement, American Indian Movement, Civil Rights Movement and of course the Black Power Movements..
Can we talk about how the FBI would send incendiary letters to different organizations in an attempt to pit Black leaders and organizations against one another with the hope of creating rifts that would lead to bloodshed? Isn’t that what happened between the Panthers and US? Did we not hear the tape of the FBI questioning Malcolm X and trying to get him to turn against the Nation of Islam? Can we talk about campaigns used by the FBI to character assassinate important leaders. No one in the Black community was off-limits from these ruthless tactics from the FBI Not Dr Martin Luther king, Not Malcolm X, not Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.. No one..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8CSQopxEf8
Let’s talk about how this insidious Cointel-pro operation resulted in leaders being hauled off to jail on trumped-up charges. Many to this day still sit languishing for 25, 30 and even 40 years. Let’s talk about political prisoners like Herman Bell, Mutulu Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Russell Maroon Shoaltz, Mumia Abu Jamal, the Angola 3, now 2, who are not only locked up, but going on their second and third decades in solitary confinement.
Let’s talk about the vicious, tortuous persecution of the government to go after and press new charges on former Panthers like the SF 8, 30 years after the fact. let’s talk about how these men all in their 70s had to undergo a trial with former police and FBI agents who once physically tortured them 30 years ago, being the officers to serve them new warrants. The SF 8 were all found innocent again, but it should be reminded, what they endured back in the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s was around the time that Assata Shakur and others like her hit the scene ready to push back on the overwhelming oppression. Let’s talk about the fact that wanna the goals of the FBI’s Cointel-Pro program was to prevent the rise of a charismatic Black leader and instead find someone who was safe and acceptable to lead the masses.
$2 Million dollars to get Assata? Where’s the $2 million dollar bounty to go after those in government who partook in that Cointel-pro war? Perhaps those individuals should be hunted down 50 years after the fact the way we still hunt down Nazi War criminals? After all, entire communities were destroyed by this..
Do you honestly think folks like Assata woke up one day and said they wanted to go smash on brutalizing organizations like the police and FBI who out gunned them and outnumbered them? I don’t think so..
Were people like Assata down make the sacrifice to defend themselves and their community from all the firebombings and other atrocities that were routinely occurring throughout the south by KKK while police turned a blind eye or even helped? Absolutely
Can we talk about entire Black Towns destroyed by mobs of angry whites who saw our humanity as a threat.. places like Black Wall Street in Tulsa or Rosewood in Florida? Often times the police were right alongside when these horrors occurred.
Let’s talk about the countless number of unarmed Black folks murdered at alarming rates by these out of control police forces. It happened back in the 60s and 70s just as its happening now. We should not forget that as a matter of policy many police in California in in other northern cities around the US, were recruited from the south with the directive to keep Black folks in a state of fear and in check..It was a policy of containment. Let’s get a 2 million dollar bounty for those sadistic officers and the people behind those policies.
Bottom line don’t talk about any ‘wrong doings’ by Assata without underscoring state sponsored repression and the all out military and terrorist attacks on Black organizations and Black people at that time.. We can start by talking about all the people gunned down by cops during the Newark Riots, Detroit Riots or Watts Rebellion. We can talk about folks like the late Geronimo Pratt (Jijaga) being framed and made to sit in jail for 30 years … There’s a long, long list.. Simply put, There ain’t no innocent people wearing those badge, so don’t be fooled..Is Asaata a terrorist?? Hell naw, she was fighting terrorists..
Oh by the way.. Thank you president Obama, all this bounty stuff is happening on your watch within a division of government you control..It’s a damn shame..
On another note, I gotta wonder how Common is feeling.. It was just two weeks ago he kicked some nice lyrics about his meeting with Assata when he visited Cuba. He also said we need to get behind Obama who thus far is allowing this to go down..I wonder if he still has love for Obama in the wake of this..
Today is May Day and many will be taking to the streets to express a variety of concerns. First and foremost around the world is worker’s rights…This is important.. All one has to do is look at the recent fires and building collapse in Bangladesh where over a 1000 people have died to understand that corporate tyranny is the order of the day. One must remember all those workers who died were making goods for pennies a day under harsh slave-like conditions for Western companies including Walmart and H&M to name a few, who all refused to improve working conditions in spite being warned that disaster was right around the corner..
Finally today on May Day there will be many who are seeking better conditions for those who are immigrants and undocumented. Some will say ask does this have to do with labor issues? It has everything to do with them.. To the degree that corporations are able to exploit people for cheaper labor affects us all both in wages and overall conditions.. One best be happy that we see folks out in the streets by the thousands in both here at home in immigrant communities as well as in so-called Third World countries demanding better treatment, living wages and the same rights to be global citizens as the corporations..
It has been reported that I signed a new 
Rapper/producer/musician 
Last year Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the biggest name in the private prison industry, contacted 48 states offering to buy their prisons. One stipulation of eligibility for the deal was particularly bizarre: “an assurance by the agency partner that the agency has sufficient inmate population to maintain a
Ninety percent of what Americans read, watch and listen to is controlled by only six media companies
According to public analysis from Bloomberg, the largest holder in Corrections Corporation of America is Vanguard Group Incorporated. Interestingly enough, Vanguard also holds considerable stake in the media giants determining this country’s culture. In fact, Vanguard is the third largest holder in both Viacom and Time Warner. Vanguard is also the third largest holder in the GEO Group, whose correctional, detention and community reentry services boast 101 facilities, approximately 73,000 beds and 18,000 employees. Second nationally only to Corrections Corporation of America, GEO’s facilities are located not only in the United States but in the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.
Add to this well-documented statistics proving that the so-called “war on drugs” has been waged almost entirely on low-income communities of color, where up until just two years ago, cocaine sold in crack form fetched sentences 100 times as lengthy as the exact same amount of cocaine sold in powdered form, which is much more common in cocaine arrests in affluent communities. (In July 2010 the oddly named Fair Sentencing Act was adopted, which, rather than reducing the crack/powder disparity from 100-to-1 to 1-to-1, reduced it to 18-to-1, which is still grossly unfair.) This is not to suggest that the crack/powder disparity represents the extent of the racism rampant within the incarceration industry. The 
Today is Earth Day and in celebration, let’s put a major middle finger up to Monsanto... If you don’t know about them, get familiar, this is the most gangsta of the big agribusiness companies. They have worldwide reach and their presence is felt by many in the most tyrannical ways..
As we celebrate Public Enemy being inducted into the Hall of Fame tonight.. We wanted to remind people of some of their work.. What they have on deck is impressive.. These were some of the songs I really dug.. Enjoy..