I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots… - Assata Shakur

A member of one group told me that if i was really concerned about the liberation of Black people, i should quit school and get a job n a factory, that if i wanted to get rid of the system i would have to work at the factory and organize the workers. When i asked him why he wasn't working in a factory and organizing the workers, he told me that he was staying in school in order to organize the students. I told him i was working to organize the students too and that i felt perfectly certain that the workers could organize themselves without any college student doing it for them.

Some of these groups would come up with abstract intellectual theories, totally devoid of practical application, and swear they had the answers to the problems of the world. They attacked the Vietnamese for participating in the Paris peace talks, claiming that by negotiating the Viet Cong were selling out to the U.S. I think they got insulted when i asked them how a group of flabby white boys who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag had the nerve to think they could tell the Viet Cong how to run their show.

And i had turned into a crochet fiend. My poor mother was the unfortunate recipient of my early “creations.” Brave, devoted person that she was, she thought they were pure genius.

Angela Davis was running for her life. They had hooked her up with Jonathan Jackson, charged her with kidnapping and murder at the kourthouse, even though she was nowhere on the set.