Too many people in the U.S. support death and destruction without being aware of it. They indirectly support the killing our people without ever havi… - Assata Shakur

They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless others. We did not murder, by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-old Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us murderers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World people. Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen percent of the total amerikkkan population, at least sixty percent of murder victims are Black. For every pig that is killed in the so-called line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the police.

Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting against a common enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about who has the right line.

Although i respected the work and political positions of many groups on the left, i felt it was necessary for Black people to come together and organize our own structures and our own politcal party...

I felt, and still feel, that it is necessary for Black revolutionaries to come together, analyze our history, our present condition, and to define ourselves and our struggle.

I was surprised to learn that there were all different types of capitalist countries and different types of communist countries. I had heard “communist bloc” and “behind the iron curtain” so much in the media, that i had naturally formed the impression that these countries were all the same. Although they are all socialist, East Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, and North Korea are as different as night and day. All of them have different histories, different cultures, and different ways of applying the socialist theory, although they have the same economic and similar political systems. It has never ceased to amaze me how so many people can be tricked into hating people who have never done them any harm. You simply mention the word “communist” and a lot of these red, white, and blue fools are ready to kill.