Black August: Our resistance is essential

By Gloria Verdieu

Black August is a month to commemorate and tell the history of those African men and women brutalized, locked up, and killed by the U.S. criminal justice system. Those courageous freedom fighters sacrificed their livelihood in the ongoing struggle for liberation and a better life for all humanity.

Hello friends!

I’m incredibly excited for this week’s recommendation as we start Black August, a month dedicated to highlighting the history of revolutionary Black political prisoners and their comrades in and outside the US. I’ll be highlighting a crucial radical Black woman’s experience today: “Assata: An Autobiography” by Assata Olugbala Shakur.

While Assata needs no introduction, here’s a quick biography before delving into the text. Assata Shakur, born JoAnne Deborah Byron on July 16, 1947, is a New Afrikan revolutionary and former member of the Black Liberation Army and Black Panther Party. She grew up between New York and North Carolina, experiencing the worst of Jim Crow, and was radicalized by the Vietnam War in college. After joining the BLA for a while, she was present in a shootout on a New Jersey Turnpike that left a state trooper dead in 1973. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but she escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum and lives in to this day.

There are too many aspects of Assata's storied history to highlight here, all of which deserve serious reflection. I'll start by noting her incredible bravery and fortitude throughout her harrowing encounters with white supremacy, patriarchal violence, and settler capitalism in and out of prison. As her name shows, she is one who thankfully struggles for the people.

Her position as a socialist revolutionary is important to highlight. She was a part of a militant black freedom struggle rooted in communist thought which sought to upend global imperialism and colonialism to free all peoples, especially black women as some of the most exploited Third World Women (seeing New Afrika as a colony). She also criticized white chauvinist elements of the Left which sadly still exist.

I also want to mention her solidarity with Lolita Lebrón, an incredibly important Puerto Rican nationalist, in prison when no one else would. She knew that decolonization for Puerto Rico was a part of a global struggle for liberation.