OH YES, SANYIKA SHAKUR IS A POLITICAL PRISONER

Friday is the day SCISSION is devoted to the political prisoners of America.


Sanyika Shakur in a New Afrikan Communist currently held in Pelican Bay's Security Housing Unit.  There are those who will argue that Shakur is just a thug, a gangster, and shouldn't even be listed here.  Fifty years ago those folks would have made similar arguments about Malcolm X.


Now, Shakur is not Malcolm.  I am not making that argument but he is a man who has been at war with America for a long, long time...and America has been at war with him even longer.


Shakur was born in Los Angeles in 1963.  He  joined the 83 Gangster Crips at age 11. He earned the nickname "Monster" at 13 by brutally beating a robbery victim. By 1988, he had been in and out of jail several times, for robbery, assault and attempted murder. During a stint in solitary confinement, he penned his best selling book,  Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (1993).


So you ask, "Is this a political prisoner?"


The blog Gangs in a biography of Shakur has a section entitled "Political Prisoner."  Here is what the blog's author writes:

The Los Angeles police arrested Sanyika for abuse and grand theft auto in January 1991. he had beaten up a stubborn drug dealer who sold his merchandise in Sanyika’s street corner. The auto theft was him simply confiscating the stubborn drug dealers van when he didn’t stop.

Because of his past, Sanyika could look forward to a seventeen year sentence. When he finally declared himself guilty, he got seven years.

Back in prison he was placed in solitary confinement during an indefinite period of time. There he sat for more than three years because of his political opinions and comments he had made (meaning, he was a political prisoner).

In prison he wrote his Autobiography, got a book deal and a contract to make a movie about his life. When he was released on parole the book was published and translated to different languages (the Swedish translation was one of the first together with the Spanish). Unfortunately Sanyika experienced what many other revolutionaries in the US have done and do, become to busy and missed a meeting with his parole officer. This automatically meant he would be sent back to prison.

But Sanyika had no plans of going back to prison, so he simply fled. Since then he was found by the police who chased him. But he didn’t give up, instead he ran, literally over the police when they came to arrest him. This made him one of FBI:s most wanted “criminals”. At the same time the book became a bestseller and he wrote letters to the editor column of The Source Magazine, was interviewed by Rap Pages.

 In a 2010 interview Shakur said, 

i was initially of course a criminal. i belonged to a street organization. i grew up in South Central and i was captured in 1984 for a crime committed against other New Afrikan people in which a gun battle was the result and some people were wounded. i was put in the hole at San Quentin for 28 months and it was there that i was turned onto the new New Afrikan Independence Movement in general, and the Spear and Shield Collective in particular. i pledged my allegiance then to the independence of the nation, to the New Afrikan ideology, the theory and philosophy of Spear and Shield Collective, and i continued to transform through study and struggle my mentality from criminality to revolutionary nationalism. And i struggled in concert with the brothers who were there, who were conscious, who felt a need to, and the obligation to, raise up cats like myself. So i became a conscious New African citizen in '86, 21 years after the death of Malcolm X, through an invitation by revolutionary brothers who felt that i had the potential to represent the nation, the organization and brothers and sisters at large. So i became a New African nationalist from the heart, because that's where a revolution begins, from the mind, from the people, and i have been struggling ever since, consciously.

He added,

 The whole issue of political prisoners and prisoners of war strikes terror in the beast, in the state, in the empire and the imperialists. Comrade George Jackson was a common criminal, a thief on the street, and was captured at the age of 18 and transformed his criminal mentality over an 11 year period to be a revolutionary, to be a representative of working class people. He eventually became a Black Panther and a prisoner of war as a consequence of the struggle that was going on in the prisons at that particular time and at large. Comrade brother Fred Hampton, another brother who was a Panther, who was also murdered, assassinated much like Comrade George Jackson, as a response to the seriousness of what they represented. Fred himself was put in prison because they said he stole ice cream and distributed it among children, $70 worth of ice cream. He was sentenced to three years in prison and in fact he was murdered while he was out on bail. But this is the same thing We're talking about.

Brother Malcolm X went to prison a common criminal and transformed his mentality while he was in prison and came out a new man of whom we know today as El Hajj Malik el Shabazz or Malcolm X. Prisoners have the capacity, the ability, like anyone else, to transform themselves to become productive, conscious revolutionaries who, by any means necessary, will struggle to the death like any other person. And this is what the state fears.

So to sum it up and to end it all, for this particular segment, We must support our prisoners of war, our political prisoners and all conscious people who are involved in our movement, in our organization, in our nation. Otherwise the beast will step in with surrogate programs and turn people against us. With that i just want to say Rebuild! Free the Land! Free all New Afrikan Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War! 

The following is from the San Francisco Bay View.  It was written by Sanyika Shakur.

Who are you?

February 15, 2012

by Sanyika Shakur, s/n Kody Scott

We are the ones who refused to be captured in Afrika without a fight, who staged daring raids on enemy supply lines and brought our nationals back to freedom. We are the ones who made longer, sharper spears, thicker shields and turned our backs on collaborating kings.

We are the ones who, on the high seas enroute to the “New World,” brought new forms of combat to bear on our oppressors. We are the ones who couldn’t be broken, who kept our languages in circulation, our spirits alive and our minds free of foreign gods and hostile demons. We are those who, on a move, became Maroons, who settled the Geechi Islands, fought alongside the indigenous nations, until we, too, became indigenous.

We are the ones who couldn’t be broken, who kept our languages in circulation, our spirits alive and our minds free of foreign gods and hostile demons.

We are the ones who, in the midst of the first Two Thousand Seasons (a thousand dry, a thousand wet), birthed new ideas of national existence and national continuity.

We are the ones that whispered, “Strike now!” to Nat Turner, who plotted and planned with Denmark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser. We are of the same blood as General Harriet Tubman.

We are the ones who didn’t need to be freed by the 13th Amendment because we had never been anyone’s slave. We are the same ones who laughingly rejected the 14th Amendment to make us citizens of the oppressor nation. And, when the so-called Negroes fell for the farce of “Reconstruction,” we had long been organized and waiting for the Klan.

When bourgeois Negroes formed the NAACP, we formed the African Blood Brotherhood and Universal Negro Improvement Association. When the White Citizens Councils attacked the Civil Rights Movement, we struck back as the Deacons for Defense. We are the ones who left the right wing reactionary Nation of Islam with Malcolm X.

When the White Citizens Councils attacked the Civil Rights Movement, we struck back as the Deacons for Defense.

We are the ones who organized the ghettos, from California to Philly, as the Revolutionary Action Movement. We were in Monroe with Robert and Mable Williams. We sat at the feet of Queen Mother Moore, Ella Baker and Dara Abubakari. We are the ones who adopted the attacking Black Panther as our symbol, those who stared down pigs, created Black Student Unions and fed free breakfast to children. We sharpened the contradiction.

We are the ones who, realizing the neo-colonial nature of the term “Negro,” changed our national identity to Black. When that term, too, had been co-opted by opportunists and counter revolutionaries, we are the ones who converged on Detroit 500 deep and brought into existence the New Afrikan national identity. We are the ones who said Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina is the national territory.

We are the ones who breathed life into the Black Liberation Army, who proceeded to combat our historical enemies from coast to coast and all areas in between. We were on the roof in New Orleans with Mark Essex, in South Central L.A. with Geronimo ji Jaga, in El-Malik at the Capitol with the RNA-II. We are the ones who were in Chicago with Santa Bear and Spurgeon Jake Winters; in Attica with L.D. and Sam Melville. We were in Soledad with George, Fleeta and John; in the Marin County Courthouse with Jonathan, William, James and Ruchell. We are the ones who were with George, Hugo and Bato in San Quentin.

We were in Soledad with George, Fleeta and John; in the Marin County Courthouse with Jonathan, William, James and Ruchell. We are the ones who were with George, Hugo and Bato in San Quentin.

We are the ones from the George L. Jackson Assault Squad of the BLA in San Francisco. We are the ones in both Olugbala and Amistad Collectives of the BLA. And that was us in the Five Percenter-BLA units, too. We invaded the tombs to free our comrades and went underwater to assault Riker’s Island as well. We are the ones who made Nicky Barnes run to the Italian mob for protection.

We are the ones who were in support of the United Freedom Front, the May 19th Communists Organization, the George Jackson Brigade, the Sam Melville-Jonathan Jackson Unit, and the Prairie Fire/John Brown Anti-Klan Committee. We are the ones who introduced comrade-sista Assata Shakur to Fidel and Raul. We hooked Robert Williams up with Mao and Chou En Lai.

We are the ones who defended the people in a raging gun battle against pigs at Aretha Franklin’s father’s church in Detroit. We are the ones who brought you Kuwasi Balagoon, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Nehanda Abioudun, Fulani Sunni Ali, Safiya Bhukari, Yassmyn Fula, Afeni Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Maliki Shakur Latine, Sekou Odinga, Jalil Muntaqim, Herman Bell and all the other stalwart standard bearers of liberation.

We are the ones who speak truth to power, who practice our theories, who are the messages we bring. We are the ones in the Provisional Government Republic of New Afrika, Peoples Center Council, The Peoples Revolutionary Leadership Council, New Afrikan Peoples Organization, New Afrikan Panthers, New Afrikan Scouts, Spear and Shield Collective, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, August Third Collective, New Afrikan Security Forces, Revolutionary Armed Task Force, New Afrikan Peoples Liberation Army and New Afrikan Women for Self-Determination. And we’ll be in many more to come.

We are the ones who support Puerto Rican Independence, the Mexicano/Chicano Movement, the American Indian Movement and all other revolutionary struggles for freedom against capitalist imperialism. We are those who stand firm against patriarchy, heterosexualism and liberalism. We are those that study Butch Lee, J. Sakai, Owusu, Yaki Yakubu, Chokwe Lumumba, Makungu Akinyele, Che, Cabral, Fanon and Dr. John Henrik Clarke. We are the ones who know that “revolution without women ain’t happenin’”!

We are the ones the enemy calls, “criminals,” “terrorists,” “gangs,” “militants,” “leftists,” “separatists,” “radicals,” “feminists,” “worst of the worst,” “America’s Most Wanted” and enemy combatants. Whatever.

We call ourselves Humans. We are New Afrikan revolutionaries. Those who weren’t afraid.

Who are you?

Free the Land!

Send our brother some love and light: Sanyika Shakur s/n Kody Scott, D-07829, PBSP-SHU C-7-112, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532.