Kilombo Academic & Cultural Institute
Letter from our Sistas 4 Assata Founder
On behalf of SOS Productions, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement & Kilombo Cultural and Academic Institute, thank you for donating your talents to Sistas 4 Assata & Nehanda 2011. As you know the fundraiser is Wed. Nov. 23rd at the 5 Spot. 100% of the profits will go to Kilombo Cultural and Academic Institute & the families of Assata Shakur & Nehanda Abiodun. These two sistas have done alot for our people & I want all involved in this fundraiser/tribute to know about them. Thank you again & I look forward to a great show. IRAS Levi.
On behalf of SOS Productions, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement & Kilombo Cultural and Academic Institute, thank you for donating your talents to Sistas 4 Assata & Nehanda 2011. As you know the fundraiser is Wed. Nov. 23rd at the 5 Spot. 100% of the profits will go to Kilombo Cultural and Academic Institute & the families of Assata Shakur & Nehanda Abiodun. These two sistas have done alot for our people & I want all involved in this fundraiser/tribute to know about them. Thank you again & I look forward to a great show. IRAS Levi.
Wed. Nov 23rd @ 5 Spot in Little 5 Points. 1123 Euclid Ave. Doors open at 8pm
Purchase $10 tickets from a Kilombo Parent or Staff and use before/after 10pm.
Assata: Exile since 1979 On May 2 1973, Black Panther activist Assata Shakur (fsn) JoAnne Chesimard, was pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot twice and then charged with murder of a police officer. Assata spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba. Assata: In her own words My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Shakur ("the thankful one"), and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government's policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program. because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it "greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.
Nehanda Abiodun, former member of the Black Liberation Army, continues her activism, fighting for the rights of political prisoners and prisoners of war while in exile (Cuba). Since 1981 she'd been living underground, pursued across the United States by the FBI on charges of armed robbery, murder, racketeering, and federal conspiracy in connection with a string of armored-car holdups in the New York City area. She was wanted as well on charges connected to the 1979 New Jersey jailbreak of Black Liberation Army figurehead Assata Shakur, who had been convicted of charges stemming from the murder of a police officer in 1973. (Shakur also was granted political asylum by Cuba and lives there today, though she recently has gone into hiding.) The FBI alleges that Abiodun was part of a group that came into being in late 1978 and originally called itself simply �the Family.� According to court records and statements from captured members who became informers, the Family's ranks consisted of some two dozen people, both blacks and whites, most of whom had cultivated their ideological fervor as members of groups such as the Sixties-era Black Panther Party and its offshoot, the Black Liberation Army; the Republic of New Afrika; and the Weather Underground.
"In 1982 a federal warrant was issued for my arrest for violating the Rico Racketeering and Conspiracy laws. I choose to go underground for political reasons and while living clandestine I learned how important it is to struggle from a position of love and not hate. It was the love of humanity, freedom and justice that were the dictates that led me to where I was then and the love given from comrades that kept me mentally and spiritually healthy when I thought that I would die from a broken heart because of being separated from my family. And be assured that it is that same kind of love that has given me the resolve to continue daily in our quest for freedom. I recognize how blessed I am to have so many beautiful people in my life that genuinely care for me, individuals who are willing to make the sacrifices needed to carry on the traditions of principled struggle." Nehanda Abiodun
"In 1982 a federal warrant was issued for my arrest for violating the Rico Racketeering and Conspiracy laws. I choose to go underground for political reasons and while living clandestine I learned how important it is to struggle from a position of love and not hate. It was the love of humanity, freedom and justice that were the dictates that led me to where I was then and the love given from comrades that kept me mentally and spiritually healthy when I thought that I would die from a broken heart because of being separated from my family. And be assured that it is that same kind of love that has given me the resolve to continue daily in our quest for freedom. I recognize how blessed I am to have so many beautiful people in my life that genuinely care for me, individuals who are willing to make the sacrifices needed to carry on the traditions of principled struggle." Nehanda Abiodun
