Assata: An Autobiography (Assata Shakur)

Assata: An Autobiography
Assata: An Autobiography
Author	Assata Shakur
Written in	1987
Publisher	Lawrence Hill Books
First published	1987
Type	Book
ISBN	1-55652-074-3

Forward by Angela Davis

In the 1970s, as Assata Shakur awaited trial on charges of being an accomplice to murder, I participated in a benefit at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to raise funds for her legal defense. At the time, Assata was being held nearby in the Middlesex County Correctional Facility for Men. Lennox Hinds, a member of the Rutgers faculty, had invited me to be one of the featured speakers at the benefit. Lennox was a leader of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and represented Assata in a federal lawsuit contesting the appalling conditions of her confinement in the New Jersey prison. He had previously worked on my case, and we had both served in the leadership of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression since its founding in 1973. Attending the benefit were Rutgers faculty members, a sizable number of black professionals, and local activists who were the mainstay of numerous campaigns to free the political prisoners of that era.

It was an upbeat event, imbued with the optimism of the times. My own recent acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy stood as a dramatic example of how we could successfully challenge the government's offenses against radical anti-racist movements. However powerful the forces arrayed against Assata-the FBI's counterintelligence program, and the New York and New Jersey police organizations-no one could have persuaded us then that we were not capable of building a triumphant movement for Assata's freedom. This benefit was one small step in that direction, and, as we left the event, we were quite satisfied with the three thousand dollars we raised that afternoon.

By then, every radical activist had learned to assume that our public meetings were subject to routine police and/or FBI surveillance. Yet we were entirely unprepared for what seemed like a reenactment of the 1973 events for which Assata faced charges of murder. Assata, Zayd Shakur, and Sundiata Acoli had been stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by state troopers who claimed that they had a faulty tail light. The encounter left Assata critically wounded and two others-state trooper Werner Forster and Assata's friend Zayd Shakur-dead. As a group of us left the benefit and drove down a country road towards Lennox Hinds's house, where we were having a small after-party, we were quite startled when local police signaled for our car to stop. My friend Charlene Mitchell, at that time the executive director of the Alliance, was told to step out of the car, along with the driver and the other person riding with us. As the policemen taunted us by clearly placing their hands on their holstered guns, I was instructed to stay in the otherwise empty automobile. Lennox, whose car we had been following, immediately doubled back and approached the police with his attorney's identification card in hand, explaining that he was our lawyer. This caused the officers to become more visibly nervous, including one who pulled a riot gun from his police car and proceeded to aim at Lennox from close range. All of us froze. We knew only too well that any innocent gesture could be construed as a reach for a weapon and that this confrontation could easily become a recapitulation of the events that had left Assata with a murder charge.

The spurious explanation given by police for the ambush was a warrant for my arrest (later proven false). Though they allowed us to leave, it was only shortly after we arrived at Lennox's house that we discovered they had already called for reinforcements and literally surrounded the house. With one of the first black woman judged in New Jersey and several other prominent community figures at the house, we were nonetheless compelled to call on higher powers, in the form of Congressman John Conyers in Washington. We figured a request for a federal escort out of the state of New Jersey might put some pressure on local police. These were the kinds of measures-and friends-needed in such a volatile time.

I relate this incident in detail because it may help readers of Assata's autobiography not only to focus on the political role of the police during the 1970s but also to better understand important historical aspects of the routine racial profiling associated with current police practices. Such a historical perspective is especially important today when brazen expressions of structural racism-such as the pattern of mass imprisonment to which communities of color are subjugated-are rendered invisible by the prevailing moral panic over crime. And if this were not enough, we find that at the same time such remedies as affirmative action programs and such safety nets as social welfare are being consistently disestablished.

When Richard Nixon raised the slogan of “law and order” in the 1970s, it was used in part to discredit the black liberation movement and to justify the deployment of police, courts, and prisons against key figures in this and other radical movements of that era. Today, the ironic coupling of a declining crime rate and the consolidation of a prison industrial complex that makes increased rates of incarceration its economic necessity has facilitated the imprisonment of more than two million people in the United States. In this ideological context, political prisoners like Assata Shakur, Mumbai Abu-Jamal, and Leonard Peltier are represented in popular discourse as criminals who deserve either to be executed or to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

During the late 1990s, the racist hysteria directed against Assata was resuscitated when the New Jersey State Police reputedly prevailed upon Pope John Paul II to use the occasion of his first trip to Cuba to pressure Fidel Castro to extradite Assata. As if this were not enough, New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman offered a $50,000 reward-later doubled-for Assata's return, and congress passed a bill calling on the government of Cuba to initiate extradition procedures.

In an open letter to the Pope, Assata asks a question that should concern all of us: “Why, I wonder, do I warrant such attention? What do I represent that is such a threat?” We would all do well to seriously ponder her questions. Why, indeed, was she constructed by the government and mass media as a consummate enemy in the 1970s, only to reemerge at the turn of the century as a singular target of governors, Congress, and the Fraternal Order of Police? What has she been made to represent? What ideological work has this representation performed?

In the 1970s, Assata Shakur's image was deployed on official FBI wanted posters and in the popular media as visual evidence of the terrorist motivations of the black liberation movement. Black militants were assumed to be enemies of the state and were associated with communist challenges to capitalist democracy. The protracted search for Assata, during which she was demonized in ways that are now unimaginable, served to further justify the imprisonment of vast numbers of political activists, many of whom remain locked up today.

Twenty-five years later, the retailoring of the image of Assata as an enemy is even more damaging, omitting the original political context and representing her as a common criminal-a bank robbery and a murderer. This lifting of her image out of the past for very contemporary purposes serves to justify the consolidation of a vast prison industrial complex, which Assata herself has described as “... not only a mechanism to convert public tax money into profits for private corporations [but also] an essential element of modern neoliberal capitalism.” In her view, this new formation serves two purposes: “one, to neutralize and contain huge segments of potentially rebellious sectors of the population, and two, to sustain a system of super-exploitation, where mainly black and Latino captives are imprisoned in white rural, overseer communities.”

As the above quotation reveals, Assata remains very much engaged with contemporary radical politics specific to the United States, even though she has been unable to visit the country since her escape from prison and her decision to settle in Cuba many years ago. As you read her extraordinary autobiography, you will discover a woman who has nothing in common with the hostile representations that refuse to expire. I urge you to reflect on what it must mean for her to have been unable to attend her mother's funeral or to visit with her new grandchild. As you follow her life story, you will discover a compassionate human being with an unswerving commitment to justice that travels easily across racial and ethnic lines, in and out of prison and across oceans and time. She speaks to all of us, and especially to those of us who are sequestered in a growing global network of prisons and jails. At a time when optimism has receded from political vocabulary, she offers invaluable gifts-inspiration and hope. Her words remind us, as Walter Benjamin once observed, that it is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

Angela Y. Davis

University of California, Santa Cruz

March 2000

Forward by Lennox S. Hinds

The publication of this extraordinary autobiography provides a rare opportunity to see behind the carefully orchestrated distortions of fact concerning the life and motivations of Assata Shakur. Writing simply and vividly about the racism that permeated her childhood and young womanhood-those ordinary experiences of Black people in the United States that have driven millions to despair and many to rebellion-Assata leads us all to understand more about the society we live in. Clearly, it was the racism riddling every aspect of the early life of this sensitive, intellectually gifted, and life-passionate child, as she struggled to establish her own identity, that led her to seek solutions to the catastrophic impact of racism and economic oppression on all people of color in the United States. It is racist America that provides the context for the making of this Black revolutionary.

People struggling for self-determination are a phenomenon of the twentieth century. These struggles are frequently understood and supported by people of goodwill in the United States when the struggles take place in South Africa, El Salvador, the Philippines, or Palestinian refugee camps. Assata Shakur's own words, as she writes about her struggles for growth and meaning in the streets of New York and in the South as a child and as a woman, present as clear a case for self-determination and development in the United States as do the lives of her brothers and sisters throughout the world. For although her book is intensely personal, it is also absolutely political. She writes about her experiences not as a historical icon seeking to crystallize the "Official Life" but as one whose experiences searching for change can provide a key to her own life and to all those others, who, as she so vividly puts it, "have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy," and for whom "a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down."

As a lawyer, teacher, and student of history, I know that while Assata's story may be unique in its energy, creativity, and passion for life and principle, it is typical of the ways the United States has responded historically to individuals that the government sees as political threats to domestic tranquility.

Since Assata touches only lightly on the events that led to her being a target for police fire on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973 and on the flimsy evidence on which she was finally convicted in 1977, I will attempt to sketch some of the details that contributed to the fearsome image generated by the state and perpetrated in the media.

I first met Assata Shakur in 1973, as she lay in the hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while state, local, and federal police attempted to question her. As the national director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, an organization that has been called on to defend political activists in the Black community since its founding in 1968, I was no stranger to the carefully orchestrated disinformation campaigns that federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies had engaged in against Black activists under the leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Prior to meeting Assata, we had represented Angela Davis, had initiated inquiries into the 1969 police executions of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and the 1971 police attack and indictments of the leadership of the Republic of New Afrika, and had defended many other Black men and women who had been identified as targets of the FBI. The FBI's systematic surveillance of and attacks on Black groups and individuals were orchestrated by its counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO), which was directed specifically against what the FBI termed "Black nationalist hate groups." COINTELPRO's first targets were Martin Luther King and thousands of less prominent civil rights activists. Elsewhere, I have written extensively about COINTELPRO and the criminal disruption and destruction of Black leaders and groups that were the specific goals of this government program. The pertinent and unimpeachable documents collected in the Church committee report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities were also reprinted in that book. In addition, the findings of the Domestic Intelligence Subcommittee, headed by Senator Walter Mondale, which were published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1976, provided incontrovertible documentation of this government-sponsored conspiracy against the civil and human rights of all sorts of political activists and, most particularly, Black people. It is important to remember that Assata Shakur's decision to join the Black Panthers occurred soon after J. Edgar Hoover ordered the forty-one FBI offices to intensify their efforts "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize" Black nationalist organizations and their leaders. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Nation of Islam, and above all, the Black Panthers were specifically targeted, as were, among many Blacks, Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, Elijah Muhammad, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, and, as we shall see, Assata Shakur, also known as JoAnne Chesimard.

As is now clear, a carefully orchestrated intelligence and counterintelligence campaign was conducted by the FBI in cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies designed to criminalize, defame, harass, and intimidate Assata beginning at least in 1971. By the time Assata Shakur was shot and captured on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973, she was wanted for a number of most serious crimes.

Massive prejudicial publicity had been generated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York City Police Department to create an image of dangerousness and to convict her in every aspect of the mass media before any trial. Orders had been issued to apprehend her, dead or alive. She spells out the dread and terror when she writes:

Everywhere i went it seemed like i would turn around to find two detectives following behind me. I would look out my window and there, in the middle of Harlem, in front of my house, would be two white men sitting and reading the newspaper. I was scared to death to talk in my own house.

Assata could no longer go home. She was on the FBI's Most Wanted list, accused of being armed, of being a bank robber and, subsequently, of being a kidnapper and murderer. A photograph alleged to be Assata Shakur taken at the scene of a bank robbery in August 1971 appeared in a full-page advertisement in the New York Daily News on July 10, 1972. It was a duplicate of a poster placed in every bank in the city and state of New York and post offices and subway stations. This advertisement announcing "Wanted for Bank Robbery, $10,000 Reward" was printed above four photographs, one of them the picture of a woman allegedly taken during the 1971 bank robbery. Beneath the picture, in bold capital letters, was the name "JoAnne Deborah Chesimard."

During her trial for this bank robbery, which ended in acquittal, a jury found that it was not a picture of Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard). The photograph had been released by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office to the New York Clearing House Association (a bank's association), which placed the ad and posters. Even after Assata had been acquitted of this bank robbery in January 1976, another advertisement offering the same reward for unapprehended bank robbers appeared in the Daily News in March 1976. This time, however, the photograph was a recognizable mug shot of Assata, with the word "APPREHENDED" across her face. This poster appeared two months after her acquittal on the August 1971 charge, two years after her acquittal on the September 1972 bank robbery charge, and while no bank robbery charges were outstanding against her.

On February 12, 1973, four months before Assata was apprehended on the New Jersey Turnpike, New York magazine published an article under the title "Target Blue," written by Robert Daley, an excerpt of this book of the same title. The cover of the magazine depicted a uniformed police officer. The subtitle was "The Story Behind the Police Assassinations." The article purported to provide intimate details about the Black Liberation Army, whose activities, the article claimed, were cop killing, bank robbing, and efforts to overthrow the U.S. Government. Above a picture of Assata Shakur were the words "Gunmen of the Black Liberation Army," and she was described by former Deputy Police Commissioner Daley as the "mother hen who kept them together, kept them moving, kept them shooting." Notwithstanding this trial by media, the only indictment against Assata for killing a police officer was dismissed in October 1974 for lack of evidence.

As the chart that follows this essay shows, on May 2, 1973, when the shooting on the New Jersey Turnpike occurred, Assata was "wanted" for all these crimes. The irony is that not one of the charges led to conviction. When she was apprehended, shot down on the New Jersey Turnpike, leading to her only conviction, she should have enjoyed the presumption of innocence that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supposed to grant to any of us when accused.

On May 2, 1973, Assata, Sundiata Acoli, and Zayd Malik Shakur were traveling south on the New Jersey Turnpike in a white Pontiac. They were stopped by New Jersey state trooper James Harper for reasons consistent with the FBI COINTELPRO guidelines, which directed that activist be arrested for minor traffic Violations. The Pontiac allegedly had defective taillights. Harper's testimony, however, leaves open the suggestion that the Pontiac was simply a target.

Harper testified that when he first saw the Pontiac he was two miles north of the turnpike administration building, headquarters for the troopers. He followed the car for two miles until it was close to the administration building before he pulled it over because "the light was better and there was more security." The Pontiac was traveling at normal speed in the center lane. Harper first passed it in the left lane, observed the driver, and "made a mental note of his description." He then moved to the right lane and let the Pontiac pass him, at which time he "made a mental note of the sex and race of the passengers." He then approached the Pontiac in the left lane, motioned the driver (Sundiata) to pull over, and called the administration building for assistance. When trooper Robert Palenchar was directed to assist Harper, he commented over his radio, "Meet you at the pass, partner," and sped to the administration building at 120 miles an hour. Trooper Werner Foerster also went to assist in this "stop" for which, Harper testified, only a summons would have been issued.

Over the years, I was to learn much about the selective, arbitrary, and ferocious ways the law and its processes would be applied against Assata Shakur from the moment I met her in that hospital in May 1973 where she clung to life.

I can certainly not improve on Assata's account of her experiences before, during, and after her numerous trials, but I must point out that she understates the awfulness of the conditions in which she was incarcerated. As she mentions, even a hearing officer appointed by Middlesex County, at the instruction of one of the federal judges before whom we argued our suits on the inhumanity of the conditions in which she was held, found the conditions shocking.

In the history of New Jersey, no woman pretrial detainee or prisoner has ever been treated as she was, continuously confined in a men's prison, under twenty-four-hour surveillance of her most intimate functions, without intellectual sustenance, adequate medical attention, and exercise, and without the company of other women for all the years she was in their custody. We filed one civil rights lawsuit after another complaining of the barbarous treatment selectively meted out to her, with limited success. As you read her story, imagine the effect these conditions must have had on this proud and sensitive woman.

Another bitter irony of her situation is that during the course of those years awaiting trial in New Jersey, the many other charges that caused her to become a fugitive, leading to the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, were dropped for lack of evidence, were dismissed, or resulted in acquittal, and yet the physical conditions under which she was held worsened, at best. Once again, the manipulation of facts by the media became a substitute for reality-none of the acquittals or dismissals was publicized. The massive security precautions for the pending New Jersey trial were the major stories on the front pages of the local newspapers, day after day, in the community from which the jury was selected.

The sheer number of these baseless charges supports the contention held by many people that the extraordinary efforts of the state of New Jersey to get Assata Shakur convicted, notwithstanding the flimsy evidence, were undertaken to justify the fabricated image of mad-dog killer that had failed, so humiliatingly, to get her convicted in New York state and federal courts.

Assata was convicted in New Jersey as an accomplice to the murder of state trooper Werner Foerster and of atrocious assault on James Harper with the intent to kill. Under New Jersey law, if a person's presence at the scene of a crime can be construed as "aiding and abetting" the crime, that person can be convicted of the substantive crime itself. The state of New Jersey convicted Sundiata Acoli for these same murders after Assata was severed from the proceedings because of her pregnancy. The jury at Assata's trial for the same offenses was permitted to speculate that her "mere presence" at a scene of violence, with weapons in the vehicle, was sufficient to sustain a conviction-even though three neurologists testified at the trial that her median nerve had been severed by gunshot wounds, rendering her unable to pull a trigger, and that her clavicle had been shattered by a shot that could only have been made while she was seated in the car with her hands raised. Other experts testified that the neutron activation analysis administered by the police right after the shootout showed no gun residue on her fingers, meaning she had not shot a weapon. She was also convicted of possession of weapons-none of which could be identified having been handled by her and of the attempted murder of state trooper Harper, who had sustained a minor injury at the shootout.

It had been and is my view that it was the racism in Middlesex County, fueled by biased, inflammatory publicity in the local press before and throughout the trial, fanned by the documented government lawlessness, that made it possible for the white jury to convict Assata on the uncorroborated, contradictory, and generally incredible testimony of trooper Harper, the only other witness to the events on the turnpike. Harper's testimony as well as that of all the other state's witnesses was riddled with inconsistencies and discrepancies. On three separate official reports, including his grand jury testimony, Harper said that he saw Assata take a gun from her pocketbook, while in the car, and shoot him. He admitted, on cross-examination during both Sundiata's trial and Assata's trial, that he never saw Assata with a gun and did not see her shoot him-that, in fact, he had lied.

In addition, the judge refused to permit the defense to present any testimony on COINTELPRO. The truth is very simple. Assata Shakur did not receive a fair trial in Middlesex County, New Jersey, She had been convicted in the press and in the minds of the general public from the moment she was apprehended in New Jersey and over and over again until the trial. The conviction in court was but a formality.

Dear Sister, thank you for sending us your vital voice and sharing your passion and commitment with us. Meanwhile, we in this society must remind ourselves again how we threaten our own interests and rights when we condone by our silence the government's use of surveillance, attacks on the legitimacy of political activists, and the use of the criminal law to suppress and punish political dissent.

In 1975, Attorney General Edward H. Levi, under the direction of President Carter and in consideration of the Church committee's findings, designed the first set of guidelines to keep the FBI within the Constitution in its investigations of individuals and groups allegedly dangerous to national security. The Levi guidelines, while not heartily applauded by civil libertarians, did attempt to restrain the unbridled use of the government's power to penetrate and disrupt organizations.

By 1983, Attorney General William French Smith, under President Reagan, had rescinded the Levi guidelines, and each year since then protections of the Bill of Rights have been further eroded. For example, the FBI is now free to investigate persons or groups accused of advocating criminal activity. Clearly, the federal government is continuing the unrestrained abuse of power by which it attempted to destroy Assata Shakur and other Black individuals and groups by surveillance, rumor, innuendo, eavesdropping, arrest and prosecution, incarceration, and murder throughout the sixties and seventies.

As long as members of Congress, still intimidated by ABSCAM, are afraid to antagonize the FBI, and as long as FBI guidelines are drafted internally by the FBI and as long as the Justice Department is subject to the political imperatives of the President, monitored only within the system but without public accountability, we are all in danger of the kinds of repression and government secrecy that victimized Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Viola Liuzzo, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, Obadele Imari, Assata Shakur, and many other brothers and sisters whose ideas and advocacy are threatening to the administration. We are all potential victims.

I encourage you now to enter the heart and soul of Assata Shakur who, despite all that has happened to her, preserves fresh idealism and confidence in the power of principled people to make change together for the common good of the peoples of the world.

LENNOX S. HINDS

New York City

Trial Chronology


DATE OF ALLEGED CRIME AND CHARGE	JURIDICTION STATE-FEDERAL	DATE OF ARRAIGNMENT	TRIAL DATE	DISPOSITION

Chapter 1

Affirmation

I believe in the living

I believe in the spectrum

of Beta days and Gamma people.

I believe in sunshine.

In windmills and waterfalls,

tricycles and rocking chairs.

And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.

And sprouts grow into trees.

I believe in the magic of the hands.

And in the wisdom of the eyes.

I believe in rain and tears.

And in the blood of infinity.

I believe in life.

And i have seen the death parade

march through the torso of the earth,

sculpting mud bodies in its path.

I have seen the destruction of the daylight,

and seen bloodthirsty maggots

prayed to and saluted.

I have seen the kind become the blind

and the blind become the bind

in one easy lesson.

I have walked on cut glass.

I have eaten crow and blunder bread

and breathed the stench of indifference.

I have been locked by the lawless.

Handcuffed by the haters.

Gagged by the greedy.

And, if i know anything at all,

it's that a wall is just a wall

and nothing more at all.

It can be broken down.

I believe in living.

I believe in birth.

I believe in the sweat of love

and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,

steered by tired, seasick sailors,

can still be guided home

to port.

There were lights and sirens. Zayd was dead. My mind knew that Zayd was dead. The air was like cold glass. Huge bubbles rose and burst. Each one felt like an explosion in my chest. My mouth tasted like blood and dirt. The car spun around me and then something like sleep overtook me. In the background i could hear what sounded like gunfire. But i was fading and dreaming.

Suddenly, the door flew open and i felt myself being dragged out onto the pavement. Pushed and punched, a foot upside my head, a kick in the stomach. Police were everywhere. One had a gun to my head.

"Which way did they go?" he was shouting. "Bitch, you'd better open your goddamn mouth or I'll blow your goddamn head off!" I nodded my head across the highway. I was sure that nobody had gone that way. A few of the cops were off and running.

One pig said, "We oughta finish her off." But the others were all busy around the car, searching it. They were pulling and prodding.

"Ya find the gun?" they kept asking each other. Later, one of them asked another, "Should we put'er in the car?"

"Naw. Let'er lay in the gutter where she belongs. Just get'er out of the way."

I felt myself being dragged by the feet across the pavement. My chest was on fire. My blouse was purple with blood. I was convinced that my arm had been shot off and was hanging inside my shirt by a few strips of flesh. I could not feel it.

Finally the ambulance came and they moved me into it. Being moved was agony, but the blankets were worth it. I was so cold. The medics examined me. I tried to talk, but only bubbles came out. I was foaming at the mouth.

"Where's she hit?" they asked each other as if i wasn't there, They concluded their examination. I was relieved.

"Let's move it," one of them said.

"O.K., but wait a minute," said the driver and he got out. "Hit twice," i heard him say. "We gotta wait." The driver slammed the door.

He said something else but i didn't understand it. Time passed. I was floating off again. It felt so weird, like a dream, a nightmare. More time passed. It seemed like forever. I was in and out, in and out.

A rough voice asked, "Is she dead yet?" I floated off again. I heard another voice. "Is she dead yet?" I wondered how long the ambulance had been sitting there. The attendants looked nervous. The bubbles in my chest felt like they were growing bigger. When they burst, my whole chest shattered. I faded again and it was down South in the summertime. I thought about my grandmother. At last the ambulance was moving. "If i live," i remember thinking, "i'll only have one arm."

The hospital is glaring white. Everybody i see is white. Everyone seems to be waiting. All at once they are in motion. Blood pressure, pulse, needles, etc. Two detectives come in. I know they're detectives because they look like detectives. One of them has a face like a bulldog, with jowls hanging down the sides. They supervise the nurse as she cuts off my clothes. After a while, one of them dabs my fingertips with what look like Q-tips. Later i find out that this is the neutron activation test to determine whether or not i have fired a weapon. Another one then tries to fingerprint me, but he has trouble because my hand is dead.

"Gimme the dead man's kit." He puts my fingers into spoon-looking things used to fingerprint dead people. They begin to ask me questions, but a bunch of doctors come in. One of them, who appears to be the head doctor, examines me. He pokes and prods, throwing me around like a rag doll. Then, like he is going to kill me, he jerks me around so that i'm on my stomach. The pain is like an electric shock. I moan.

"Don't cry now, girlie," he says. "Why'd you shoot the trooper? Why'd you shoot the trooper?"

I want to kick him in his face. I know he would kill me if he had the chance. I can see the scalpel slipping. One of the other doctors says something about calling the operating room. "Hell no!" is all i can think of. "Hell no!”

After a while, they all leave. Then a Black nurse comes into the room. I am glad as I could be to see her. She bends over me.

"What is your name?" she asks. "What is your name?"

I think about it and decide to say nothing. If i tell them my name they will know who i am and they will kill me for sure.

"What is your name?" she keeps asking, enunciating each syllable in the way that people talk to someone who has trouble hearing or understanding. "What is your name? What is your address? Where do you live?" Her voice is getting louder. "We need your signature, miss," she says, waving a piece of paper in front of me. "We need your permission for treatment, in case we have to operate." She repeats the same thing, over and over. "Who shall we contact in case of emergency?" (I think that's kind of funny.) "What is your name? Where do you live?" I close my eyes, wishing she

would go away. She keeps right on talking. I drift off, thinking about my arm. It is still there.

"Nerve damage. Paralyzed," i heard them say. It has never occurred to me. It isn't that bad, i remember thinking. I can live with that if i have to.

More voices, other voices, grating my ears and my consciousness.

"She can talk," one is saying. "The doctor says she can talk. Where were you going? What is your name? Where were you coming from? Who was in the car with you? How many of you were there? I know she can hear me."

I keep my eyes closed. One of them leans down real close to me. I feel his breath on my cheek. And smell it.

"I know you can hear me and I know you can talk, and if you don't hurry up and start talking, I'm gonna bash your face in for you."

My eyes fly open in spite of myself. Immediately they are all in my face, throwing question after question at me. I say nothing. After a while, i close my eyes again.

"Oh, she doesn't feel good," one of them says in a sweet, mocking voice. "Where does it hurt? Here? Here? HERE?"

With each here comes a crash. I look around wildly, but no one is there. More thumps and punches, but none of them hurts as bad as my chest is hurting. I try to scream but i know immediately that that's a mistake. My chest erupts and i think i am gonna die. They go on and on. Questions and bangs. I think they will never stop.

A woman's voice. "Telephone."

"Thank you," one of them says, giving me an ugly grin. They are gone.

Another pig comes in. A Black pig. In uniform. He comes closer and i see that he is not a cop but a hospital security guard. He stands not too far from where i am lying and i can see he is not at all hostile. His face breaks into a kind of reserved smile and, very discreetly, he clenches his fist and gives me the power sign. That man will never know how much better he made me feel at that moment.

The detectives come back with a nurse. They begin to move the stretcher. My mind races. Where are they taking me? The only place i can think of is the operating room. When we arrive at the X- ray room, i'm thankful. Because i have to move around, the X-rays are painful, but the technician is cool. X-rays are over and i am rolled down the hallway, determined to keep my eyes closed. All of a sudden, flashes of light. My eyes pop open. This time they are taking my picture.

The police photographer asks, "Don't you wanna give us a smile? Come on. Give us a smile."

I close my eyes again. We are moving. The stretcher stops. One of the pigs tells the nurse he has a headache. She volunteers to get him something.

The stretcher is moving again. Where the hell are they taking me? Again the light is changing and, although my eyes are closed, i can feel the difference. It feels like i'm in the dark. I can't take it any longer and i look. The room is dark, but there is some light. My eyes slowly adjust. There's something lying next to me. I can see an outline. Something in plastic. Something-my mind slowly realizes that it is a man in a plastic bag. And that the man is Zayd. My body stiffens. My mind spins.

One of the troopers says, "That's what's gonna happen to you before the night is over if you don't tell us what we want to know."

I say nothing, but inside i'm raging. "Dogs! Swine! Filthy pigs! Dirty slimy scum! Bastards! Sons of bitches!" I rage on and on. "I wouldn't tell you the right time of day," i remember thinking. "I wouldn't tell you that shit stinks!"

The night crawls along. Nurses, doctors, and troopers. I am still scared, but i am just as angry and evil as i am scared. The detectives are in and out and, when nobody is there except them, they get in their digs and bangs. But after a while i don't think about them too much. I am thinking about living, about surviving, thinking about what is going to happen next. They are gonna do what they are gonna do and there isn't much i can do about it. I just have to be myself, stay as strong as i can, and do my best. That's all. There is nowhere to run and i am in no shape to try. I realize how isolated and vulnerable i am. What if i really do need an operation? I need help from the outside world. I have to try to get word out to someone. The Black nurse has been back and forth, asking me the same questions. Each time i have closed my eyes until she goes away. I decide to ask her to get in touch with my people the next time she comes by. Maybe she will be cool. She is my best shot; the guard is long gone.

I doze off for a little while. When i wake up, a nurse and a priest are standing over me. The priest is mumbling and seems to be rubbing something on my forehead. At first i don't understand what he is doing. Then it dawns on me. Last rites. Last rites are for the dying.

"Go away," i say out loud. I don't have the strength to say anything else. But i know i don't want anybody's last rites. I am not going to die, and even if i do die, i'm not going to die nobody's hypocrite.

The Black nurse comes back and starts her questions again. Before she can get started good, i beckon her to come closer. There is no one else around. I ask her to get in contact with my lawyer (who is also my aunt). I give her my name and ask her to make the call herself. She has a hard time understanding me and keeps asking me to repeat my name. I can barely talk, and each time she asks me to repeat myself, i feel like screaming. Then it occurs to me that Assata is foreign to her ears. She has probably never heard the name before. So i give her my slave name. Then i give her the number and she is off and running.

Two minutes later the detectives are on me like white on rice. They threaten and plead, reason and offer me the world. They hurl question after question at me, acting crazier than before. One plays the nice cop who is trying to save me from the bad cop, if only i will cooperate. I am tired and their act is even tireder. I can see exhaustion in their faces. The whole night is coming down on me. Their voices begin to sound far away. I can't take it anymore. They can go to hell. I am going to sleep. This time i am going out for real.

When i wake up the stretcher is moving. After a little while we arrive at the intensive care part of the hospital. The place is packed with nurses. I am elated. All i want to do is sleep. Soon i'm drifting off again.

I wake up and it's the next day. The doctors are making their rounds. One of them, an intern i think, is very kind to me. They examine me and spend the rest of the morning doing blood tests, X-rays, EKGs, etc., etc.

Soon i learn that they're going to move me again. I also find out that i'm in middlesex county hospital, I hear the nurses talking They are glad i am being moved because the police are driving them crazy

When they come to move me it looks like a police parade. The rooms i am moved to are called the Johnson Suite. I can't believe it. I have never imagined that hospitals have rooms like this. There is a sitting room, a huge hospital-equipped room (where i am kept), a den, a kitchen, a full bathroom and another little room whose purpose i will never learn. They transfer me to the bed and handcuff one of my legs to the side rail.

I keep looking around. It is elegant and clearly for rich people. I am probably the first Black person who has ever been in this room. And the only reason i am there is for security. They have sealed off the doors and no one can enter except through the sitting room next door where three state troopers are stationed. Two regulars and one sergeant.

The police radio in the room cackles all day long. "A carload of suspicious-looking coloreds in a white Ford coupe." "A suspicious-looking Negro walking near the hospital in a blue jacker and sneakers." No suspicious-looking white people are reported. From listening to the police talk next door, and to the radio, i learn that the hospital is saturated with state troopers. They seem to be under the impression that somebody is going to try and break me out. I feel better. The Demerol has me flying a little and makes it easier for me to lie in the contorted position i am forced into because of the cuff on my leg.

Later that afternoon, it begins again. Detectives and more detectives. Questions and more questions. This time the questions are different. Now they want to know about the Black Liberation Army: how big is it; what cities is it in, who is in it, etc., etc. But the main focus of their questions centers around "the guy that got away." I am delighted! I figure that Sundiata is somewhere safe by now, cooling out.

They are more careful where and how they hit me now. I guess they don't want to leave any marks. One sticks his fingers in my eyes. I don't know what he has on his fingertips, but whatever it is burns like hell. I think I am gonna be blind forever. He says he will keep doing it until i am completely blind. I close my eyes and hold them as tight as i can. He strikes me a few more times. Some of the stuff gets into my eyes anyway. Burning tears pour down my face and my whole head is throbbing. I think he is going to keep on, but he begins to curse me, calling me all kind of nigger bitches. Finally, he and the others leave.

On one of those first days, a white doctor comes to examine me. He acts very nice, sweet as pie. He examines me slowly, the whole time making friendly conversation. I wonder what kind of specialist he is since i haven't seen him before and i know he isn't one of the regulars. He says he knows how terrible i must feel and makes a big deal of protesting that i am chained to the bed. He keeps on talking and, after a while, pulls a chair close to the bed. Then he starts to ask friendly little questions. The conversation goes something like this:

"Those guys on the turnpike are rough. They'll give you a ticket for anything. I take the turnpike every day. You live in jersey? I live in Newark. You ever been there? You must really be lonely up here. I'll bet you really need someone to talk to. I went to medical school in New York. You're from there, aren't you?"

I get suspicious and say nothing to him. I tell him i want to go to sleep and he leaves. I never saw him again, but to this day i'm convinced he was some kind of police or FBI agent.

On the third or fourth day, most of my troubles came to an end. Well, not really, but the punch, bang, poke, and prod part of my troubles ended. A nurse with a German accent came to my aid. She was one of the morning nurses, very professional and exacting, to the point that she could be a pain in the neck. But she was a lifesaver. It was she who had first protested the tightness of the handcuff on my leg. My leg had begun to swell and she had insisted they loosen it and that the cuff be covered with gauze. Of course, as soon as she was gone they tightened it again, but the gauze helped somewhat. I could tell by the little things she said and did that she knew what was going on. One morning she came in as usual and, after she had finished her normal routine, she reached behind the bed, pulled at something, and then handed me an electric call button on a cord.

"Anytime you need me or need anything from the nurses, just press this button," she said. "Don't be afraid to use it," she added, giving me a knowing look.

I could have kissed her. Later, when she returned to the room, after the troopers realized i had the call button, one came in behind her.

"Is there any way to disconnect that thing?" he asked. "She might hurt someone with it or hurt herself."

"No," she said, "there is no way to remove it. If you pull it out, it will just keep ringing in the nurses' station. She is having difficulty breathing and she needs it.”

Right on!" i thought. "Das ist richtig." After that, whenever the police came within two feet of my bed, i would push the button. Finally, they gave up the idea of beating on me and contented themselves with threats and other kinds of harassment. A favorite was to stand in the door and point their guns at me. Each day was my last day on earth. Each night was my last night. After a while, i became accustomed. Immune. Sometimes they would cock a gun i didn't know was empty, give a long, impassioned speech, and then pull the trigger. Other times i was invited to a game of Russian roulette, they all expressed a bitter hatred for me. They were state troopers and i was accused of killing one of them.

Every day there were three shifts of police. When they changed shifts, the two troopers would salute the sergeant. Some saluted an army salute, but others saluted like the nazis did in Germany. They held their hands in front of them and clicked their heels. I couldn't believe it. One day one of them came in and gave me a speech about how he fought in World War II on the wrong side. He went on and on and there was no question that he believed everything he said. He talked about how messed up the world is. How decent people couldn't walk the streets. He said that if Hitler had won, the world wouldn't be in the mess it is in today, that niggers like me, no-good niggers, wouldn't be going around shooting new jersey state troopers.

He went on to say that the white race had invented everything because they were smart and worked hard, that other races wanted to riot and use terrorism to take everything the white race had worked so hard to get. I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut. He talked about empires, the Roman, the Greek, the Spanish, the British. He told me white people created empires because they were more civilized than the rest of the world. White people created ballet and opera and symphonies. "Did you ever hear of a nigger writing a symphony?" he asked. Every day he gave me a speech about nazism. Sometimes other nazis would join in. I asked him if there were a lot of nazis in the state troopers, but he just laughed and kept on talking.

When i was in the Black Panther Party, we used to call the police "fascist pigs," but i had called them fascists not because i believed they were nazis but because of the way they acted in our communities. As many times as i had referred to police as fascists, these shocked me by the truth of my own rhetoric. I later learned that the state troopers in new jersey was started by a German, that their uniforms were patterned after some type of German uniform (very similar to the uniforms South African police wear), that they are notorious for stopping Black, Hispanic, and long-haired people on the turnpike and beating, harassing, and arresting them.

The nazis headed the harassment campaign against me. They spit in my food and turned down the thermostat in the room until it was freezing. For a while their campaign centered on keeping me from sleeping. They stamped their feet on the floor, sang songs all night, played with their guns, shouted, etc. I told the nurses about it, but it was no use.

I could deal with whatever they were putting out, but how long would this go on? I had heard nothing from the outside world, and i didn't even know if anybody knew where i was or whether i was dead or alive. My chest was feeling better, but i still could hardly breathe. I thought i was past the point of needing an operation, but i wasn't sure if it was because of the painkillers they had given me or because i was really getting better.

Every day i asked them to contact my lawyer, and every day they said they had tried but there was no answer. I knew that was a lie because Evelyn had an answering service. Every day i asked them to contact my family. The response to this was usually obscene.

"Oh, you got a family, do you? Is your mother a nigger whore like you? We don't allow no pickaninnies at this hospital."

They went on and on about my family until they found something else to go on and on about. Whoever said that no news is good news had to be out of his mind.

Well, there was news, but it wasn't good news. They told me they had arrested Sundiata. At first i didn't believe them, but they were too glib and arrogant. I knew something had happened.

"We got your friend," they said, "and he's singing like a bird. Yeah, he's singing like a bird, and he's giving you all the weight. It's a good thing for you he didn't know what color undies you had on or he would have told us that. We know where you were coming from. We know where you were going. We know that you stopped at a Howard Johnson. He even told us what you ordered and that you just love potato chips."

"What?" i thought. "How did they know that?" Then i remembered that we had bought potato chips at a Howard Johnson on the turnpike. Maybe someone had seen me and remembered.

"Yes, Clark Squire tells us that you took the trooper's gun and shot him in the head. Now, you wouldn't do a thing like that, would you? Well, JoAnne, you're in a hell of a fix. If I were you, I wouldn't let him get away with it. It's a low-down thing to do, giving all the weight to a woman. I'll make a deal with you. You tell us everything that happened and I promise well light on you. just don't like to see you get a bad break, that's all. You know you're facing a lot of time in prison, the way things stand, if he testifies against you. You could get life in prison or even the chair, but all you have to do is tell us what happened and we'll see to in that you do just a couple of years and go home. You're young. You don't want to rot away your whole life in prison, do you? Maybe you think you owe something to the cause. You think he's thinking about the cause now? No, he's singing his head off, trying to give you all the weight. They're all the same. They talk all this shit about Black people, equal rights, civil rights, but when it comes down to the wire, all they care about is their hide. He's thinking about his hide and you better think about yours. You think the cause gives a damn about you? Your own people don't give a damn about you. To them you're just a common criminal. Now I'm giving you this one chance to save yourself and come clean. If you don't take it, you're a fool."

They really did think Black people were stupid. Their line had to be the oldest in the book. He was sitting there like he just knew his corny little speech had done the trick. I said nothing. If you don't say anything to them, they have nothing to turn around and use against you. "Divide and conquer" has always been their motto.

When they realized i wasn't going to talk, they began to leave. Then one came back. "Oh," he said, "I almost forgot to read you your rights." He pulled out this little card and read from it. ""You have the right to remain silent.... You have the right to... etc.'l wouldn't want you to say that we didn't read you your rights."

Thursday afternoon. They're letting me make a phone call. I don't believe it. I call my aunt. She's not in. The answering service answers. I don't know who else to call. The only lawyers whose names i know worked on the Panther 21 trial. I call them at random. No one is in, but secretaries promise to give them messages. I'm disappointed but i feel a lot better. Things are looking up.

It is Friday. From the activity in the room next door, i can tell something is up. Voices and whispers. They are back and forth, in and out, arranging this, moving that. The police radio is jumping. What is happening? Whatever it is, it can't be too bad, i think. They are leaving me alone. In a little while a policewoman comes in. She is in a brown uniform and her insignia says "Sheriff's Department.” She's Black or Hispanic. I can't tell exactly, except that she isn't white. Then some more police come in, dressed in uniforms similar to hers. Then more police. They are state troopers. One of them moves to the door and stands at attention. Then some men in suits come in. Then a man comes in with a stenographic machine.

"The Honorable Joseph F. Bradshaw, State of New Jersey, County of Middlesex. All rise."

Then this judge walks in with a black robe on. One of the men in a suit reads the charges against me:

We are here today to serve complaints upon you for the matters arising out of the shooting of May 2 of 1973. I will read you the complaints, leave copies with you of the charges that will be pending against you. The Judge will then advise you on the arraignment of such rights you may have.

…you are charged under Complaint Number 119977, by Detective Taranto, New Jersey State Police, who says on the 2nd of May, 1973, within the confines of the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you unlawfully and illegally resisted a lawful arrest being made by New Jersey State Trooper James Harper by discharging a dangerous pistol and wounding the said James Harper and fleeing the scene of the incident, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:85-1....

You are also charged,... under complaint Number 5 119979, by Detective Sergeant Taranto of the New Jersey State Police, who says that on the 2nd of May, 1973, within the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you did commit an Atrocious Assault and Battery upon New Jersey State Trooper James Harper by shooting, wounding and maiming the said James Harper with a hand gun then and there discharged by the defendant, all in viola- tion of N.J.S. 2A:90-1.

In the Second Count you are charged by the said officer who says that defendant Joanne Deborah Chesimard did on the afore- mentioned date and place unlawfully and illegally assault the said James Harper with intent to kill, murder and slay him by use of a hand gun then and there held by the defendant, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:90-2.

It further charges in the Third Count that the aforementioned defendant did at the above mentioned time and place commit an unlawful and illegal assault and battery on a law enforcement officer, to wit, one James Harper, a duly sworn Trooper of the New Jersey State Police, by discharging a firearm and wounding the said James Harper, all in violation of N.J.5. 2A:90-4....

In S 119980 you are charged with illegally and unlawfully committing the crime of murder by willfully and with malice aforethought shooting, killing and slaying New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:113-1 and N.JS. 2A:85-14...

You are further being charged under $ 119981 with one count, wherein Detective Sergeant Taranto charges you on the 2nd day of May, 1973, within the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you did unlawfully, illegally and with malice aforethought cause or affect the murder of James Coston a/k/a Zayd Shakur, while resisting or avoiding a lawful arrest then and there being affected by New Jersey State Trooper James Harper, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:113-2.

You are charged with S 119982 by State Police Sergeant Louis Taranto, that on the 2nd day of May, 1973, in the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, you unlawfully and illegally possessed on your person, under your custody and control, an illegal weapon, to wit, one Browning 9 milimeter automatic pistol, one Browning automatic .380 caliber, one .38 caliber Llama automatic pistol, serial number 24831, all without having obtained any necessary permit for the carrying of same, in violation of N.J.S. 2A:151-41 (a)....

You are further charged in Complaint S 119983, wherein Detective Sergeant Taranto says on the 2nd day of May, 1973, in the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you did unlawfully and illegally and forcibly take from the person of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster a 38 caliber revolver by violence, to wit, by shooting, slaying and killing the same Werner Foerster, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:141-1.

The Second Count of that Complaint charges you with committing that act while being armed, in violation of N.J.S. 2A:151-5…

…you are being charged by State Trooper Detective Sergeant Taranto, Complaint S 119984, who says on the 2nd day of May, 1973, in the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you did illegally, unlawfully conspire with James Coston, a/k/a Zayd Shakur and one John Doe to commit the crime of murder of the said Trooper Werner Foerster, and in the affectuation of said conspiracy did execute the following overt acts:

1. That the said defendant Joanne Deborah Chesimard did have in her possession a pistol with which to affectuate the ends of the conspiracy on the above-mentioned time and ..... at the above-mentioned place.

2. The above named defendant Joanne Deborah Chesimard in concert with and by common scheme and plan did assault Trooper James Harper and otherwise discharge her weapon at the said Trooper James Harper with the intent to affect the ends of the conspiracy by otherwise wounding, maiming or killing him, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:98-1 and N.J.5. 2A:113-1.

I think he will never stop. Half of the charges i don't even understand. I interrupt the proceedings. "I don't have a lawyer here," i protest. "I would like to have a lawyer present." They ignore

me and keep on reading. "How do you plead?" they ask me.

"I would like to have a lawyer present. Don't i have a right to a lawyer?"

"That will not be necessary," the judge says coldly. "Enter a plea of not guilty for the defendant."

And just as quickly as they entered, the procession departs.

Later the same policewoman comes back. She stands rigidly against the wall. Her face is a mask. "Oh, no!" i think. "Court again? What are they gonna do, railroad me here and now?" 1 imagine myself being tried right there in the bed with no lawyer.

The door opens. It is Evelyn-my lawyer and aunt. She is the most beautiful sight in the world. She embraces me and sits down next to me. As usual, she is business first.

"I only have five minutes," she tells me. "They told me that I couldn't see you. I had to go to court and get a court order to see you. The judge would give us only five minutes apiece. Your mother and sister are outside. So talk fast."

We look up. The police are practically standing in our mouths.

"I would like to talk with my client in private," Evelyn says. "Would you please move back. This is an outrage. This is an attorney-client visit and we have a constitutional right to privacy."

The police move back one inch. I tell Evelyn about the kangaroo court in the morning. My mouth moves so fast it's like one of those old-style movies, but a talkie. I can see from the expression on her face that i must look horrible.

"How are they treating you?" she asks.

I don't have time to tell her the whole story, but i have to let her know what is going on. I don't know what they will do next. I have to try to get someone to put pressure on them to stop. I tell her some of it, but i just can't tell her the worst things. Her face looks so pitiful and every time i tell her something else, her hands shake.

"Try to do what you can," i say.

"Time's up. Time's up, miss!"

Evelyn makes her futile protests. "I need to talk with my client. This is just not enough time.”

"Sorry, miss. Time's up!" They move toward her like they an going to beat her up.

Then she is gone. I brace myself for my mother and my sister It. has been such a long time since i have seen them. I don't know

what to expect. My mother comes in. She looks worried but strong. She kisses me

"I'm proud of you," she says.

The words spin around me, weaving a warm blanket of love. I am so happy. I can hardly contain myself. My mother is proud of me. She loves me and she is proud of me.

Too soon the time with my mother is up. My sister comes in. She has her hair wrapped in a turban and she looks so pale. As soon as she sees me, she breaks out crying. Tears stream down her already puffy face. I can tell she has been crying a lot.

"I love you," she says simply.

We don't do a lot of talking, but i feel so very close to her during those few minutes.

"Time's up." Again. And then she is gone.

I lie there full of emotion. All of this is so hard on my family. They look vulnerable and shaken. This is maybe harder on them than it is on me. I wish there was something i can do to make them happy.

Two Black nurses were very kind to me. When they were on duty, they would go out of their way to make sure i was all right. They made frequent trips to my room, for which i was especially grateful during those first days.

"If you need anything, just ring," they said knowingly. One night one of the nurses came in and gave me three books.

I hadn't even thought about reading. The books were a godsend. They had been carefully selected. One was a book of Black poetry, one was a book called Black Women in White Amerika, and the third was a novel, Siddbartha, by Hermann Hesse. Whenever i tired of the verbal abuse of my captors, i would drown them out by reading the poetry out loud. "Invictus" and "If We Must Die" were the poems i usually read. I read them over and over, until i was sure the guards had heard every word. The poems were my message to them.

When i read the book about Black women, i felt the spirits of those sisters feeding me, making me stronger. Black women have been struggling and helping each other to survive the blows of life since the beginning of time. And when i read Siddhartha, a peace came over me. I felt a unity with all things living. The world, in spite of oppression, is a beautiful place. I would say "Om" softly to myself, letting my lips vibrate. I felt the birds, the sun, and the trees. I was in communion with all the forces on the earth that truly love people, in communion with all the revolutionary forces on the earth.

I was definitely getting better. They were even unchaining me so that i could hobble to the bathroom every now and then, with the help of the nurse. I was still weak and, when i returned from the bathroom, i would flop on the bed as if i had just accomplished a great physical feat. But at least now i knew what was wrong with me. During those first days i could barely ask, and when i did, they acted as if my condition were some top secret information i was not privy to. I had three bullet holes. There was a bullet in my chest (it's still there); an injured lung with fluid in it, a broken clavicle, and a paralyzed arm with undetermined damage to the nerves. I kept asking if i would be able to use my hand again. One or two doctors said, flatly, no. The others said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."

Anyway, i was gonna live.

STORY

You died.

I cried.

And kept on getting up.

A little slower.

And a lot more deadly.

Contents

Forward by Angela Davis

Forward by Lennox S. Hinds

Trial Chronology

Chapter 1

Affirmation