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Assata Shakur is a freedom fighter who teaches me how to fight. She is a living, breathing, and enduring testament to what is possible when Black people struggle for liberation. Each generation of Black people living under the heels of colonialism, chattel slavery, racial capitalism, and patriarchy has taken up a responsibility to carry this work forward. It is a long, protracted struggle. Our collective struggle does not fit in a neat box of policy priorities, campaigns, or projects. There is no single solution or pathway. Our liberation is not bound up in a single leader or organization. Our struggle has no geographic borders or specific timeline-it is for our ancestors, the living and future generations. In "To My People" (1973), Assata writes a love letter and invitation to this struggle that strikes at the hearts of people on the front lines of today's movement so much so that it has become our rallying cry.
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS.
I first heard these words at a Young People for Leadership development conference in 2010. The staffand participants repeated the stanza three times as part of a ritual to close the conference. It wasn't until 2013 that I began to hear more people using Assata's words as a call to action. By then, I'd read Assata's biography and developed a clearer analysis of anti-Blackness.
A year later, I joined a small group of protestors and led the chant during the Ferguson Uprising in August 2014. We collectively shouted the words in preparation to join the masses taking action on West Florissant Avenue. At the time, I didn't understand the weight of what it meant to declare a commitment to fighting, winning, loving, and protecting one another. I believe that Assata understood each of these well when she wrote "To My People."
I...