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'She Died Free': Tributes Pour In for Revolutionary Icon Assata Shakur
"They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival," said one admirer.
Sep 27, 2025
Assata Shakur, a Black revolutionary who inspired generations of activists to struggle for a better world, passed away on Thursday in Havana, Cuba, where she had lived in exile from the US for over four decades.
Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced her death on Friday, saying it was caused by a combination of “health conditions and advanced age." She was reportedly 78 years old.
"At approximately 1:15 pm on September 25, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath," her daughter Kakuya Shakur wrote on Facebook on Friday. "Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time. I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this moment. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time."
Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Byron and was also known as Joanne Deborah Chesimard, spent the first three years of her life in Queens, New York before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina. She then returned to Queens for third grade.
"Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations."
"I spent my early childhood in the racist segregated South," she recalled in a 1998 letter to Pope John Paul II. "I later moved to the northern part of the country, where I realized that Black people were equally victimized by racism and oppression."
Shakur became active in the anti-Vietnam War, student, and Black liberation movements while attending Borough of Manhattan Community College and the City College of New York. After graduation, she joined first the Black Panther Party and then the Black Liberation Army (BLA).
"I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the US government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one," she wrote in 2013.
In 1973, she and two other BLA activists were stopped at the New Jersey Turnpike by two state troopers. By the end of the encounter, both Shakur's friend Zayd Malik Shakur and trooper Werner Foerster were shot dead. In 1977, Shakur was convicted of Foerster's murder in a trial she described as a "legal lynching." Throughout her life, she maintained her innocence.
"I was shot once with my arms held up in the air and then once again from the back," she wrote of the shootout.
She was sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years, but didn't long remain behind bars.
"In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case and who were also extremely fearful for my life," she wrote.
In 1984, she claimed asylum in Cuba. Throughout her life, she also remained staunchly committed to the cause of liberation for all oppressed peoples.
"I have advocated and I still advocate revolutionary changes in the structure and in the principles that govern the United States," she wrote to John Paul II. "I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty."
During her exile, her writings, including her 1987 autobiography, gained a wide audience and brought her story and voice to younger activists.
"It is our duty to fight for our freedom," she wrote in one of the book's most famous passages. "It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
She was also influential in the world of music and hip-hop, serving as godmother to Tupac Shakur and inspiring songs by Public Enemy and Common, among others.
The US government did not give up its pursuit of her. In 2013, under President Barack Obama, the Federal Bureau of Investigation named her the first woman on its "Most Wanted Terrorist" list. The FBI and the state of New Jersey also doubled the reward for information leading to her capture. That reward will now never be claimed.
"She died free!" one of her admirers, who uses the handle The Cake Lady, wrote on social media on Friday. "The US government, after decades of pursuit, never got the satisfaction of putting her in a cage. They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival."
News of her passing inspired tributes from social justice and anti-imperialist leaders and organizations, including former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
"We honor the life of comrade Assata Shakur, a revolutionary who inspires and pushes all of us in the struggle for a better world," wrote anti-war group CodePink on social media.
Community organizer Tanisha Long posted: "Assata Shakur joins the ancestors a free woman. She did not die bound by the carceral system and she did not pass away living in a land that never respected or accepted her. Assata taught us that liberation can not be bargained for, it must be taken."
The Revolutionary Blackout Network wrote, "Thank you for fighting to liberate us all, comrade."
The New York-based People's Forum said: "We honor Assata’s life and legacy as a tireless champion of the people and as a symbol of hope and resistance for millions around the world in urgent fight against racism, police brutality, US imperialism, and white supremacy. Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations."
The Democratic Socialists of America vowed to "honor her legacy by recognizing our duty to fight for our freedom, to win, to love, and protect one another because we have nothing to lose but our chains."
Black Lives Matter organizer Malkia Amala Cyril lamented to The Associated Press that Shakur died during a global rise of authoritarianism.
“The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love she practiced if we are going to survive it,” Cyril said.
Several tributes featured Shakur's own words.
"I believe in living," she wrote in a poem at the beginning of her autobiography.
"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."
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Censoring Jimmy Kimmel Is Not The Biggest Threat To The First Amendment—But This Is
The ongoing collapse of the free press is... and indy news outlets need your help.
Sep 19, 2025
The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and the cancelling of his long-running eponymous late-night TV show by Disney-owned ABC is certainly disturbing from the perspective of anyone who defends the First Amendment in the US—myself included.
It’s quite clear that the Trump administration saw an opportunity to take down a thorn in its side and used Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr’s influence over Nexstar, a media conglomerate that owns many ABC affiliate stations, to swiftly and successfully pressure the network to do its bidding.
Meaning that, right-wing protestations to the contrary, the incident definitely passes the censorship smell test.
But it should be understood that major corporate-owned media like ABC has only rarely truly championed the First Amendment. Because programming that is critical of the capitalism that makes ABC possible has generally never been allowed to air on its channels. And there are other blind spots besides… the most obvious being Gaza shaped. So, if Jimmy Kimmel was an open socialist like me or had a history of taking potentially career-damaging stands like protesting the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, he would never have been given a show in the first place.
Jimmy Kimmel is a rich and very connected man. He’ll be fine. He’ll likely bounce back with a new show in record time. BINJ and the diminishing numbers of fellow indy news outlets around the country are not in any way fine.
Because the thing that speaks most loudly to the owners of conglomerates like Disney that own media companies like ABC is money. As long as a talent like Kimmel brought in plenty of cash and didn’t really rock powerful boats too far beyond what was widely considered fair game for a comedian, he was safe. But the moment he pissed off top conservatives with an iron-clad grip on the federal government enough to threaten ABC’s, and therefore Disney’s, bottom line, he was forced out.
And that’s what happened when Kimmel, frankly, overconfidently stated that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a right-winger (which does not now appear to be the case) on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the Trump administration smelled blood in the water; Carr immediately announced that the FCC would have to look over the licenses of TV stations that continued to air his show; and Nexstar, a company with a big deal in the works that required FCC approval, immediately ordered its local TV stations to stop airing Kimmel. As did Sinclair, another company that owns ABC-affiliate stations.
Which is why I encourage readers to consider that if you want to defend the First Amendment and the free press that it has historically allowed to flower (more in better times, less in this era), your time and money would go a lot farther toward that goal if you support independent news organizations like the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ). Because the less frequently that our freedom of the press is used, the more likely we are to lose it… and the First Amendment with it.
Regrettably, as I’ve often written, the news industry and journalism itself are already on the rocks in this country. And the freest of the free press, independent press like BINJ, is far closer to perdition than major media combines at present due to the economic and technological forces arrayed against us. Possibly compounded by the looming threat of the Trump administration deciding to crush us outright at some unfortunate future point. Eliminating one of the most important remaining checks on unbridled political and economic power in our society in the process.
Jimmy Kimmel is a rich and very connected man. He’ll be fine. He’ll likely bounce back with a new show in record time. BINJ and the diminishing numbers of fellow indy news outlets around the country are not in any way fine. Both talk show hosts and journalists play important roles in America’s fragmented information ecology, true. But journalists provide the fodder for the hosts to riff on day in and day out, not so much the other way around.
So, if you expect to continue to have access to news and views on critical issues of the day that are free of the malign and debate-limiting influence that compromises media interests owned by vast corporations from Comcast NBCUniversal to Disney to Warner Bros. Discovery to Paramount Global to AT&T to Fox Corporation to Alphabet to Meta, then you could put your money and energy into helping us survive.
Most of the independent press at the local and regional level like BINJ do our big annual fundraisers every November and December these days. In fact, we’re celebrating BINJ’s 10th anniversary with a big fundraiser on November 8 (details forthcoming).
If you want to help keep the free press free and help us continue our role as guardians of the First Amendment, support us. Support our many sibling publications in the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets. Support entertainers and artists that join us in speaking truth to power. And sure, put in a good word for Jimmy, his main flaw in my estimation being letting the Democrats off the hook too often. Just give your money and your sweat equity to the grassroots media and arts crews. The more the merrier. And the better for reinvigorating our failing democracy.
This editorial was originally produced for HorizonMass, the independent, student-driven news outlet of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
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How to Tell When Authoritarians Become Fascists
How real is the threat of fascism? At a minimum, the extreme right is a threat to the very limited, mostly one-dollar, one-vote democracy that capitalists allow us.
Sep 19, 2025
The times they are a-changin. And quickly. And not in a good way. And it’s scary.
The façade of democracy is being ripped away by politicians who never liked it but lately feel emboldened to admit it. Most important of all, they have begun to act like unapologetic authoritarians. And brag about it. Suddenly the “F word” is on our minds.
Based on historian Robert Paxton’s definition—“Fascism is a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion”—I developed the following:
Fascism Worry Checklist
If you answer "true" to four or fewer questions, you live in an ordinary, but likely severely unequal, 21st century capitalist country. If you answer "true" to five and up to seven questions, be worried about the potential for fascism in your country. If you answer "true" to eight or more questions, good luck. And seriously consider joining with other activists in defending the bits of democracy that you have left.
(Answer true or false)
10. The loyalty of the police in defending all people, democracy, and the rule of law is in question, at least in part because the far-right has significant support inside their ranks.
9. A popular political party pushes the idea that a ‘successful’ strong man, often a billionaire, is needed to lead the nation against its enemies, foreign and domestic.
8. My country glorifies the military. Everyone is expected to react with an unquestioning patriotism no matter what it does.
7. Those who profit from waging war have created powerful lobby groups. Their self-interest is to define rivals as enemies who must be "defended" against, justifying ever increased spending.
6. While external "enemies" excuse militarism, internal minority groups have become targets of hate campaigns to justify paramilitary militias who are supposedly "defending" the nation and its values.
5. Specialists who have been trained in propaganda targeting other country’s affairs and in overthrowing "unfriendly" governments are available for hire by domestic politicians.
4. A mass movement to oppose "socialism" can be easily mobilized by the wealthy to defend their "property" against increased taxes or efforts to reduce inequality and provide better social services.
3. Verifiable, objective truth is ignored by growing numbers of people. Instead, they believe "Big Lies" or conspiracy theories, which are becoming more common.
2. A political movement has been created in which loyalty to a leader above all else is the critical test of party membership.
1. Many "important" people, especially the wealthy, no longer trust democracy or believe in elections and are willing to manipulate results to get their way.
How real is the threat of fascism? At a minimum, the extreme right is a threat to the very limited, mostly one-dollar, one-vote democracy that capitalists allow us. Supporters of the system claim capitalism is integral to liberal democracy, but that is absurd. Everywhere fascism has taken power or grown quickly it is because the wealthy and powerful have thrown their support behind it and against democracy. When forced to choose between their "property rights" and democracy, capitalists choose self-interest, which is maintaining their wealth and power. All over the world rich people are abandoning conservative parties in favor of the extreme right or are pushing the traditional parties of wealth to the extreme right.
I wrote the above for a book that I subsequently turned into 43 videos titled Economic Democracy or No Democracy—An Anti Oligarchy Manifesto for the Your Socialist Grandfather YouTube channel. Suddenly it seems much too topical. Urgent even.
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