Will Obama Sell Assata Out?

Will Obama Sell Assata Out?

http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/will-obama-sell-assata-out/

by Paul Scott
May 9, 2009

Most Americans are not familiar with Assata Shakur. After all, she's
not exactly the type of Black superhero that they parade around
during Black History Month. This is the type ignorance that some
legislators in New Jersey hope will allow them to extradite Shakur
back to the U.S. under the cover of our darkness.

Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard) was involved in a 1973 shootout on
the New Jersey Turnpike that resulted in the deaths of fellow Black
Liberation Army member Zayd Shakur and New Jersey State Trooper
Werner Foerster. Shakur was sentenced to life in prison in 1977 but
was broken out of prison by her comrades in 1979. She has been living
under political asylum in Cuba since 1984.

She still remains on the FBI's Most Wanted List with a million dollar
reward for any snitch willing to give her up to the FEDS. (See the
FBI's Wanted poster for Assata at
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/fugitives/dt/chesimard_jd.htm.)

However, with President Barack Obama seeking to open political
channels with Cuba and ease U.S. restrictions, politicians in New
Jersey have been turning up the heat on the Prez to make the Cuban
government give up Shakur if they want to be in Uncle Sam's good graces.

While the current headlines of "NJ to Press for Return of Cop Killer"
would lead you to believe that Shakur is some heartless street
thugstress that went around shootin' up police stations just for
kicks, the truth about the government repression by which groups like
the Black Panther Party and its underground military arm, the Black
Liberation Army, suffered has never really been told.

We cannot allow the media to even begin discussing Assata Shakur
without putting her struggle in the context of COINTELPRO. The
Counter Intelligence Program was an effort by J. Edgar Hoover's
Federal Bureau of Investigation and its associated agencies to
destroy groups that dared stand against U.S. oppression.

It was under COINTELPRO that Black leadership suffered under "dirty
tricks" that ranged from political assassinations (Chairman Fred
Hampton) to smear campaigns which are too many to even begin to name
here. Even the good Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not immune to
Hoover's "dirty tricks."

Could you really expect Assata Shakur to get a fair trail under such
repressive policies?
According to the late civil rights attorney William Kuntsler in his
book, "My Life as a Radical Lawyer," a law enforcement agent told him
that during Shakur's trial " a member of the New Jersey State
Assembly had gone to the hotel where the jury was sequestered and
talked to them about the necessity to convict." In the book Kuntsler
hints that even he underestimated the lengths that New Jersey law
enforcement would go to get a conviction of Shakur.

Today, those same types of people are at it again. On April 17, New
Jersey Sen. Sean King sent a letter to President Obama asking him to
"delay normalizing relations with Cuba unless they agree to extradite
convicted cop killer JoAnne Chesimard." (Read the letter at
http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/2009/04/LettertoPresObamaSenatorKean.pdf.)

Also, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has been quoted as
saying, "Obama's move to ease sanctions against Cuba is an
opportunity to bring back Joanne Chesimard."

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