Article By  John T. Wills

There is much talk about Cuba since the president changed American policy. One thing of great disappointment is that the agency’s tasked with law enforcement will seek extradition for Assata Shakur exiled there for many years.

I lived through the 1960s and witnessed the excessive efforts government agencies used to destroy black leaders and organizations. When they talk about terrorism, the government failed to address militias or the KKK. In fact, every black person is a political prisoner because our forefathers were kidnapped from our native lands.

Yet, people like Fred Hampton, Bunche Carter, Malcolm X, andDr. King someone we all know as a man of peace were targeted through what was called COINTELPRO. In my view there have been a consistent and sustained assaults on the freedom of people of color though police shootings and abuse, which is a most pressing issue in the African American community.

I won’t rant too much on the recent decision to list the exiled former Black Panther Assata Shakur as the first woman named to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. So I will simply ask that you listen to legendary African American activist, Angela Davis, as well as Shakur’s longtime attorney, Lennox Hinds. Davis, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the subject of the recent film, “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.”

She argues that the FBI’s latest move, much like its initial targeting of Shakur and other Black Panthers four decades ago, is politically motivated. Listen to the facts and see if this is an effort to strike fear and retribution designed to frighten people who are involved in struggles today. Forty years ago may seem like it was a long time ago but slavery ended in 1865, and it took until 1965 for African American’s to use the same bathroom or drink from the same water fountain as whites.

We now are living in the 21st century, and we’re still fighting the very same issues — police violence, healthcare, education, people in prison, and poverty. A professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University, Hinds has represented Shakur since 1973 says this is a political act pushed by the state of New Jersey, by some members of Congress from Miami; with the intent of putting pressure on the Cuban government and to inflame public opinion. You be the judge.

(Democracy Now) Assata Shakur in her own words: Rare Recording of Activist Names to FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List.