For Immediate Release
Contact: [email protected]
September 29, 2025
On Thursday, September 25, 2025, our beloved comrade, mother, warrior, truest revolutionary, and lover of the people, Assata Shakur, took her final earthly breath. The entire world feels off-kilter as humanity grapples with living on this planet without her. Her teachings have been our guide. Her words our balm. Her prayers our assurance. As her body sheds, we who remain must also transition. We must be brave enough to experience her differently. Rather than being comforted by imaginings of Assata dancing under the Havana sun, we must learn to look for her in the whirlwind, to feel her watching through every rainbow, and to be enveloped in her omnipresence.
The United States government cornered her, framed her, caged her, made her a fugitive, then named her a terrorist…their insidious lies woven from the same thread used to hunt Mama Harriet, to sever Nat Turner’s head and place on a stake, to rape our grandmothers, and to lynch our grandfathers.
To be Black and free is the greatest threat to white capitalist power. When they captured Mama Assata in 1973 – accusing her of taking the life of a New Jersey state trooper who was gunning for hers – it was an attempt to demonstrate to the world what happens when a “20th century slave” takes their own freedom. Even their courtrooms, cages, and cops were no match for the indomitable spirit of a free Black woman. Kakuya, was conceived in an act of revolutionary love and rebellion while Mama Assata was on trial…new life birthed behind walls meant to crush it.
Assata Olugbala Shakur’s life and freedom is, too, a testament to the power of the people as much as it is to the most remarkable of freedom fighters. When the state convicted “she who struggles for the people” in 1977 and placed her in a cage, her comrades refused to leave her there. The Black Liberation Army rescued her from prison – ultimately sacrificing decades of their own freedom for hers. Everyday people in Pittsburgh and New York made their homes underground railroad stops even in the face of a police state that had placed a bounty on Mama Assata’s head and terrorized neighborhoods in their search for her. Palenques were built across oceans as Fidel Castro and the Cuban people provided protection and sanctuary for more than 40 years.
Mama Assata teaches us that revolution is an imperative…that the system does not reform; it consumes. It does not listen; it silences. Carved out from the concrete of her cell, she reminds us that revolution comes from the will and power of revolutionaries. “Nobody in the world, nobody in history has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” We have to take it. Mama Assata teaches us about long struggle. She teaches us that it is our sacred duty to fight and to win. She teaches us that revolution is an absolute necessity…that “everything must change, especially ourselves.” She teaches us that it is far better to “go crazy” than to “go along.” She teaches us that to love our people must be at the heart of it all. She teaches us what it means to live free.
Even now, as her soul ascends, may our hearts lift her and may our most righteous Ancestors pull her towards them. We call on Baba Sekou Odinga and Baba Mutulu Shakur, on Mama Afeni and Tupac…May her own mothers and grandmothers give her warmth, and may every honorable soul nod at a life well lived and job well done.
And for those who remain…those who dare invoke her name or recite her words…
May we live our lives in a manner that honors her. May we fight bravely and valiantly for our freedom. May we engage fully in a revolution that crushes racism, sexism, colonialism, and oppression. May we forge weapons of mass construction and mass love to change the system and ourselves.
Assata’s passing is not an end; it is a seeding.
It is our duty to fight for freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love and protect one another.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
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Black Lives Matter Grassroots
The mission of Black Lives Matter Grassroots is to support, sustain, and uplift the necessary agitations, mobilizations, community organizing, and initiatives of Black Lives Matter chapters to fulfill our sacred duty to advance Black liberation. #BlackLivesMatter was birthed to end state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Black Lives Matter Grassroots is a collective of 52 chartered chapters globally working on the ground since 2013.
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