To My People By Assata Shakur

In “To My People”, a speech by Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army, explains her frustrations and disappointments on how African Americans were treated and more importantly how she was treated by white authorities in the US. Her story is that she was stopped on the turnpike because of a traffic violation in 1973 in New Jersey by Trooper Foerster. During this traffic stop, Shakur was accused of shooting and killing Trooper Foerster with his own gun. Shakur was soon convicted of first degree murder and quickly fled to Cuba. While in Cuba, she wrote and delivered a speech targeted towards her “brothers and sisters” about how unfair African Americans had been treated in the United States. Assata Shakur in this speech utilized a variety of rhetorical devices to emphasize her frustrations with the accusations by the hypocritical US authorities.

Assata Shakur was born on July 14, 1947 her real name is Joanne Deborah Byron, after she was born her parent divorced. She was living with her mother, aunt and her grandparents in Wilmington North Carolina. As a child she spent time working with her grandparents in a restaurant they own by the beach. Her grandparents instilled in her the love for written word, and she spent a great deal reading to satisfy her imagination. Her family tried to infuse in her a sense of dignity, “you are as good as anyone else”, also not to let anyone said that they’re better than her. Shakur never like her real name Joanne she felt that she was not an African American and she should go back to Africa, because of

He counters his entire intent to inform his audience of uninvited and undeserved discrimination in one line by saying, “The danger that they perceive is not a hallucination. Women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence” (Staples, 395). In this instance, he is subtly making a call to action as well as countering his argument. His goal of putting that line in the story is to insight anger within his own race, to target them and convey to the idea that in order for them to collectively not be viewed as dangerous, they need to wholly reduce the violence.

Assata Shakur was , and still is, well known for participating in black empowerment. After her political asylum in Cuba, Assata Shakur has kept a blog to enforce her beliefs on police brutality and racial issues. During this time, people were still fighting for equal civil rights for the African American community. To be more specific, it was the Black Power Movement. Assata Shakur was writing this speech to encourage and persuade others to fight for the Black Power Movement through any means necessary. Also, at the time the Vietnam War was going on so there was already a lot on America’s plate. By applying a wide range of rhetorical devices, Shakur uses her position as a Black Liberation Army leader to motivate African Americans to fight for the Black Power Movement.

Race has always been an issue,especially in the 1970’s, but it doesn’t help that the government adds more fuel to the fire. In 1977 during a time of social/people movements,like the Black Panthers,Black Liberation Army,etc…, an outspoken and well known Black woman named Assata Shakur was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a state trooper pulled over Shakur and other people in her car for a traffic stop, there was a shootout that left a state trooper dead. No one knows who killed the trooper, but the government convicted Assata Shakur of the first degree murder. Where she later escaped prison and fled to Cuba for political asylum. As told in her speech “To My People”, Assata Shakur ,most notably, uses allusion,metaphors, and logos to highlight the problems in “Amerikkka” surrounding race.

During the 70s, the fight for equal rights and Black power was a ravaging fight. Famous protesters such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Assata Shakur. In particular, Assata Shakur was a leader of the Black Power Movement (BPM). Through her struggles, Shakur educates her audience, this is written on a blog but spoken out loud at the time, on how there is racial bias and injustice. By applying a wide range of rhetorical devices, Shakur uses her position as a Black Liberation Army leader to motivate African Americans to fight for the Black Power Movement.

Overall, the premises of her argument effectively demonstrate that people of color are not directly responsible for their own criminal image which is backed by

Police brutality has been around for decades and now, some communities feel as if African-American people that are killed by police are not getting the justice they should receive. She feels that it "shouldn't be a race thing" and that "all lives matter", as people's death should be a advocated no matter what race, ethnicity or background they come

Three African American women came together and created an campaign in the year of 2013. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi are the three campaign leaders that came together to raise awareness for the deaths of Trayvon Martin who was brutally murdered by a police officer and for the death of George Zimmerman. The organizers of this campaign work with and understand how to take leadership with different types of people in different backgrounds. Their goal was to first focus on black Transgender, Cisgender, women, and so on. The organizers wanted to show that they don’t want to intentionally reproduce these lethal acts against black americans.

In just the past year, a major violent protests have arisen due to the shooting of Mike Brown unarmed African American teenagers and the death of several other African American teenagers. However, violence against African Americans is not new. “Assata: An Autobiography” follows the life of the Black revolutionary Assata Shakur specifically her experience in the criminal-punishment system after she was wrongly accused of shooting a state trooper. Assata is beaten, forced to endure inhumane prison conditions, and repetitively accused of crimes she did not commit, all in order to silence her voice in the Black liberation movement. Assata’s experience is an example of some of the reasons Statement by Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color

A leader, activist, survivor, “rebel”, mother and a black woman, Assata Shakur is a woman who many may have heard about but not too many know her story or what she accomplished. In her autobiography, Shakur really gives a very descriptive perspective about what she has experienced in her life being apart of the civil rights and Black Panther movements.

The suspicion and oppression that Assata and the rest of her Black community were subjected to proved to be obstacles in the lives of many individuals but, even so, such obstacles did not halt their fight for freedom. To those not affected, it may appear as though today the United States has evolved and progressed to be free from these forms of prejudice and racism. However, the absence of explicit segregation and public lynching should not disguise the fact that the economic gap between Whites and Blacks has nearly tripled in the last twenty five years, in the past decade there have been multiple accounts of police and vigilante brutality towards people of color, and that Assata Shakur is the first woman on the United States’s Most Wanted Terrorist list for a crime that she was unjustly prosecuted for and is forced to live out her life as a political refugee in Cuba. Today, corporations such as the Black Lives Matter movement are working relentlessly to put an end to said police brutality and to protect the rights of other discriminated groups, but similar to fifty years ago, a change will not be made overnight. However, the general population of the United States is becoming increasingly more outspoken and intolerant towards acts of unjust in the country and for the first time since the March on Washington in 1963, is beginning to drastically unify to make a change. And, every step that our country takes together in the fight for freedom, the liberation for all of our country’s people grows ever

Even before Donald Trump became president, the idea of a wall at the border of Mexico and the United States caught the attention of the American public. Throughout Trumps presidential race the topic of the wall was the clear solution to immigrations problems in American. The wall, would keep away the immigrants that are currently “harming” our countries economy and culture. When Donald Trump made this statement, he directly made them against the Mexican community of America and of Mexico. He sparked a lot of tension between his believes on immigration and the Hispanic community. With the racist remarks Donald Trump said during his presidential race, the Hispanic community felt betrayed that a racist man has taken office at the White House.

After I finished listening to this song and reading the lyrics, I felt as if it had affected me. It sent a strong message to me (and other teenagers) about the issues that we shouldn’t have with gay marriage or others, or even yourself being gay. One of the lines that effected me the most is “America the brave still fears what we don't know, and "God loves all his children" is somehow forgotten, but we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago. I don't know.” To me this sounds like the bible is being hypocritical. “God loves all his children” is a strong message throughout the bible. But yet people think that if you are homosexual or support gay marriage you cannot be loved by others or by god. It is a sin. By the words “but we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago” it made me feel that we as a human race haven’t moved past these times, or grown to accept things that were not previously accepted. We have not evolved to accept others that are not like ourselves. This made me appreciate the courage that Macklemore has to write a song about this lightly trodden around issue that we are facing today.

Living for the City, written in 1973 by Stevie Wonder, and its genre of music is Soul. This song had a single version that rose to #1 on the Billboard “Hot Soul Singles” chart and also # 8 on the “Hot 100” in 1973. That tells you that this song was very popular at that time. The form of the song is a modified compound AABA. That means, the A sections are made up of one instrumental bridge for each two verses that are performed.