THE OFFICE OF CHIEF OF STAFF

P.O. BOX 25332

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 07101

973-395-0796

July 10, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PANTHERS CELEBRATE ASSATA

CONDEMN DUNBAR’S REMARKS

On Monday, July 16^th, the New Black Panther Party will mark the birthday of political prisoner in-exile, Assata Shakur, with a teach-in called ‘For The Love Of Assata/For The Freedom Of Sundiata.’

It will take place at Waset Kommuniversity, 271 So. 9^th Street (between So. Orange and 13^th Avenues) in Newark at 7p.m.

The teach-in will address the vicious media and government distortions about this valiant freedom fighter and survivor, including those made most recently by the newly appointed superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, Carson Dunbar, and inform the community as to just who she really is.

Dunbar, the first African-American to head the State Police, the first agency to institutionalize racial profiling, recently said that Shakur, also notoriously known as Joanne Chesimard, is a killer who deserves to be behind bars for the rest of her life, and that he believes that any move towards normalizing relations with Cuba should be conditioned upon them turning her over to state authorities. Dunbar made the comments at a press conference for Congressman Steven Rothman several weeks ago. Rothman called for a new congressional bill that he is calling ‘The No Save Haven In Cuba Act.’ The bill says basically that the United States would not recognize any democratically government without Cuba first turning over “fugitives” like Shakur.

Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. On May 2, 1973, in what many say was one of the worst examples of racial profiling, the car she and two other colleagues were riding in was stopped and fired upon by NJ state troopers on the NJ Turnpike in New Brunswick. When it was all over, she was critically wounded. Another colleague Zayd Shakur and a state trooper Werner Foerster were dead. Later, Shakur was tried and convicted along with Sundiata Acoli, the other surviving colleague, by an all-white jury in a very prejudiced and sensational atmosphere for being responsible for Foerster’s death and was sentenced to life plus 30 years. On November 2, 1979, Black Solidarity Day, Shakur was liberated from what is now known as the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, NJ. She has since lived in asylum in revolutionary Cuba.

“It was the current ongoing struggle against racial profiling that got Dunbar his job. You would think that he would have some respect for that and call for a fresh, honest look at previous cases involving this hated practice if for nothing else to restore dignity and trust for that agency that he now presides over because now, it has no trust from our community at all. None. But no, true to pathetic, masterserving form, he pours oil on a fire he should seriously be trying to put out,” exclaimed an infuriated Zayid Muhammad, a long-time supporter of Shakur, and now chief of staff for the New Black Panther Party in the New York-New Jersey Region.

It will also educate the community about Sundiata Acoli, her co-defendent, who is now in his 28th year of incarceration, making him one of the longest held political prisoners in the United States. For more information, please call 973-395-0796.

HOLD THE LINE!…COVER DOWN!…BLACK POWER!…

’Bro. Zayid’ Kazi Angaza Kikongo Muhammad

7/19/01