Don’t you ever be ashamed of what you are, it’s ya panther power that makes you a star.
“My mother was a Black Panther and she was really involved in the movement.
Just black people bettering themselves and things like that. She was in a high position in the party which was unheard of because there was sexism, even in the Panthers. All my roots to the struggle are real deep. My stepfather at the time, Mutulu Shakur, he was also a well-known revolutionary. And then my godfather, Geronimo Pratt, he had a top official rank position with the Panthers on the West Coast.
There’s racism, so when the Panthers hit, the government panicked and they felt like the Panthers were detrimental to American society. So they raided every Panthers’ house, especially the ones who they felt like, could do damage as an orator. My mother was seven months pregnant, they put a match to the door and said ‘Fire, Fire!’ And you know it’s like five in the morning so my mother opened the door and they just burst in, put a shotgun to her pregnant belly and put a gun to her head and said, ‘Don’t move, bah, bah, bah, you’re under arrest.’ They treated them like less than humans.
My mother was pregnant with me while she was in prison. She was her own attorney. Never been to law school. She was facing three-hundred-some odd years. One black woman, pregnant, beat the case. That just goes to show you the strength of a black woman and the strength of the oppressed
A month after she got outta prison she gave birth to me. So I was cultivated in prison, my embryo was in prison.”
How can people be considered to have free will if everything is determined by something else that exists outside of yourselves?
