ms: ...One of the terms that's come up from the sixties and seventies, in talking about the leadership of the Black Movement, within the movements in the united states, is that it had a role in radicalizing lots of other parts of the movement. I wonder how you see that -- the leading role of the Black Movement?

assata: ...Well, i think it's logical, and i also think it's correct that the people that are most oppressed, in any given country, should have a great deal to say about the direction that a movement must take, should take etc. ...The ideas and the revolutionary examples of Third World people have been ignored, minimalized, minimized. The contributions of so many revolutionary people have just been overlooked by the european movement, by the white left in the united states...The bankrupt kind of ideology, the kind of stagnation that has been coming out of the european experience, for the last years, shows that something else must be developed. The most oppressed people in the world right now are Afrikans, Asians, and Latin Americans. So, the ideological input of Afrikans, Asians, and Latin Americans is not only important, it is essential. It's necessary because imperialism has reached such a state it's really difficult to separate racism from imperialism; eurocentrism from imperialism, because they're connected. By perpetuating an ideology that is eurocentric, it is also perpetuating an ideological imperialism.

So, in order to destroy imperialism, there must be an ideological movement from the people who are victimized by imperialism. This is not to say that other experiences are not important, and not to say the contributions of european revolutionaries -- Marx, Engels, Lenin -- are not valid, not important. You don't throw them out. But, that must be expanded.

A science, to be a science, cannot be stagnant; it has to grow. If it does not grow, then it becomes a dogma. A science must be something that is constantly expanding, constantly growing, and one of the problems has been that there has been no systematic way in which socialist theory could grow because the dogmatism has just dominated -- for years -- the ideological, and in many ways, practical aspects of the left. That has to be re-thought, and those tendencies have to be thrown out the window, because they don't help and they've done a lot to hinder people's freedom.


**********THE SIG**********

i'm a tru pisces tryna flow in the direction of both of these okplayer quotes:

"I m raising a fuckin angelic being who is going to replenish this fuckin earths cuz in 2G all we fuckin do is talk.....im teachin my seed to turn his spirit inside out and spread beams of green light"
-nebbie

"GOd give me the strength to change the things i can, understanding for those i cannot and the muthafuckin heart to stand up for my beliefs and principles, so that when the government that is suppossed to protect me turns against me and my people we will have the means, the might and the muthafuckin gun power to blow away our oppressors
umm amen"
-earthqueen

and last but not least:

"all things considered, i'd rather be me"
-bfnh