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Melanie Cervantes
20" x 26 "
4-Color, Handprinted, screenprint Print, Archival Lennox Paper, Printed in Oakland, CA 2010
This is one of four posters I created based on illustrations I made for the forthcoming book, from Microcosm Publishing, Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas. This is a project that members, I among them, from Justseeds Cooperative all contributed to.
"We need the strong medicine of our foremothers to make us well again. We need their medicines to give us strength to fight and the drive to win.” –Assata
On May 2 1973, activist Assata Shakur, was pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot twice and then unjustly charged with murder of a police officer. Assata spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba in exile.
Assata Shakur has been living in Cuba since 1986, after escaping from prison where she was serving a life sentence imposed in a highly disputed trial. Assata was a Black Panther then a Black Liberation Army (BLA) leader in the early '70s, so she was a target of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation.
"Assata Shakur is a Black American folk hero. She is a freedom fighter that escaped the chains of oppression. She made it to the other side. She is a sister that defied the definitions of expected behavior by a Black woman."
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Melanie
Cervantes
Jesus
Barraza