"The reward for the capture and return of a fugitive member of a black militant group convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper was doubled to $2 million on Thursday, the 40th anniversary of the bloody gunbattle.
The FBI also announced it has made Joanne Chesimard, now living in Cuba as Assata Shakur, the first woman on its list of most wanted terrorists."
"Chesimard, a member of the violent Black Liberation Army, was convicted of the 1973 murder of state trooper Werner Foerster during a traffic stop. The BLA was responsible for killing more than a dozen police officers in the 1970s and ‘80s, said agent Aaron Ford of the FBI’s Newark division.
According to NJSP Superintendent Col. Fuentes, Foerster and his partner stopped a car carrying Chesimard and two cohorts on the New Jersey Turnpike for a broken tail light. When the troopers approached the car, a gunfight ensued and both troopers were injured. Chesimard then took Foerster’s gun and shot him twice in the head as he lay on the ground.
She was convicted in 1977 but escaped from prison in New Jersey in November 1979 with the help of accomplices. She spent the next few years living in safe houses, two of which were in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, before surfacing in Cuba in 1984, Fuentes said."
I have some recollection of this, having grown up in NJ during the '70s.
But perhaps the FBI and the NJSP have the story wrong.
Democracy Now! recollects the incident differently:
"Assata Shakur, the former Joanne Chesimard, was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. She was convicted in the May 2, 1973 killing of a New Jersey police officer during a shoot-out that left one of her fellow activists dead. She was shot twice by police during the incident. In 1979, she managed to escape from jail. Shakur fled to Cuba where she received political asylum. She once wrote, "I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color."
No mention of her executing a New Jersey State Police Officer. I suppose Amy Goodman doesn't see that as germane. Or perhaps she things Officer Foerster shot himself twice in the head.
Back in the day, the cool kids in the BLA, the Black Panther Party and the Weather Underground had fun shooting police, robbing banks and bombing buildings. Today, those still living in the US who have been released from prison have found good gigs at US Universities. Angela Davis at UC Santa Cruz, for instance, or Bill Ayers at University of Illinois at Chicago or Kathy Boudin who is now a professor at Columbia. And naming their children after their old friends.
"Obama mentor Bill "Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn [have] raised three children. One is named Malik (the Muslim name of Malcolm X). Another is named Zayd (after Zayd Shakur, a Black Liberation Army revolutionary who was killed while driving the cop-killer JoAnne Chesimard — a.k.a. Assata Shakur — to a hideout)…"
So, Ayers, leader of the Weather Underground, named a child after Zayd Shakur, a leader of the BLA, who was killed helping JoAnne Chesimard, a cop killer escape. Ayers gang and Chesimard's collaborated in a hold up of a Brinks armored car in which two people were killed. An accomplice of Ayers helped Chesimard escape from prison.
More recently, Ayers has been teaching young people who aspire to be teachers. He has, however never disavowed his actions or beliefs.
He also helped to launch the political career of the President of the United States.
Hardly two degrees of separation.
But wait, there's more:
Common is a rapper, or poet or whatever. I can't say. But he must be pretty good for Michelle Obama to invite him to the White House to perform. Common joined a distinguised list of musical artists invited to perform in the White House, including such luminaries as, The United States Marine Band, John Philip Sousa, Scott Joplin, Al Jolson, The Metropolitan Opera, Duke Ellington Van CliburnVladimir Horowitz, Leontyne Price, Mikhail Baryshnikov with Patricia McBride, Mstislav Rostropovich and Andres SegoviaMstislav Rostropovic, violinists Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern, and the Harlem Boys Choir.Aretha FranklinStevie WonderJustin Timberlake
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