“We usually just blow the heads off white men.’ ”
The miserable death of Joanne Chesimard aka Assata Shakur in the custody of the Cuban Communist government touched off an outpouring of sympathy from the DSA, members of Congress and assorted celebrities. And condemnations largely mentioning Shakur’s role in the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper.
While that’s true, Chesimard/Shakur had actually been involved in a string of robberies and attacks on law enforcement officers to finance the terrorists operation of the Black Liberation Army.
Here’s a particular low point in their career and hers as they robbed a progressive priest and church dedicated to helping poor black people.
Among the radicals was a trio who arrived at Presentation [Our Lady of Presentation Church] one evening asking Powis [Father John Powis] to write a letter for a job-seeking relative just out of jail. “I look up and they have three .45 automatics pointed at me.” He was ordered to open the church safe with its $1,800 in bingo money. “Twice I couldn’t open it. One of them says, ‘We usually just blow the heads off white men.’ ” The safe finally complied. Powis was gagged, hooded, and locked in a bathroom. When the police arrived, they showed him pictures of likely suspects. He recognized one of the robbers. It was Black Liberation Army leader JoAnne Chesimard, a/k/a Assata Shakur. “I didn’t know her, but I had heard that a few weeks before she and others had robbed and killed a white real estate broker on Howard Avenue. I guess I was lucky.”
This was what Chesimard’s racist motto adopted by BLM really meant by “it is our duty to fight for our freedom”.
This is what the DSA supports.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Daniel became CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2025.
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