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Statement Honoring Dr. Mutulu Shakur, 07.13.2023

We, the NY-YCL, are deeply hurt and angered by the passing—or, perhaps, more fittingly, the state-sanctioned murder by medical neglect—of Dr. Mutulu Shakur. Shakur dedicated his life to the unwavering and absolute freedom of all African people. As a young man, Mutulu Shakur aided in the liberation of his people as a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement (an organization dedicated to socialist change), the Republic of New Afrika, and later the Black Liberation Army. Mutulu grounded himself in effecting change within his community and transnationally. Not only was he an unmatched revolutionary leader, but he was also a world-renowned doctor of acupuncture medicine who traveled to China and served as Assistant Director at the Lincoln Community Detox program. Dr. Shakur provided for the Black community, aiding in the treatment of those addicted to heroin using acupuncture medicine—services typically not afforded to poor Black people. Through political education and acupuncture, Dr. Mutulu helped to heal his people, who, as the darker peoples of society, are locked out of every service and opportunity and, otherwise, banished to the outskirts of society and further left to decay. To this day, his founding technique, the 5-point auricular acupuncture protocol, is used and practiced everywhere.

We celebrate and honor the life and seminal legacy of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, as he helped us tear through the tattered veil of capital and white supremacy and breathe a new life of freedom and insight into the lungs of African people, lungs that had been strangled and scrouged by the cadaverous rung of imperialism. Shakur lifted up African people not only through words of liberation but also through his forthright revolutionary praxis and holistic healing methods. Thus, it was no surprise that he was an inspiration to and also the stepfather of one of the most politically aware and prolific wordsmiths of all time, none other than Tupac Amaru Shakur.

The bourgeois state will use the media to tell you that Dr. Mutulu Shakur was a terrorist; they will tell you he was a murderer, but what they won't tell you–as means of strategically obscuring the legacy of our Black revolutionaries and spreading misinformation that seeks to outright physically and historically delete those at the fore of the struggle for Black self-determination from the collective psyches of Black people; those who directly confronted the global capitalist hegemon–is that Mutulu, Mumia, and so many of our vanguards, no matter how much they try to kill them off by denying them medical treatment, or waiting till they only have six months to live–as in the case of Mutulu and Marilyn Buck–fought, unendingly, for our freedom and lived for our freedom, and thus, can not be killed. For us, as Black people, organizers, and activists, it is a reminder that this is what they do to our leaders: murder them and replace them with Black pantomimes of the neoliberal order whose only aim is to rip the arteries of revolutionary consciousness from the chests of Black people; leave us maimed so that within us there is no movement to freedom. so that our voices raise only the faint susurrations of hopelessness and death. There is a saying, however, that when the sages and leaders are killed, their spirit lives on in the hearts and minds of the people. We demand the freedom of Mumia Abu Jamal, Ruchell Magee, Sundiata Acoli, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Jalil Muntaqim, Chip Fitzgerald, Joseph Bowen, Veronza Bowers, Kamu Sadiki, Robert Seth Hayes, Mohamman Geuka Koti, Leonard Peltier, and all of our political prisoners held captive by the empire. They will forever live on in us and through us.