{"product_id":"assata-shakur-quote-communists","title":"Assata Shakur QUOTE","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eAssata Shakur’s observation that we are taught from an early age to oppose communism without having the faintest idea what it is, and that only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is, comes from Assata: An Autobiography. In the book she traces her own awakening from a young woman who absorbed the anticommunist lessons of school, television, and the Cold War to a revolutionary who questioned them. She recalls how, as a student, she found herself defending American policies she barely understood. She came to realize that her ideas about the world, and about who her enemies were, had been handed to her by the very system that oppressed her.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eAnticommunism has been one of the most powerful weapons of the American ruling class. During the Red Scares, from the Palmer Raids to McCarthyism, it was used to purge unions, blacklist artists, and jail and deport organizers. Abroad, it justified wars, coups, and mass killings, from Korea and Vietnam to Guatemala, Indonesia, and Chile. At home, the FBI used the charge of communism to target the civil rights and Black liberation movements, branding Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black Panther Party as threats to national security. Teaching working people to fear communism without understanding it has been a way to keep them from imagining any alternative to capitalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eAssata’s words are a call to think for ourselves and to look at who benefits when we are taught to fear and hate. The same lessons are repeated today against Cuba, against China, and against socialist movements everywhere. Refusing to accept an enemy chosen for us by those in power is the beginning of political consciousness, and of the solidarity that the oppressed of the world need in order to get free.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eprinted on acid-free, premium matte-photo paper\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"a-size-large a-spacing-none\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-size-large product-title-word-break\" id=\"productTitle\"\u003epaper weight + thickness: 250\/m² \/ 66lbs \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-size-large product-title-word-break\"\u003e*frame not included*\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Color Collective Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41486273282219,"sku":"","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0277\/7458\/2882\/files\/ASQUOTE11x17SQUAREPosterFrameMockUp_322af242-a4a3-4326-9f09-ba5859ada8c5.jpg?v=1696980965","url":"https:\/\/anotherworldpress.org\/products\/assata-shakur-quote-communists","provider":"Another World Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}