A Letter for Tomorrow: in honor of Assata

• Dear Assata,

  Your voice reached me before I saw your face. First a whisper among elders, then a rallying cry. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom... We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Your autobiography sparked a fire in my young soul. For years, your words guided me—unyielding, principled, and rooted in love. You survived unimaginable oppression, labeled a criminal, the first woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. No one could extinguish your revolutionary flame. Even in exile an ocean away, your voice still reached us.

  You showed me that words—our poems, our stories, chants—can be both sword and salve. Can cut through lies and heal wounds. You taught us black boys that revolution isn’t about guns or macho posturing, but transformation. “The power of the people is stronger than any weapon... We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love.” Those words taught me to change the world; I had to change myself, to uproot hatred and plant love. You gave me a new understanding of strength: compassion and creation are as vital as confrontation. I carry those lessons daily, using words to challenge wrong and nurture right.

  You said, “a revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man,” which made me examine the sexism in the movements around me. I realized that if I wanted to stand beside sisters, I had to purge the reactionary, patriarchal thinking I had inherited. Your example demanded that I become a different kind of man—one who could fight oppression without replicating it, one who could listen as fiercely as he shouted. You were among the first elders to show me that revolutionaries are allowed to be human. I remember the passage in your story where you held your baby girl during a prison visit and then returned to your cell and “cried until you vomited.”

  Assata, your legacy lives in many of us. Every time we raise our voices or write for justice and humanity. We feel your hand on our shoulders. We have whispered your words to ourselves in moments of doubt, shouted them aloud in moments of triumph. We have told others about how a woman with unshakeable love for her people taught us to fight.

  Now you have joined the ancestors, a fierce warrior welcomed among them, and we mourn you even as we honor you. But you are not gone. You live on in our roar, our prayers, in our classrooms and marches, in every bold act that chips away at oppression. You are finally free.

  In love and triumph—rest in power—live in peace, Mama Assata.

• Everyone is problematic to a cause

• Everyone is a hero to a cause

• Water.