The Pen is a Weapon…

For one who is oppressed and has a conscious mind the act of writing is a subversive act. This especially applies to someone in prison trapped behind enemy lines.

The art and desire to write, like the desire to scream, must come from a place, a space of liberation. A liberatory act of resistance.

Writing for me has always been therapeutic, a salve against the blows and wounds inflicted by abusive power. It has also been a tool, a weapon if you will, to bludgeon and beat back the beast who strives to steal my mind and crush my soul while destroying my spirit and will to live and/or fight.

When I was young and my approach to fighting my battles were always physical. I never knew that little letters matched together to form words and sentences could have the power of an atom bomb. The power to shape minds, move mountains and topple oppressive regimes.

Who knew that men n women with fancy titles, in skirts and ties, with an array of weapons and devices at their fingertips would plot, plan and scheme on how to silence those words, to erase, to delete, to prohibit the writing or speaking of those words. Tyranny knows no bounds.

Why do such ppl fear such from an old man trapped in a concrete box behind a solid steel door? Because those little tiny letters, characters that created words that leads to sentences and paragraphs give birth to knowledge.

Knowledge in the hands of the oppressed, the dispossessed, the disinherited, the disenchanted is like kryptonite to those who wield oppressive power.

Free your mind and the rest will come!!

Dare to Struggle – Dare to Win

– Shaka Shakur
Shaka Shakur.1996207@jpay.com

Featured photo: AmĂ­lcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (left) seated next to Fidel Castro at the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January, 1966, on the 7th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. This is where Cabral delivered his famous speech, “The Weapon of Theory.”

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