Black Students Demand UC Berkeley Name A Building For A Cop-Killer

19 Mar, 2015 by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

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Oh, boo hoo! Because you don’t rule the campus, you feel you are discriminated against. I don’t blame Chancellor Dirks in the least for not addressing your list of extortion demands directly. The BSU is acting like a terrorist organization… issuing demands. What is this? The resurgence of the Black Liberation Army? You don’t have the right to demand that the university hire so many black individuals for certain positions. Those that hang others in effigy, should be sternly dealt with. But that doesn’t give you the right to make demands. Especially when it comes to honoring cop-killers and terrorists. She’s no hero… Shakur is a stone-cold killer. Is that who you look up to? Then we have a really serious problem, don’t we?

From WND:

University of California Berkeley’s Black Student Union has released a list of demands issued to the administration, including the renaming of a campus building for fugitive cop-killer and FBI-designated terrorist Assata Shakur.

BSU’s demands follow the hanging of effigies depicting lynchings at various locations on campus in December, BSU member Cori McGowens told the Daily Californian.

The ongoing dialogue between BSU and Chancellor Nick Dirks has focused on efforts to improve recruitment and retention of black students at the university – currently about three percent of the student population. The demands include creation of a resource center for black student development, hiring two full-time black admissions staff members, hiring two black psychologists who understand “the racially hostile campus climate at this university,” increased funding and an initiative to increase the number of black students, faculty and senior staff.

But it is the demand that Barrows Hall – named for a former UC president and anthropologist, and which houses Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies and African American Studies – be renamed for Shakur that is raising eyebrows.

Shakur, whose real name is Joanne Chesimard, was convicted in 1977 for the 1973 murder of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster during a traffic stop, where, during an altercation, she took the officer’s gun and shot him twice in the head as he lay on the ground.

Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army, escaped from prison in New Jersey in 1979 and resurfaced in Cuba in 1984, where she was given political asylum. The BLA is credited with killing more than a dozen police officers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Shakur, placed on the FBI’s Most-Wanted Terrorist list in 2013, is the aunt of late rapper, Tupac Shakur. There is currently a $2,000,000 reward for her capture.

“If we do not receive a written response from Chancellor (Nick) Dirks addressing in detail each of our individual demands as they were presented, by 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, we will understand that the chancellor has not prioritized the dire needs of black students on this campus,” BSU students wrote in a press release.

Tuesday’s deadline passed, with a spokesman for the chancellor saying a letter sent last week outlining projects already in the works to assist black students would stand as Dirks’ response, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. As to renaming a building for Shakur, “No comment” was the response.

BSU members, angry that the administration failed to answer each of their individual demands, has vowed to press on.

“We will persevere until we get what we need and what we deserve,” said Gabby Shuman, co-chair of political affairs for BSU, calling the situation on campus “an emergency … requiring immediate attention.”

McGowens told the Chronicle that “trying to excel academically is immensely difficult while coping with the issue of antiblackness on campus.”

So, the BSU wants to fight racism with racism. How retro. Shakur is in communist Cuba, where she feels right at home with other Marxists and murderers. Emergency, my arse. As far as you ‘deserving’ something – exactly what would that be? To deserve something, you have to work for it, not throw the race card at people. I have serious doubts about you deserving anything at all when you seek to rename a campus building after a cop-killer and terrorist. And if you idolize members of the Black Liberation Army and feel you are revolutionaries, then you don’t belong on campus. You belong in prison.