When I went to visit Jon’s grave a couple of weeks ago, JR handed me a piece of paper and said, “look what they put on the bulletin board of my job.” JR works security, so I was pretty interested to see what it was. Turns out it was a wanted poster for Joanne Deborah Chesimard, a name that looked incredibly familiar to me. While perusing the jillion of aliases, I came across the one that made it all connect–Assata Shakur.
It seemed odd that her poster would just appear now. First, she’d been wanted for more than twenty-five years. The other strange thing was that she’s been in Cuba for as long as nearly anyone remembers. Why put her poster up in DC?
Today, we found out why. ‘Twas a preliminary PR push.

The New Jersey State police announced Thursday they were naming a stretch of the Jersey Turnpike after Werner Foerster, the officer that was killed with Shakur, Zayd Malik Shakur, and Sundiata Acoli were pulled over in 1973. To commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the incident, the state announced today that the reward for Assata’s capture had been upped to $1 million. (Also, considering there are serious ambiguities when it comes to this incident, the language used by this writer is seriously loaded. Outside of conviction, know that most of these assertions are seriously disputed, making it difficult to take lines like “cop killer” as gospel.)
Political grandstanding is beautiful, ain’t it?
All this can be is grandstanding. Assata is in Cuba, a nation with which the United States does not have an extradition treaty. The only person that could really turn her over at this point is Fidel Castro, and it’ll take more than a mil to make Fidel jump, Jack. I’m not quite sure what the state is trying to do with this one–former Gov. Whitman was trumpeting this cause in ’98–but this just seems strange.
Or is it deeper than that?
Think about this…Fidel’s clearly closer to death than birth. Most think Fidel’s brother Raul will be his successor, but he’s pretty old, also. Someone more apprised of the Cuban political network could answer this better than me, but there’s no telling what will happen when someone not named Castro’s in charge. The embargo has been crippling, and I don’t know how likely it is that someone not directly associated with the revolution will have the resolve to perservere in spite of the trade restrictions.
So when that day comes, when the U.S. starts entertaining the idea of establishing a stronger relationship with Cuba, who would be surprised if Assata Shakur is a bargaining chip?
That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. All today’s ceremony did was bring greater awareness to the state’s qualm with Shakur, but there’s no way that an increased reward will bring Assata any closer to U.S. soil. When a source told SOHH.com that, “our hope is that she has less friends at $1 million,” I don’t know what friends he’s talking about. Unless a Cuban baseball player is going to bring her in his suitcase to a minor league ballpark, that mil is useless. This is building toward something bigger.
(To find out more about Assata, run a Google. There’s a lot of stuff, if you’re not familiar with the story. Just get your learn on, but know this is one of those tricky felony murder situations.)
Whether you think she’s guilty or not–there’s a conviction on one side and some shaky evidence on the other–it’s hard to deny that upping the ante serves little purpose other than bringing publicity.
We’ll just have to wait to see what the publicity’s good–or bad–for.