Her blood will forever stain the cells in the trenches. It was 1995 and I was 17 years old in a jail cell when I learned that the police and correctional officers locked her up in a men’s prison and beat her while she was pregnant. I had never seen beauty so brave while being brutally beaten. She protected her flower and remained sturdy until she was liberated by her comrades. Then she fled to Cuba. Cuba has always been an inferno where revolutionaries are tried and rescued by the fire. Within one of those flickers of a flame, Assata breathed and told me to save the flower.
