Afeni Shakur Writes About Hip-Hop and the Occupy Movement

On December 14, 2011, a voice that knew protest from firsthand experience spoke out on AllHipHop about the Occupy movement: Afeni Shakur, who by then went by Afeni Shakur-Davis, published an essay about Occupy Wall Street and the role of hip-hop. She understood the movement as an answer to working people’s anger at a system that pursues profit “by any means.”

Capitalism, Jobs and a Smartphone

The problem was not capitalism itself, she wrote, but how it was practiced in America. She pointed to factory work outsourced overseas and to the fact that many African Americans had long struggled to find work, and asked what a smartphone would cost if it were built entirely in the United States.

Turning Anger into Work

Then she became personal. She recalled her time in the Black Panther Party and wrote that her anger had later led her into addiction: “Anger has consequences.” When her son died through violence in 1996, she did not respond with anger or violence. For around 15 years, she had been leading the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, which among other things promoted creativity, conflict resolution, grief counseling, and mentoring for young women. She called these people “the 99 percent.”

Her advice to the movement: turn anger into action, not violence, and do more than wear a T-shirt with the slogan.