Although Shakur undermines the effectiveness of the armed struggle alone, she still believes that actions are needed to change the oppressive reality that minority groups face as they “synthesize dreams and reality”. She idolizes the actions of a 17-year-old boy with a rifle who attempted to defy the power structure with violence and responds to the news of the boy’s death with the regret that she did not have the courage to do the same.

Franz Fanon believes that violence is the only way to achieve freedom from oppression, as the change needs to be irreversible. Assata did not support the use of violence and instead believed that freedom should be achieved through different, though still irreversible, strategies not limited to violence. To Assata, revolution is a process which consisted of fighting against both institutionalized racism and racist ideas that engulf the United States. She believed that education, rather than violence, was the best way to counteract this racism. However, as Assata ages, she begins to understand the use of violence as a viable strategy to implement in the Civil Rights movement. They have no other defense against an inherently violent social justice system characterized by police brutality and inhumane prison institutions. Assata shares a few of Fanon’s ideas, but his rigid principles on violence cannot be directly applied to the prejudiced social climate of the United States because the oppressive societies of colonial Algeria and the United States are not identical.
