Kuwasi Balagoon was a New Afrikan Anarchist who viewed Black Americans as a “subjugated nation” that deserved to resist the conditions forced onto them.
By Molly Sprayregen, October 19, 2023
On November 2, 1979, a group of three arrived at Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in Dannemore, New York sometime between one and four pm. Their IDs were checked at a nearby state school so they could visit an inmate in South Hall, a maximum security wing of the prison.
During the guard-sanctioned trip to South Hall, the three visitors took over the prison van transporting them to the unit. In a November 3, 1979 New York Times article, Captain Gordon Hector of the state police revealed, “They came in with guns at the guards’ heads. They got the drop on the guard inside the unit.”
Kuwasi Balagoon, a bisexual New Afrikan Anarchist and member of the Black Liberation Army, is alleged to have been among these three visitors, there to assist in the escape of prisoner Assata Shakur, the alleged “mother hen” of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The revolutionaries who helped her escape were a sub-group of the BLA known as “The Family,” radicals committed to underground life, guerilla warfare, and bank robberies to bolster their cause for Black liberation. Their escape plan for Assata Shakur was successful.
