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FOUNDING MEMBER
P E R S P E C T I V E : S L U G
K’Sisay Sadiki : Growing Up Panther
K’Sisay Sadiki performs her solo show January 31 and February 1 at University Settlement downtown.
BY SUSIE DAY
“As we left the courtroom,
a friend was standing
in the hallway with
K’Sisay, Kamau’s twoyear
old daughter. As Kamau walked
near her, she held out her arms to him.
Kamau took two steps toward her and
the marshals jumped him and began
beating him… I will never forget the
haunting scream of that child as she
watched her father being brutally
beaten.” – Assata Shakur, “Assata: An
Autobiography”
That two-year-old, K’Sisay Sadiki,
is now in her 40s with kids of her
own. She has lived her life in two
worlds. She’s attended prestigious
dance and film schools, holds down
a steady job, pays taxes. And, as the
child of Black Panthers, she’s lived
underground, raised by people dedicated
to overturning white supremacy.
Her father, Kamau, also has a
daughter — K’Sisay’s sister — by Assata
Shakur, who famously escaped
from prison in 1979 and now lives in
Cuba as a “dangerous fugitive,” hunted
by the US government. Kamau is
in a Georgia prison, serving a lifeplus
10-years sentence for the 1971
fatal shooting of a police officer — a
cold case, resurrected in the post-
9/11 world.
K’Sisay tells me about how she’s
making sense of her life.
“I need people to know who my parents
are. Who I am, too, as a woman
who has lived in the background, not
feeling comfortable with sharing my
PHOTO SOPHIA DAWSON
father’s story.”
On January 31 and February 1,
she will perform “The Visit,” her oneperson
show, at University Settlement
in Lower Manhattan. Part of an
installation by the artist Sophia Dawson,
“The Visit” is K’Sisay’s work in
progress, an exploration of her double
reality — and a way to educate people
about her father.
K’SISAY SADIKI: I was born into
activism. Both my parents were Black
Panthers in the Queens branch of the
party. When I was a baby, my father
was arrested for a robbery and served
five years in prison. He wrote me letters,
like, “Oh, my baby’s sick. When I
get out I’m going to be there for you.”
My mom and I would visit my father
when I was a toddler. Once we
went to visit — my mom said he’d gotten
his GED. So I thought we were
there to celebrate something. They
put my mother and me in a room and
said he’d be out soon. But he didn’t
come. My mother and I were there for
hours, so long that I peed on myself
and started screaming. Then they
brought my father in.
My mother didn’t want him to react
with anger: “This is my family —
look what you did to them!” She tried
to calm him down, calm me down,
make the best of the situation. My
mom would always try to make things
brighter. She’d pack picnic lunches.
“We’re going to see your father, then
we’re going to the lake!”
But there are photographs of me as
a little girl, and you can see the stress.
Going to court and stuff, I experienced
trauma. My grandmother told my
mother, “You can’t expose her to that,
you have to make a decision.”
So I was also raised going to art
camps, being exposed to theater,
knowing my family wanted the best
for me: “Whatever your dreams are,
let’s cultivate them.”
SUSIE DAY: Is there’s a similarity
between you as a Panther kid and
kids growing up in the 1950s Red
Scare, whose parents were Communists?
SADIKI: Yeah, we definitely
couldn’t say certain things, and we
were taught a code. At school, I never
stood up to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
That was something my mom
taught me as a little girl.
I went to a predominantly white
school in Queens, and I thought,
“Damn. Why are these teachers so
mean to me? Like they loved their
little white girls, but they hated me.
Then there was me not standing up
to say the Pledge…
My mother was comrades with this
other woman from the Panthers. Her
daughter and I were raised together.
They would dress us up and take
us to Broadway plays and stuff, and
we’d wear these little pink dresses or
whatever. They just liked dressing us
up.
But I was raised around kids of
Panthers, and taught that we were
blood cousins. It was like, okay, we
know we’re different.
DAY: Your father got out of prison
in 1979. In an earlier version of your
show, you talked about him training
you as a kid in Panther drills and calisthenics.
SADIKI: It’s funny, my father did
want me to be this soldier. But my
mom said, “This is a little girl. She
likes dancing school. Your approach
has to be different.”
DAY: Your dad was released about
the time Assata escaped and went
underground.
SADIKI: I barely knew that; my
mom and dad kept some things from
me. I didn’t know that my parents
were being threatened. The FBI was
telling my mom, “We’re going to kidnap
your daughter.” I had no idea. I
lived through a child’s lens.
➤ K’SISAY SADIKI, continued on p.15
January 30 - February 12, 2 14 020 | GayCityNews.com
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