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Posted on Oct 23, 2016
By Chris Hedges
David Duprey /
AP(http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Inmate-Golf-Art/ec980867313e4424bb
091318aaaf87d5/27/0)
Heather Ann Thompson's book "Blood in the
Water(http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/178182/blood-in-the-water-by-h
eather-ann-thompson/9780375423222/ ) : The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971
and Its Legacy" is a detailed study of the inner workings of America. The
blueprint for social control employed before and after the crushing of the
Attica revolt is the same blueprint used today to keep tens of millions of
poor people, especially poor people of color, caged or living in miniature
police states. Thompson meticulously documents the innumerable ways the
state oppresses the poor by discrediting their voices, turning the press
into a megaphone for government propaganda and lies, stoking the negative
stereotypes of black people, exalting white supremacy, ruining the lives of
people who speak the truth, manipulating the courts and law enforcement, and
pressuring state witnesses to lie to obstruct justice. Her book elucidates
not only the past but also the present, which, she concedes, is worse.
"America by the early twenty-first century had, in disturbing ways, come to
resemble America in the late nineteenth century," Thompson writes near the
end of her book. "In 1800 the three-fifths
clause(http://www.blackpast.org/aah/three-fifths-clause-united-states-consti
tution-1787 ) gave white voters political power from a black population
that was itself barred from voting, and after 2000 prison gerrymandering was
doing exactly the same thing in numerous states across the country. After
1865, African American desires for equality and civil rights in the South
following the American Civil War led whites to criminalize African American
communities in new ways and then sent record numbers of blacks to prison in
that region. Similarly, a dramatic spike in black incarceration followed the
civil rights movement-a movement that epitomized Attica. From 1965 onward,
black communities were increasingly criminalized, and by 2005, African
Americans constituted 40 percent of the U.S. prison population while
remaining less than 13 percent of its overall population. And just as
businesses had profited from the increased number of Americans in penal
facilities after 1870, so did they seek the labor of a growing captive
prison population after 1970. In both centuries, white Americans had
responded to black claims for freedom by beefing up, and making more
punitive, the nation's criminal justice system."
On Sept. 9, 1971, prisoners at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate
New York rebelled in the face of intolerable conditions. They were sick of
the racist-fueled violence of the white, rural guards; angry at poor medical
care and the dearth of vocational and educational programs; underfed (the
prison allocated only 63 cents a day to feed a prisoner); unhappy about
their mail being censored, or destroyed if it was in Spanish; living in
poorly ventilated cells with little or no heat or stifling heat; unable to
buy basic commissary items on salaries that averaged 6 cents a day; and
tired of being given only one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper a
month and allowed only one shower a week.
The uprising was not premeditated. It took place when prisoners, trapped
inadvertently by guards in a tunnel that led to the yard, thought they were
going to be given another beating by sadistic correction officers. The
spontaneous uprising took place "because ordinary men, poor men,
disenfranchised men, and men of color had simply had enough of being treated
as less than human," Thompson writes.
Four hundred fifty prisoners had previously staged a peaceful sit-down
strike in the prison's metal shop to protest wages that, as a witness later
testified at a New York state hearing, were "so low that working at Attica
[was] tantamount to slavery." Prisoners had formed committees and sent
respectful letters to prison authorities asking them to address their
concerns. The requests were largely ignored. Despite authorities' promises
that there would be no retribution, those who organized the protests were
put in isolation or transferred to other prisons. The callousness of the
officials was especially unconscionable in light of the fact that the state
had netted huge sums for sales of products made by the prisoners.
After three days of negotiations, in which the prison authorities refused to
grant the rebellious prisoners amnesty, 550 New York state troopers, 200
sheriff's deputies and numerous Attica prison guards were issued
high-powered weapons, including rifles loaded with especially destructive
bullets that expanded on impact, bullets banned in warfare under the Geneva
Conventions. The prisoners had no firearms. The assault force members were
fed a steady diet of lies and unfounded rumors to stoke their hatred of the
prisoners. Black radicals were coming, they were falsely told, to the town
of Attica to kidnap white children, a rumor that led to the closing of the
schools.
Through clouds of CS
gas(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/csgas.html ;) , the assault
force stormed the yard, where some 1,200 prisoners held 42 guards and
civilian staff members. It unleashed a blizzard of gunfire, shooting 130
people. Twenty-nine prisoners and nine hostages died. (One guard beaten by
prisoners in the first moments of the uprising died later in a hospital.)
The assault force, which had done all the killings that day, immediately
began to hide evidence of its crimes. State officials told the press outside
the prison that seven or eight of the hostages had died when the prisoners
slit their throats. They claimed that the genitals of one of the guards were
cut off and stuffed in his mouth. These reports were untrue, but they
dominated the news coverage.
Meanwhile, inside the retaken institution, many prisoners were suffering
from gunshot wounds that would not be treated for days. Some were stripped
and made to run gantlets in which they were beaten by guards with ax
handles, baseball bats and rifle butts. Those singled out as the leaders of
the rebellion were marked with Xs on their backs, forced to crawl through
mud, tortured and in few cases, it appears, executed.
New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and the Nixon White House feared that the
rebellion presaged armed revolution. The scores of dead and wounded were,
for them, a message to the rest of the country-defy us and we will kill you.
Today, any citizen who seriously resists the corporate state can expect the
same response.
Thompson writes, "All of those assembled in the president's office agreed
that while the morning's events made a particularly 'gruesome story,' news
of the slashings and castration would go a long way toward discrediting
America's 'bleeding hearts' like 'the Tom
Wicker(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/tom-wicker-journalist-and-author
-dies-at-85.html?_r=0 ) s of the world.' 'I think this is going to have a
hell of a salutary effect on future prison riots,' Nixon said. 'Just as Kent
State [the May 4, 1970, shooting by National Guardsmen of unarmed students
that left four dead and nine wounded] had a hell of a salutary effect. .
They can talk all they want about force, but that is the purpose of force.'
"
The avalanche of government lies permeates the narrative-not a surprise to
anyone who has reported on the inner workings of power or spent time in our
prisons and marginal communities.
There are heroes in the narrative. Their fate, which is almost universally
bleak, is also instructive. The prisoner Sam Melville, who was serving an
18-year sentence in Attica for setting off explosives in government
buildings to protest the Vietnam War, who taught classes to other inmates
and who researched prison operations to show how the institution cruelly
exploited prisoner labor for profit, was executed by guards after the
uprising, according to other prisoners. So, apparently, was Elliot "L.D."
Barkley, who was in prison for violating parole by driving without a license
and who, although he was only 21, was one of the most articulate
spokespeople for the prisoners. Prisoners such as Frank "Big Black" Smith,
savagely tortured by guards after the uprising, and Bernard "Shango" Stroble
rose up majestically during the revolt to protect hostages and maintain
order, and they fought for justice long after their release from prison.
Civil rights attorneys such as Ernie Goodman and William Kunstler came to
the prisoners' defense.
A few within the governmental system exhibited rare moral courage. Among
them were Dr. John Edland of the Monroe County medical examiner's office,
who refused to falsify autopsy reports and told the public that the hostages
had been killed by state gunfire; Attica guard Michael Smith, who defied his
own fraternity to speak the truth about state abuse; and government attorney
Malcolm Bell, who exposed the state cover-up of the killings by the state
troopers, sheriff's deputies and prison guards. However, most who knew the
truth remained silent.
Edland was especially singled
out(http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2016/09/12/john-edland-at
tica-riot-hero-and-victim/89963672/) for condemnation. He was attacked as
incompetent by state officials and called a clown and, although a
Republican, a radical left-winger. (State troopers were dispatched to local
funeral homes to prevent morticians from informing families of the cause of
death of hostages.) Edland received death threats and other hate mail, was
shunned by the local community and saw state troopers menacingly idle their
automobiles in front of his home. Edland called the day he released the
autopsy findings "the worst day of my life."
When the state decides to isolate, discredit and crush you it has
innumerable ways to do so. The press often is manipulated. Employers
blacklist you. A gullible population is made to believe the caricature of
you as a traitor or an enemy. Such smear campaigns are now directed against
Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
New York State Police Capt. Henry "Hank" Williams oversaw the investigation
into the 1971 assault. This meant that, in Thompson's words, "the main
investigators of the crimes of Attica were those who may well have committed
them." Williams made sure that "nothing related to the shooting-shell
casings, the weapons themselves-was collected." No chalk outlines, usually
required at a crime scene, were drawn to indicate where the bodies had
fallen. No calculations were made regarding bullet trajectories. The yard
where the killings took place was cleaned up under Williams' supervision as
quickly as possible.
Prisoners were threatened with violence or indictment if they refused to
incriminate the leaders of the uprising. The goal was not justice; it was to
punish and isolate the prisoner leadership and protect law enforcement.
"When strong-arm tactics still proved ineffective," Thompson writes
concerning one interrogation, "they switched their approach: should this
witness help them, investigators suggested, they would, in turn, help him
get paroled. In addition to enticing the witness with the possibility of
parole, they also promised to make prison life easier for him in the
meantime."
Scores of prisoners were indicted in connection with the uprising; only one
member of the assault force was charged, with a minor offense. The state's
entire case when it went to the courts was built on a scaffolding of lies
designed to exonerate the assault force and punish prisoner leaders. Jurors,
who saw doctored films and photographs, never knew they were being presented
with fabricated and tainted evidence, including photos of crude knives that
had been planted next to slain prisoners. Witnesses recited stories fed to
them by government investigators.
The state has never admitted wrongdoing for the Attica assault, and
important parts of the record-autopsies, ballistics reports, trooper
statements, and depositions-remain sealed nearly five decades later.
Thompson stumbled onto Attica files in the Erie County courthouse and the
New York State Museum, but since her discovery, she writes, they have
vanished or "been removed from anyone's view."
"American voters ultimately did not respond to this prison uprising by
demanding that states rein in police power," she concludes. "Instead they
demanded that police be given even more support and even more punitive laws
to enforce.
"Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s were all about the politics of the ironic. At
the Democratic National Convention protests of 1968, Kent State in 1970, and
Wounded
Knee(http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/aim-occupation-of-wounded-kn
ee-begins ) in 1973, unfettered police power each time turned protests
violent, and yet, after each of these events, the nation was sent the
message that the people, not the police, were dangerous. Somehow, voters
came to believe that democracy was worth curtailing and civil rights and
liberties were worth suspending for the sake of 'order' and maintaining the
status quo."
Though immediately after the Attica uprising there were minor reforms, these
improvements were soon rolled back. Conditions in prisons today are worse
than those that led to the 1971 revolt. Control of prison populations is
more brutal, more sophisticated and more inhumane. It is doubtful that the
press, unlike at Attica in 1971, would ever be allowed inside a prison
during an uprising to air the voices of the prisoners.
Much of the worst damage was done during the Clinton administration.
President Bill Clinton signed into law, with Republican support, the
draconian 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. It provided
$9.7 billion to build more prisons. By 1995 the prison population exceeded 1
million. It would soon double.
"The fact that so many of these people now in prison had been arrested
because they were drug addicts, mentally ill, poor, and racially profiled
concerned few if any politicians, whether in a statehouse or in Washington,
D.C.," Thompson writes. "Then, to make sure that this now enormous group of
the incarcerated did not resist their deteriorating conditions of
confinement via the nation's legal system as they had done so effectively
both before and after the Attica uprising, in 1996 legislators passed the
Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA)."
The PLRA made it difficult and often impossible for prisoners to use the
courts to protect their Eighth Amendment right not to endure cruel and
unusual punishment.
The New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, who was part of the negotiating
team that tried to resolve the Attica uprising without bloodshed, singled
out white fear as the central issue in the 1971 case. "White fear fixed
itself upon the literal presence of black human beings. Black people, to
whites, were the symbolic representation of the evil in man and thus were
also the handy instruments by which white people could hold themselves
symbolically innocent of that evil." Wicker concluded, "The heart of the
matter was the fear of blackness."
This white fear remains unexamined in America. It allows us to stand by
passively and watch the daily murders by police of unarmed black men and
women. It allows us to maintain a prison system that holds a staggering 25
percent of the world's prisoners, the majority of them poor people of color.
This white fear condemns us as a nation. It perpetuates the evil of white
supremacy. Poor people of color have been robbed of the most elemental forms
of justice and basic constitutional rights. But the state, in the age of
deindustrialization, has no intention of stopping there. These forms of
social control, so familiar to poor people of color, will bear upon all of
us.
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