Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, Consultant , Insitute for Development of Pan African Policy(Ghana), Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, Campaign to End the New Jim Crow, Dr. Cornel West, Prof. Princeton Univ., public intellectual, author and activist
40th anniversary of the Attica Rebellion and Massacre and the Struggle Today Against the New Jim Crow with . Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, Consultant , Insitute for Development of Pan African Policy(Ghana), a 43 year veteran of the Black Liberation and Pan-African Movements . Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, Campaign to End the New Jim Crow . Dr. Cornel West, Prof. Princeton Univ., public intellectual, author and activist
Forty years ago, September 9, 1971, inmates in New York's Attica Prison began a protest against jail conditions that ended on September 13, as one of the bloodiest days in the 20th century in the U.S. Troopers shot indiscriminately over 2000 rounds of ammunition, and 29 prisoners and 10 state personnel would die. After the shooting stopped, police beat and tortured scores of prisoners, 90 of the surviving prisoners were seriously wounded but were initially denied medical care. The state would originally claim that all of the guards had died at the hands of the inmates. The New York Times reported on its front page that the throats of all of the guards were slashed. But it was lies, the guards as well as the prisoners who were deemed expandable had been shot dead during the raid.
The Attica uprising is an under-commemorated historic event. Millions, watched the drama, from interviews with the inmate leadership all the way to the climactic helicopter gunship assault, which was as ruthless and one-sided as anything that was coming out of Vietnam. While the legacy of the Attica uprising, includes the establishment of Prisoners Legal Services, and the Prisoners Rights Project, it also includes the Rockefeller Drug Laws. The lasting lesson of Attica is that little will change until current and former inmates, many times more numerous than in 1971,again take their destinies into their own hands, as many are doing, and continue to organize themselves and we in our communities follow suit in a political fight to roll back the prison state in our lifetimes, inspired by the sacrifice of the heroic Attica Brothers.
produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash
please notify us if you plan to broadcast this program - knash@igc.org
![<?php echo $config['site_title']; ?>](/static/images/rp-navimg.gif)
![Support the <?php echo $config['site_title']; ?>](/static/images/support.png)
