Attica unsealed
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
A headline in an upstate New York newspaper threw me back 42 years, to a time I will never forget, and to a massacre I hope to never see repeated.
State attorney general seeks to unseal long-secret volumes on Attica prison tragedy
“The passage of time has made clear that – like the shootings at Kent State, the violent police attacks on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s, the My Lai massacre and the Watergate scandal – Attica is more than just a profoundly tragic event; it is an historic event of significance to generations of Americans,” State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s court papers argue in trying to end the permanent seal that courts ordered for the documents.
“Attica was a tragic event in the history of our state,” Schneiderman said in a statement provided to The Buffalo News. His office has asked the State Supreme Court in Wyoming County to release the remaining approximately 350 pages of a 1975 report that some families hope will bring at least more closure regarding the revolt’s death toll.
“It is important, both for families directly affected and for future generations, that these historical documents be made available so the public can have a better understanding of what happened and how we can prevent future tragedies,” the attorney general said.
The article concludes with:
In 1972, the New York State Special Commission on Attica wrote, “With the exception of Indian massacres in the late 19th century, the State Police assault, which ended the four-day prison uprising, was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.”
The documentary,
Criminal Injustice:Death and Politics at Attica, co-produced and directed by David Marshall, co-produced and written by Chris Christopher, tells parts of the story many people are still unaware of.
"Rockefeller pulled the trigger, Nixon Gave him the blessing"
In September of 1971, the infamous prison rebellion began at the Attica State Correctional Facility in upstate New York—a dramatic civil rights protest that ended with Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordering more than 600 state troopers to storm the prison and retake it with force. As a result of this forcible retaking, 39 people were shot to death—hostages and inmates alike—and scores of other prisoners were severely wounded and tortured for days.
Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica brings this historical event to life in new and startling ways. Based on interviews of eyewitnesses who waited four decades to open up and share their stories, as well as newly discovered documents, Criminal Injustice sheds new light on what happened at Attica from September 9th to 13th, 1971, and the role played by local, state, and federal officials. This film raises important new questions about the needless deaths, the White House’s involvement, and the influence of Nelson Rockefeller's political aspirations on decisions made before, during, and long after the controversial and deadly event.
Forty years after this cataclysmic and highly charged event, filmmakers found witnesses willing to speak with new candor that adds depth to, and often alters, the historic record. The film includes the final interview regarding Attica given by New York Times reporter Tom Wicker, an on-the-scene negotiator who later documented his experiences in the book A Time to Die; Malcolm Bell, the special prosecutor turned whistle blower; Dr. Heather Thompson, the nation's leading academic authority on the Attica prison uprising; as well as inmates, former hostages, law enforcement officers, and others.
Two groups have been pushing for the unsealing of the records for a long time. The families of the guards and former inmates who died, most mowed down by bullets from helicopters sent in by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Many of you who read this today were not even alive at the time. But for those of us who were, it was one of the most horrific events we lived through. For those of us who were working with prisoners and prison injustices even more so. These were not anonymous "prisoners". They were our sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins, lovers, husbands and former neighbors, sent "upstate" (as happened to so many of our kin, and still does) to be warehoused in a brutal facility.
Two years ago, The Nation, posted this piece.
The Attica Prison Uprising: Forty Years Later
The prisoners filling the cells of New York's Attica prison in 1971 faced inhumane conditions. They earned 56 cents per day for manual labor in searing workshops, were only allowed one bar of soap a month and could only shower once every two weeks. They were not allowed to read what they wanted to read and there was no due process in parole hearings. The prison population was largely black and Hispanic, controlled by an all-white guard staff. After years of agitation by civil rights activists and the black power movement, the authorities across America were beginning to push back.
When tempers reached a boiling point on September 9, the prisoners erupted in a full-fledged rebellion, taking over the prison and holding it for four days, along with several guards who had been taken hostage. But when the negotiations broke down over the point of amnesty for violence conducted during the take-over of the complex, the mood in and outside the prison soured. By the time state troopers and police forces had retaken Attica by force on the morning of September 13, ten hostages and twenty-nine inmates had died.
In this video produced by The Nation's Frank Reynolds and Liliana Segura, lawyer Elizabeth FInk, former national guardsman Tad Crawford and former Attica prisoners Carlos Roche and Joseph "Jazz" Hayden recount what happened during those days forty years ago, and the repercussions still being felt from the uprising.
The Rochester NY newspaper,
Democrat and Chronicle, just featured two people, Frank “Big Black” Smith and Dee Quinn Miller—Frank, a former inmate, and Dee, the daughter of Bill Quinn—a guard slain during the massacre.
Watchdog column: Prison riot's scars connected two very different people
Frank was an inmate at Attica when the riot erupted, a bear of a man — as his nickname implies — who’d been jailed for robbing an illegal craps game in New York City. He was wrongly identified as an instigator of the riot, but did become a leader — providing security for the inmates and the hostages — during the standoff that lasted four days. After the violent retaking of the prison on Sept. 13, 1971, Frank was singled out by police and others who’d stormed the maximum-security facility. He was beaten and laid out on a table with a football squeezed between his chin and throat. Lit cigarettes were dropped upon him, and he was told he’d be killed if he allowed the football to slip free.
He survived the torture, and upon his release became a lead plaintiff in an inmate lawsuit against the state of New York for the bloody retaking and its brutal aftermath.
Dee Quinn Miller was only 5 during the Attica riot. Her father, William “Billy” Quinn, was a corrections officer who valiantly tried to head off rampaging inmates, only to have a prison gate give way and topple upon him. He was beaten by prisoners, and died two days later at a Rochester hospital. Later in life Dee decided she wanted to learn more — much more — about her father. She’d heard little of his life, or his death. Sometimes she and her sisters would be asked to leave history classes if the riot was expected to be a topic.
At the time, I was a member of the Young Lords Party (YLP), and we had a YLP chapter inside Attica, as did the Black Panther Party. The inmates
issued a list of demands, along with 15 proposals to address changing the brutal system.
They specifically asked for members of our leadership to be part of that process, and called for a civil rights lawyer, and for journalists to come to the table.
Their 5th demand was:
We urgently demand immediate negotiation thru Wm. M. Kunstler, Attorney-at-Law, 588 Ninth Ave., NYC, Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve of Buffalo, the Solidarity Committee, Minister Farrakhan of MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, Palante, The Young Lords Party Paper, the Black Panther Party, Clarence Jones of the Amsterdam News, Tom Wicker
of NY Times, Richard Roth of the Courier Express, the Fortune Society, David Anderson of the Urban League of Rochester, Blond-Eva Bond of NICAP, and Jim Ingram of
Democrat Chronicle of Detroit, Michigan. We guarantee the safe passage of all people to and from this institution. We invite all the people to come here and witness this
degradation, so that they can better know how to bring this degradation to an end.
Previously, in July, the Attica Liberation Faction had issued a
Manifesto. It opened:
We, the men of Attica Prison, have been committed to the New York State Department of Corrections by the people of society for the purpose of correcting what has been deemed as social errors in behaviour. Errors which have classified us as socially unacceptable until reprogrammed with new values and more thorough understanding as to our values and responsibilities as members of the outside community. The Attica Prison program in its structure and conditions have been enslaved on the pages of this Manifesto of Demands with the blood, sweat, and tears of the inmates of this prison.
The program which we are submitted to under the façade of rehabilitation are relative to the ancient stupidity of pouring water on a drowning man, inasmuch as we are treated for our hostilities by our program administrators with their hostility as medication.
In our efforts to comprehend on a feeling level an existence contrary to violence, we are confronted by our captors with what is fair and just, we are victimized by the exploitation and the denial of the celebrated due process of law.
In our peaceful efforts to assemble in dissent as provided under this nation’s U.S. Constitution, we are in turn murdered, brutalized, and framed on various criminal charges because we seek the rights and privileges of all American People.
In our efforts to intellectually expand in keeping with the outside world, through all categories of news media, we are systematically restricted and punitively remanded to isolation status when we insist on our human rights to the wisdom of awareness.
Those of us on the outside who were called went. Here is one person's story.
On September 9th, 1971, the brothers incarcerated in Attica stood tall and demanded their human rights. G.I. and Juan “Fi” Ortiz from the Y.L.P.’s central committee joined the national team of negotiators from outside the prison walls. When the negotiations failed and the negotiating committee was ordered out of the prison, G.I. refused to leave the prison yard. He had decided to die with his brothers. Those brothers were the ones who forced him out, because in their words “if anyone had to leave the yard it was G.I. because he was the only one there that day that could tell the world about the hell they were living in Attica”
The world was told, and told again. Yet even after investigations and lawsuits, there are questions that remain unanswered.
Attica is All of Us has published Attica Prison Uprising: 101, a short primer, with the history, documents, and events that took place during and after the massacre.
The Attica Revisited website, is another important source of information.
With the cooperation of the New York State Archives and the Pacifica Foundation, we have gathered together an extensive collection of audio, video, and textual records of the Attica rebellion—including written transcripts and audio recordings of the McKay Commission hearings as well as dozens of audio documentaries produced by the Pacifica Foundation. The documentaries contain many hours of interviews with key actors in and observers of the drama played out in September of 1971. We have also asked historians to contribute their perspectives on the story of Attica. We hope you find these resources useful to understanding the history of the event and the history of New York and American penal institutions in general.
The time has come - for the records to be opened.
You can contact New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, to express support:
General Helpline: 1-800-771-7755
TDD/TTY Toll Free Line: 1-800-788-9898
Office of the Attorney General
The Capitol
Albany, NY 12224-0341
press office email
NYAG.Pressoffice@ag.ny.gov
Muhammad Ali - Attica
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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30 years later after the U.S. invasion. Miami Herald: Grenada - wounds remain.
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Some call it the intervention. Others refer to it as the invasion.
Officially it’s known as Thanksgiving Day — the anniversary of the morning 6,000-plus U.S. soldiers landed on the sandy beaches of an almost forgotten speck in the eastern Caribbean to oust a Marxist regime that had executed the island’s charismatic left-wing prime minister.
But 30 years to the day American troops arrived to restore calm, the people of Grenada are still searching for peace.
“I don’t think as a nation we have done enough to facilitate national healing,” said Anne Peters, who survived the Oct. 19 executions that sparked the U.S. military involvement ordered by President Ronald Reagan.
Peters, a teacher, was with Prime Minister Maurice Bishop in his final hours. Bishop had been placed under house arrest by members of his political party but later freed by demonstrators, Peters among them. Together Bishop and the demonstrators took control of the military barracks —where Bishop and members of his cabinet were later lined up against a wall and shot.
“On that morning they [the U.S. troops] came, I didn’t really care who came, whether they were from Jupiter or from Mars,” said Peters, who was shot during the attack. “I just needed to be relieved of the pain and suffering. But then I said, ‘You came, did what you had to do and now leave us alone.’ ”
Map indicating the location of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles.
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Defeats last year jolted both the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United Nations into action, bringing new leadership and vigor to the fight. New York Times: A Reason for Hope in Congo’s Perpetual War.
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Rocket after rocket ripped across the sky. By Saturday evening, after two straight days of pitched battle with artillery, tanks and mortars, the Congolese Army had driven the M23 rebels out of the strategic town of Kibumba.
“We are victorious,” sang ecstatic soldiers from the back of a truck as dusk fell. “We are the winners.”
The officers were more circumspect.
“It’s not finished yet,” said the commander, Maj. Gen. Bahuma Ambamba, adding that the area was still being cleared.
Still, the battle was a dramatic turnaround from barely a year ago, when the rebels had the upper hand. Ill-disciplined, corrupt and often drunk, the Congolese soldiers were only somewhat more popular than the mutineer rebels who had taken up arms against them.
Last fall, after the rebels briefly overran Goma, the regional capital and a city of one million people, the United Nations peacekeeping forces here were exposed as little more than blue-helmeted mannequins.
That bitter defeat jolted both the Congolese government and the United Nations Security Council into action, bringing new leadership and vigor to the long war in eastern Congo.
Congo recalled dozens of officers to the capital, Kinshasa, and streamlined the command structure. The United Nations authorized an intervention brigade to bolster the peacekeeping force and put in charge a Brazilian general known for battling street gangs in Haiti.
Pete Muller for The New York Times.
Momentum Shifts in Congo’s Battle Against Rebels: Until last summer, rebels had the upper hand in their battle against the Congolese government. But the government, backed by the United Nations, has brought new leadership and vigor to the fight.
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Chinese businessmen in Africa get the attention, but Indians are not far behind. Economist: Elephants and tigers.
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ABHIJIT SANYAL is sitting on a beach-chair watching frothy waves roll in from the Indian Ocean. He arrived in Tanzania a year ago after a career in his native India with Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant. ChemiCotex, an industrial company in Dar es Salaam, hired him as chief executive to oversee the expansion of its “tooth-and-nail business”, which dominates the Tanzanian market for dental care and metal goods.
“A lot of the challenges here are familiar to someone like me from India,” he says. “And so are the solutions.” Distribution is hampered by poor infrastructure, as is the electricity supply. Ancient and modern manufacturing processes co-exist uneasily. Most customers are middle- and upper-class; the rest are too poor.
What surprised Mr Sanyal when he arrived was how often people in Tanzania mistook him for a local. “On a new continent you expect residents to recognise you instantly as an outsider—but not here.” East and southern Africa host large populations of people from the subcontinent, mainly India. Most distributors of Samsung goods in Kenya are Indian. Many of their ancestors came as railway-workers and traders in the early 20th century. The rupee was then east Africa’s main currency. Mahatma Gandhi spent two decades in South Africa and Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, backed African nationalist movements in the 1950s. Until 1999 India’s trade with Africa exceeded China’s. “It’s not called the Indian Ocean for nothing,” says Mr Sanyal.
The Chinese have arrived en masse since the turn of this century and have quickly come to be seen as dominant investors. But Indians are far from cowed. A new wave is crossing the ocean, some coming alone or as salarymen, working for or with locals, even managing them. Cities such as Dar have fast-growing Indian expatriate communities. The charge is led by Indian private-sector behemoths such as Bharti Enterprises, Essar and Tata. Rather than focusing on trading goods, they increasingly invest in the continent. Bharti Airtel bought an Africa-wide mobile phone network in 2010 for $10.7 billion.
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A media/tech start-up generating a lot of buzz. Black Enterprise: Tech Startup of the Week: GroupFlix Offers New-Age TV Viewers a Much Needed Alternative.
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Television viewing has changed tremendously with the rise of social media. The social media and TV-viewing interaction is not only keeping viewers, specifically younger viewers, engaged but it’s driving interest in shows. A recent consumer survey, conducted by Horowitz Associates, revealed that 25% of 18-34 year old broadband Internet users posted status updates and comments related to shows on social media.
It’s this consumer behavior widely-known as second screen viewing that sparked James Norman’s latest tech venture, GroupFlix. The San Francisco-based startup launched in mid-September and is already generating buzz around its new-age viewing model. Based on engagement surrounding a particular show, the online platform provides TV viewers with their preferred shows at an affordable rate. The streaming service, which is currently in beta, offers its subscribers shows from premium channels and the premier studios. GroupFlix is currently in talks with Warner Bros. Entertainment and Sony Pictures, noting that many of the early stage startup’s potential partners are excited about their innovative model.
If you’re wondering how GroupFlix works— and how it differs from Netflix, Hulu, Apple, or Amazon—users start by picking a TV show; if enough subscribers request the show, engaging in dialogue around the show, the show will be available “within 24-hours of TV airing.” The monthly subscriptions will be available in the $8-$10 range (per show). GroupFlix will take a revenue share of the monthly payment, and will receive payment from partners based on data provided.
The Detroit native spoke with BlackEnterprise.com about what GroupFlix offers that competitors like Amazon and Apple don’t, how the platform infuses social into the mix and what’s next for the NewME grad’s company.
Founded by James Norman, GroupFlix offers its subscribers shows from premium channels (Image: GroupFlix)
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Lupita Nyong'o is poised to break through one of Hollywood's glass ceilings: romantic leading lady. The Root: Budding Dark-Skinned Female Superstar?
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12 Years a Slave is being hailed as the front-runner to sweep the next Academy Awards. In addition to Chiwetel Ejiofor's powerful performance and Steve McQueen's forceful direction, there is Lupita Nyong'o's haunting turn as a slave named Patsey. Nyong'o's ability to convey Patsey's grace and humanity, regardless of the abuse and degradation she endures, affirms her status as one of the most gifted actresses to grace the screen in recent memory.
Nyong'o's performance has been universally praised by critics, but even if she doesn't manage to win an Oscar (although she deserves one), she may end up securing something more valuable: a place in history as one of Hollywood's first dark-skinned romantic leading ladies.
New York magazine called Nyong'o "gorgeous" and the site's commenters went wild, with many of them describing her as "beautiful" and "stunning." The Huffington Post dubbed her a "style star," citing her "natural beauty" and "stunning" looks. Perhaps the biggest testament to Nyong'o's official arrival as a major force in beauty and fashion is this: She was recently the subject of coverage in the beauty bible known as Vogue magazine.
Nyong'o is certainly not the first black beauty to make it big in fashion or movies. But if she truly succeeds at both, she will be the first black beauty like her who has really made it. The black actresses who have emerged as true leading ladies in Hollywood tend to fit European standards of beauty, among them Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Halle Berry and Paula Patton.
Lupita Nyong'o (Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Loss and separation and a long walk across a far bridge to an empty bandstand in a forgotten park. A coastal wind blows through juniper and pine, conjuring the scent of a distant past. Waves crashing on the rocks below the precipice beat out a steady and familiar rythmn; and memory becomes a fading melody.
Blues for Almost Forgotten Music
I am trying to remember the lyrics of old songs
I’ve forgotten, mostly
I am trying to remember one-hit wonders, hymns,
and musicals like West Side Story.
Singing over and over what I can recall, I hum remnants on
buses and in the car.
I am so often alone these days with echoes of these old songs
and my ghosted lovers.
I am so often alone that I can almost hear it, can almost feel
the half-touch of others,
can almost taste the licked clean spine of the melody I’ve lost.
I remember the records rubbed with static and the needle
gathering dust.
I remember the taste of a mouth so sudden and still cold from
wintry gusts.
It seemed incredible then — a favorite song, a love found.
It wasn't, after all.
Days later, while vacuuming, the lyrics come without thinking.
Days later, I think I see my old lover in a café but don’t,
how pleasing
it was to think it was him, to finally sing that song.
This is the way of all amplitude: we need the brightness
to die some.
This is the way of love and music: it plays like a god and
then is done.
Do I feel better remembering, knowing for certain
what’s gone?
-- Roxane Beth Johnson
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