A Look Back At The Attica Correctional Facility Riots
September 9, 2010 7:34 AM   Subscribe

39 years ago tToday, September 9, 1971, a riot started at Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York. Several days later almost 40 people were dead. Talking History has an extensive collection of resources on the riots including Videos and Photos. Elsewhere, Most of the Stories are sad and brutal, though some are Poetic and even Heroic (Attica is also home to Mark David Chapman, who was just denied parole again yesterday)
posted by Blake (11 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYl9nNIoz8o
posted by monkeyJuice at 7:35 AM on September 9, 2010


bah - Dog Day Afternoon
posted by monkeyJuice at 7:37 AM on September 9, 2010


Attica is also home to ...

Please stop mentioning that fucker's name or adding to his celebrity. He admitted to doing what he did to be famous. Don't grant him his wish.
posted by rocket88 at 8:19 AM on September 9, 2010 [2 favorites]


I love that MDC wants to be paroled. You shoot the most famous person in the world; a man who stood for love (or at least that's what he portrayed) and you shoot him in the back in his doorway, with his wife standing there, and he has a 5 year old son.

Yea. Like you're ever going to get out.

Quit trying. "Ohhh I value human life now".

Boo hoo.
posted by stormpooper at 8:49 AM on September 9, 2010 [1 favorite]


I was 8 years old when this happened and remember it dominating the news for a while. As the Talking History link says: occasionally...inmates rebel and become socially and politically visible. When they become visible, so do our prisons and our criminal justice system. Afterward prison reform became a viable topic for discussion. Unfortunately the lessons learned seem to have been largely forgotten. Current conditions in prisons in the US are pretty bad compared to other developed nations and we are continually putting more and more people into an already overcrowded system, yet the current attitude of many Americans is "lock 'em all up and throw away the keys!" Any attempts to improve the conditions in prisons or attempt to rehabilitiate prisoners is derided as being soft on crime. I wonder when and where the next Attica will take place.
posted by TedW at 9:05 AM on September 9, 2010 [1 favorite]


Please stop mentioning that fucker's name or adding to his celebrity. He admitted to doing what he did to be famous. Don't grant him his wish.

Who, Mark David Chapman?
posted by inigo2 at 9:11 AM on September 9, 2010 [2 favorites]


I wonder when and where the next Attica will take place.

I wonder if it really can, we have improved prison security a lot since Attica, haven't we?
posted by furiousxgeorge at 10:11 AM on September 9, 2010


I was fascinated to find out (via Wikipedia) that just about every reference to Attica in pop culture has been to Dog Day Afternoon instead of to the original riots. I'd assumed that the "Attica! Attica!" chant was from the real-life bank robbery that the movie is based upon, but the Life magazine article doesn't mention it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:36 AM on September 9, 2010


John and Yoko performing Attica State on The David Frost Show in 1971. There's a creepy irony to it now, since his murderer lives there.

Lyric excerpt:

What a waste of human power
What a waste of human lives,
shoot the prisioners in the towers
Forthy-three poor widowed wives

Media blames it on the prisioners,
But the prisioners did not kill
"Rockefeller pulled the trigger"
That's what the people feel.

Attica, Attica state, we're all
mates with Attica state.

Free the prisioners, free the judges
Free all the prisioners everywhere,
All they want is truth and justice
All they need is love and care

They all live in suffocation,
Let's not watch them die in sorrow,
Now's the time for revolution,
Give them all chance to grow.
posted by chococat at 12:20 PM on September 9, 2010


Attica Correctional Facility reminds me that prisons fail miserably in this regard.
posted by bwg at 6:13 PM on September 9, 2010


I am a bit reluctant to address the Chapman issue (I would call it a derail except that it was brought up in in the FPP), but I do wonder what Lennon would say about keeping him in prison forever. Is the fact that he killed a celebrity enough? (See John Hinckley for related discussion.) When I read the comments of my local paper the consensus is "lock 'em up and throw away the key" for any crime; some of the comments here seem to echo that sentiment. But does that really accomplish anything? Perhaps it would help if we could acknowledge the difference between justice and vengeance.

I am a big Beatles/Lennon fan (Lennon>McCartney) but think Chapman should get the same sentence any other person who shot someone would get.

I am a big Beatles/Lennon fan (Lennon>McCartney) but think Chapman should be set free so that I could lead a mob to tear him limb from limb.

Both of the above statements are true, but only one works in a civilized society.
posted by TedW at 8:03 PM on September 9, 2010


« Older Radically authorless, furiously remixed and...   |   Who is the Greatest Diva of the Last 25 Years? We... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments