On a day when we woke up to the seemingly incomprehensible barbarism of a woman being beheaded in Saudi Arabia, we may do well, apropos Nivedita Menon’s post on MLK, to remember the barbarism that hides in broad daylight within seemingly civilised societies. One such floodlit hideout, so bright it blinds us, is the state of our prisons. Before Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib inaugurated a new era of dehumanisation in the American “correctional system”, there was Attica, and hundreds others like it that continue in the U.S and around the world to this day. We may also remember Professor G.N Saibaba of Delhi University who, despite being 90% disabled, has been not only imprisoned but kept in solitary confinement for almost two years on mere suspicion in an Indian jail somewhere. Really, what more does it take these days?!

This is a guest post by Ipsita Barik

When Al Pacino’s character Sonny Wortzik yells and hollers “Attica – Attica” in the film Dog Day Afternoon, the cops and the FBI officers are left stunned & dumbfounded, but the civilian population collected at the scene, behind the police barricades began to cheer & applaud. The air is soon filled by the chants of the noun and Sonny in his soaked white shirt, flaying his arms and stomping on the ground, gestures at the cops and adds “you put them guns down; you put them down – “AATTICA aattica”. So what was happening here? Why were these people cheering and supporting a man who had come to rob a local bank and was holding hostages inside! And what was Attica all about?

Attica prison riots/uprisings happened at the Attica Correctional Facility, New York, United States; when the prison cells and yards were seized by the inmates, who also held hostages, on September 9th 1971, opening a series of negotiations and dialogues between the establishment and the inmates, which included civilian observers, Tom Wicker of the New York Times, Republican State Senator John Dunne, radical lawyer William Kunstler and Black Panther’s Bobby Seale, on the request of the inmates. The primary demands of the inmates were related to the inadequacies and brutalities within Attica, such as related to insufficient food and medical care, racial discrimination, physical abuse, restricted access to educational and training facilities, all a serious indictment of the prison rules and environment, as the New York State Special Commission on Attica/McKay Commission (set up by the state) subsequently went on to assert and highlight. Continue reading ‘Attica, Attica, You Put Them Guns Down!’ Ipsita Barik →