Page 27 - ACTL_Win23

No one in power did anything for decades, for years. In fact, quite the contrary. They just doubled down, continued the cov- er-up, refused to acknowledge that any of this had ever happened. In fact, they said it had been nothing but fraternity hazing, if anything had happened at all. Nobody had done anything wrong. Go home, for- get about it.
As important, Judge Telesca let each of them, one by one, sit in his court- room and after thirty years of being belittled, interrupted, tortured, in- timidated, and terrified, he allowed them to tell their stories on the stand, uninterrupted. Their stories of trauma were stenographically recorded so that they would forever be preserved for future generations to reckon with.
suffered tremendously. Their widows would suffer further because the State did something pretty diabolical with them; it kept offering them checks. “Here, Mrs. Cunningham, here’s a small little tidbit to hold you over to buy groceries.” Mrs. Cunningham had seven children; she needed that money after her husband was killed. What they didn’t tell her and the other widows or the surviving guards who received some payments for hospital bills, was that by cashing those checks, they had elected a remedy under New York state law and were waiving their right to sue their employer.
Guns, perhaps, were not the problem. Civil rights was the problem, fem- inists were violent, anti-war protestors were violent, black people were violent; that was the problem. It was time to get tougher on crime, time to reembrace the death penalty, time to roll back the clock on the notion that prisoners were also human beings. Attica, in particular, dealt this death blow. Thankfully, however, the story does not end there. The men inside of At- tica and the guards who had been in Attica did not let this story get swept under state rugs. They dared to stand up for human rights, the prisoners and the guards alike, as well as their families. They refused to be silent, no matter how many times powerful state officials tried to tell them that nothing happened or tried to shut them up with threats of indictment or to swindle them; they would not go away. This itself is a thirty-year story; one I don’t have time to tell you, sadly, but it is an inspiring story, a Da- vid and Goliath-like story, if ever there was one. A story that culminated ultimately in the courtroom of the Honorable Michael Anthony Telesca, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, who would be the first and only man of real influence and power to use it for good by insisting that the State of New York finally pay some measure of restitution. First, to the surviving prisoners and the families of those that died and then to the surviving guards and the families of those killed at Attica.
Ithasbeenfifty-oneyearssincethemenatAtticadaredtostandtogetherto ask for basic improvements on conditions on the inside. And sadly, prison conditions are worse today than they were five decades ago, which is hard to believe. This is in no small part because those men, and by extension their goals, were deliberately – at the time and steadfastly thereafter with stunning calculation and precision – discredited. And if you doubt this, I invite you to read Blood in the Water. It was hard for me to come to what I learned.
Stephen Schwarz Rochester, New York
This was a nightmare that had enormous political implications for the country. In fact, the consequences for the nation were dire. In 1970, before Attica, when polled, the majori- ty of Americans were actually warming to civ- il rights. It’s really hard to believe now. They were becoming increasingly persuaded that prisoner rights were in fact human rights; believing that things like Miranda rights were necessary. That actually, the death pen- alty was wrong. Remember the moratorium? In the wake of Attica, and interestingly, oth- er events spun similarly in a self-interested but seriously distorted way, the public grew wary overnight; not just wary but jaded, cynical, suspicious. Civil rights, they decid- ed, was perhaps the problem. Civil rights had gone too far, had taken a violent turn. Not that state violence had taken a violent turn, not that law enforcement had per- haps gone too far; that wasn’t the problem.
WINTER 2023 JOURNAL 26
26