Word: attica
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...prison rebellion at Attica, N.Y., was part of a siege of domestic violence that began with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and continued in a demoralizing blur through the deaths of R.F.K., Martin Luther King, the flames of Newark and Watts, the bashing by (and of) war protesters, the torn victims of radical bombings, and the savage abbreviation of young lives at Kent and Jackson State...
Wicker's involvement at Attica was anything but narcotic. Shortly after the rebellion began on Sept. 9, 1971, he was asked by prisoners to join a 37-man committee of observers to mediate and publicize their fight for better conditions and safeguard them against reprisal. Five days and 43 lives later, Wicker returned to Washington a haggard, angry and sad man-but a man who no longer was hesitant about using power "to force," as he says, "elementary humanity upon even greater power...
...Wicker tried to convince Rockefeller to come to Attica, so that he could see the awful chances for bloodshed. But the governor refused to come and refused to give the observers more time. Wicker says the "order of things" was more important to the governor than lives...
...order of things have buried 39 people and two issues--prison reform and basic human decency--in the cemetery reserved for all the dirty little stories of American history, most of which share the same themes: racism and violence. New York Congressman Herman Badillo provided the epitaph for Attica's tombstone: "There's always a time to die. I don't know what the rush...
...Wicker has ot disinterred the bones. No one can do that. He only promised us a "time for anger," and four and a half years after Attica, his book screams quietly--a stark gravestone rubbing to remind us of the grave and what is buried there, lest we forget...