Word: attica
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...Until nine days ago, we could believe we were sheltered from the rest of the world, separated as we were from the problems of the people in the city and the ghettos and the rest of the world. If we did not know it then, we know it now. Attica is part of the tragedy that is the world. Time will heal the loneliness and grief we feel now. But Attica can never return to the Attica of nine days...
...Attica mourned its dead amidst undercurrents of anger and fear. The prison?the community's largest employer?had suddenly become not a source of income but of anguish, the focus of events beyond understanding and beyond control. Now police, reporters from large cities and assorted strangers poked around and asked questions, spreading rumors, raising new fears before the old ones had subsided. "We've been told to expect more trouble," explained Warren Peck, the local barber. "We don't want reprisals taken here," said a man near by. "But if they come in from Buffalo and start trouble, I think...
...Attica (pop. 2,900) is in Wyoming County, in the heart of New York's productive farm belt, lush with acres of sweet corn and rolling green hills. Red barns and tall silver silos sit fat amidst fields of goldenrod and purple wild flowers. Along Route 98, small, white clapboard farmhouses ringed with zinnias and neatly clipped lawns are spaced with the regularity of mileposts. Route 98 cuts from north to south and connects the New York State Thru way with Attica about twelve miles to the south...
Despite the towering presence of the prison, Attica in many ways is the archetypal upstate New York community. Its ambience is one of spare Yankee economy distorted by the proximity of metropolitan Buffalo and the lure of markets (and profits) made available by the Thruway. There are old, elm-shaded Victorian homes hard by one and two story frame houses of no particular distinction; in the commercial district the new Citizens' Bank, done in businesslike red-brick modern, contrasts with the clapboard charm of Timm's Hardware. Attica has a variety of fraternal, youth and religious organizations, in addition...
...prison tragedy has clearly been a shock to the values and ideals of Attica's citizens. There is a bitterness toward the rebel prisoners who led the riots that in many cases borders on hatred. One man referred to them as "outlaws who are out to destroy our country and burn our cities, and now want to destroy our prison." A woman who refused to give her name went even further. "Now when I see a Negro I feel different," she said, "now I feel uncomfortable." But there is also an understanding of the prisoners' lot. "I felt they...