Community New York: In Wake of Attica, … Trying to Ensure It Won't Happen Again

More than a decade ago, I took on a side job as an adjunct professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, teaching in the criminal justice department. As a local newspaper reporter who focuses on criminal justice issues, I was allowed by the RIT staff to craft a course on media coverage of crime and to teach it to undergraduates and graduate students.

That year, and each year I have taught the class since, I include a session focused on the Attica Uprising. There are many people who are always kind enough to come and be part of a panel, including: Michael Smith, a surviving hostage shot five times in the September 13, 1971, retaking; Dee Quinn Miller, whose father, William Quinn, was a corrections officer killed by inmates during the riot; Minister Raymond Scott, one of the negotiators at Attica who tried to find a resolution and head off violence; and local filmmaker Christine Christopher. Sometimes the sessions have been smaller affairs, with only my class as the audience, and other times we've had larger sessions and panels open to the entire university. Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica, the film which Christine Christopher and her filmmaking partner David Marshall created, is often shown before the panels. It is a must-see for anyone wanting to know the riot history and the wrong-headed political and police response to the uprising.

How did it reach a point where I could count on individuals, some who can never completely separate themselves from the trauma of Attica, to agree time and time again to return to my class and discuss those horrific days in September 1971? I have no easy answers, except there is a community of people who are connected to the uprising—some personally, some through their studies or jobs—that exists in the Rochester region and across western New York who always seem willing to help one another. Perhaps there is solace in the time together; perhaps there is the desire to ensure the riot is not forgotten; perhaps there is a hope that New Yorkers will not forget how inmates and prison employees and their families were all treated abysmally in the riot's aftermath. Or, perhaps, those were the initial reasons and now we simply are all friends.

When the Attica Prison Uprising erupted on September 9, 1971, I was all of twelve years old. I wasn't concerned with much beyond how my Little League baseball season had ended and whether the North Carolina Tar Heels would be any good in the forthcoming collegiate basketball season.

As the years passed, my acquaintance with the riot would be mostly through pop culture references, especially Al Pacino shouting "Attica" again and again in the film Dog Day Afternoon. (That chant would later, incongruously, be repeated in such shows as The Gilmore Girls and SpongeBob Square Pants.)

This all was to change in 2000, a change that would bring me into a network of people whose strength, resilience, and determination I still marvel at to this day.

Some background: In 1999 the State of New York decided to settle a lawsuit from Attica inmates with a $12 million payment—$8 million for inmates and $4 million for their attorneys who had scrapped in court for years with no recompense. The next year, U.S. District Judge Michael Telesca, based in Rochester, was assigned the task of deciding how to divide the award to inmates. Telesca, known for his ability to carve out compromises where others couldn't, had in fact helped convince the state to settle the lawsuit with the $12 million payment.

I cover federal courts and criminal justice issues for the daily newspaper in Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle. To his credit, and typical of his character, Telesca decided to set aside many days during the summer of 2000 for inmates to testify about their injuries suffered in the retaking and the aftermath, when many were brutally beaten. The families of slain inmates also testified. Telesca used the testimony, coupled with written claims...