NEW YORK
The prisons are the crime
By
Deirdre Griswold
New York
Doña Rosa Escobar, a highly respected figure in
Pro-Libertad, the movement to free Puerto Rican political
prisoners, was the featured speaker at a Workers World Party
forum here Sept. 24 commemorating the anniversary of the great
Attica prison uprising. The event was part of Mumia Awareness
Week.
Escobar brought news of the 11 prisoners who were recently
released from jail, and of the movement in Puerto Rico and here
to continue the struggle to release them all without
conditions.
Pat Chin, Larry Holmes and Monica Moorehead of Workers World
Party all spoke on different aspects of the struggle against
repression. Holmes emphasized the relationship between police
repression at home and imperialist expansion and exploitation
abroad. Moorehead addressed the alarming growth of private,
for-profit prisons that provide slave labor for big
corporations.
Pat Chin explained why in 1971 the cruel conditions in the
U.S. prison system sparked a mass movement of resistance inside
and outside the walls. Vast warehouses for the poor like
Attica, Sing Sing, San Quentin and Alcatraz had become symbols
of the brutal nature of capitalism.
The Attica uprising was not only over better food, housing,
treatment and an end to racist brutality--it was a cry for
genuine democracy by hundreds of people who had been deprived
of all their rights, but who banded together in multinational
unity to present and fight for their demands.
The bloody response of the authorities--even killing many of
their own guards during the assault on the prison--forever
linked the name of Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York
State at the time, with ruthless repression.
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