ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Title: Inside Attica: Corruption and Reform
Original Publication Date: 11/22/2023
Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/bWpV7Wwemxf
Description: Joe Pascone from the Turning Tides History Podcast joins us to delve into the gripping story of the Attica prison riots and their lasting impact on the landscape of prison reform. Unravel the layers of this historic event as we explore its catalysts, the unfolding of events, and its reverberating effects on the criminal justice system. Discover how the Attica uprising sparked a national conversation on prison conditions, human rights, and the pursuit of justice. Join us in this insightful conversation shedding light on a pivotal moment in history and its enduring significance. #AtticaPrison #PrisonReform #TurningTidesHistory #CriminalJusticeReform
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Begin Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime, with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.
Welcome back, guys. I am very excited to be joined by a very special guest today, Joseph Pascone, host of Turning Tides History Podcast, and he did a really special episode, or a series of episodes, on the Attica. Uprising from the early 1970s, and I thought that tied together really well with what we're talking about in organized crime and the punishment [00:01:00] aspect of organized crime as well, and crime in general.
So thank you so much for coming on, Joe. If people have listened to my other podcast, the History of the Papacy podcast, Joe Picon did a really helpful. Full primer on the resurgent Mento, and he has a really detailed series on that. So definitely go and check those out and then check out all of his other work as well.
Hey, thank you so much for having me on Steve. And yeah, I did a, maybe a bit too detailed of a series on the risk argument though but I definitely did it. It was a lot of fun and the Attica one just came out. And I'm just chugging along here over on my end. I think that this is a really interesting topic, the Attica uprising, because it brings together so many threads of society, crime, and in a lot of ways, it's touched our lives personally being New Yorkers who are expats from New York.
And so it gives us a, I think we have. A very interesting way to look at this objectively and [00:02:00] subjectively, especially being that it, the incident happened well before either of us was born. So I think we have a little bit of perspective on it, but it's also close to both of us as well. Yeah, in a historical sense, it happened yesterday.
Basically, it may as well have. It happened, the retaking and the uprising happened in a few days in September 1971 at, like you said, Attica. And this wasn't like an insular event. This was a culmination of basically the 60s. This was all the best and the worst parts of the 60s kind of thrown into a pot and it just exploded over into the deaths of 44 people.
And it was probably the biggest mass shooting, if you could call it that, up until the present day. And it was completely sanctioned by the state. I think the best place you could probably start the story is, I started, at least in my series, with 1865, because that to me is when race relations sort of start in [00:03:00] America.
Previously to that, there were a handful of free African Americans, sure. But the vast majority were enslaved peoples who were treated literally like property. Supreme court decided these people were property. You could bring them across state lines, just like you could bring a chair across the state line and it still counts as yours.
After the civil war. Millions and millions of free blacks were given the right to vote. They were given civil rights. They were elected to Congress. They were elected as representatives. They were elected as governors. In 1870, there was a black governor in Louisiana, for example, once reconstructing, reconstruction sort of ends with Rutherford B.
Hayes that's it all the reforms of the previous era go out the window black codes, Jim Crow laws, they come into effect, not just in the South, but in the North as well. It's just the segregated. In the north as it is in the south, just in a different way. It's not the same overt racism like, oh, this is the good old [00:04:00] south.
So this is how it's going to be. It's oh your economic status is maybe a little lower than mine because of whatever reason and because of that, you need to live in this much worse neighborhood than I get to live in. So that's where the idea or the start of Attica happens.
The Attica state is built in the height of the Great Depression. It's in 1931. It's finished in a year there, or less than a year. For the time, it was a state of the art institution, but basically what happens is over time, the facilities just degrade because time passes. It's 40 years later. It's the late 60s, early 70s, and Attica is a much worse place to live.
It's way overcrowded. There's about 2, 000 people there. In a facility that was probably only built to withstand maybe a thousand thousand two hundred tops. And in America, the continual rise of radicalization, the Vietnam War has started.[00:05:00] JFK has been assassinated. Nixon has been elected in a very controversial presidential election.
Police riots the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Attacks on civil rights the civil rights movement. You see the Klan Come back with a new renewed force, which was super powerful, caused millions of black people to leave the South in the pre or in the post Civil War era.
And these all kind of all these forces come together into a very disgruntled population, and it wasn't just. For political reasons, there were obviously political prisoners who were deeply interested in black liberationist movements and anti war movements and were the rock bed of the uprising that's about to happen.
But for the most part, they were just regular people who've done the wrong thing in their life. And for the most part, they were kids. For example, John Hill, [00:06:00] who is the accused killer of William Quinn, he was in Attica because he turned 19 while he was still in juvie. He didn't rob a bank and then...
Set fire to an orphanage or something. That's all that happened. He was in juvie because, I don't know, could have stole something from the store. It was five cents. Another guy, Charles Pernassilis, he was in Attica because he didn't inform his parole officer about an out of state trip. And that's how he ends up in Attica.
So it wasn't just cut and dry. Oh, this is a place for murderers. This is a place for rapists. That's what it turns into. That's what the. The press and the state tries to turn this place into it's just this horrible place. And eventually it even becomes that. And after this period, people talk about Attica is a really dangerous place even today.
And I think it's interesting because it. The uprising takes place during a bunch of other uprisings and a big mess of problems throughout the [00:07:00] country. In 1970, in Soldad Prison, there's a guy called George Jackson. He was a very famous prisoner slash political activist. He wrote a book called Letters from Soldad, where he talks about his experiences in jail.
Basically, what happens one day is a CO or a guard, a corrections officer, CO. See something in his hair. Apparently George Jackson, somehow, I don't know how this happened. He got a wig and under the wig, he managed to sneak in a pistol. We still don't know how this happened, but in the ensuing he takes out the pistol.
He says, the dragon has come three people are dead by the end of it, or. Or two guards are dead and then three prisoners are dead, and George Jackson's among them. The people at Attica, who have heard about this uprising through the chain of information they instantly assumed that this was a police shooting.
They assumed that it was trigger happy guards who gunned down George Jackson. We still don't know [00:08:00] exactly how he got the gun. It seems very, it's a very far fetched story either way. But they were convinced that this was, because of the prison guards. Also down the street, there's Auburn State Penitentiary.
There's a massive uprising there. The black Muslim population takes the lead in the uprising. They take hostages. The guards promise there's not going to be any reprisals. Just give up. The apparatus who were in charge of the prison say, no, there are going to be reprisals, and everyone gets thrown in key block or solitary confinement.
And a bunch of these instigators are sent to Attica. These are called the Auburn Six. And these guys interject the population with a new surge of politic, politics and radicalism that they didn't experience before. You see all these things come together and it's September 9th. Basically what happens is the day before in D yard.
I'm sorry. There's a play [00:09:00] fight between two prisoners. The one of the prisoners runs away when he sees that guards interpreted as a real fight and they're coming question him. He says, leave me alone. I just got out of keep lock. I was there for 14 days. I'm just trying to let loose. He says, no, you're going, the guard says, no, you're going back to keep lock.
So instantly incendiary situation, a tussle starts. In the end, the prisoner gets away because the other guards see that there's a very dangerous situation explosive situation building up. They'll deal with this at another time. So that night, they come and grab the two prisoners. One guy is dragged out unconscious, so they have to really beat him pretty badly to get him out of his cell.
Everyone else in the cell block is convinced that this person's dead, so they start throwing things at the CO. One guy gets hit in the face with a soup can, so then it's even more raucous. The head CO, he goes to his boss, he says, look, let me keep some guys[00:10:00] over time, so that we can make sure that there's not going to be a incendiary situation.
And his boss says, who the hell's going to pay for that? That, that was his main argument, which I guess is fair, but in hindsight, probably should have been. The last thing on that guy's mind, considering the level of problems at the prison. That morning, everyone's going to breakfast. The person who threw the soup can the day before gets sprung from his cell.
When the guard's not looking. So you have 60, 70 people who are all pissed at you and you're in charge of them as this guard. It was a lose situation. Either you try to act like their buddy or you try to act, like an authoritarian. If you're in that situation. You talked about Mike Smith before he was someone who chose to act give people respect because he realized that's the only way they're both going to get through this at the end of the day, and both [00:11:00] have some sort of semblance of a decent time.
So this guy gets sprung and they, the state apparatus, the prison apparatus, decide they're going to send the whole 50 person squad, the whole 57, the whole 50 person regiment back to their cells. They're going to stay in solitary confinement. When they go to corner them in a place called Times Square, it's like the central corridor for the whole prison.
The prisoners realize what's going on. The guards are too slow on their uptake because there's no communication one way or the other. And, riot explodes guards are attacked, the door to Times Square is forced open using the plumbing system from the prison's water system, like water pipes are used to jimmy a door, the door open, William Quinn is on the other side of this door he's in charge of the, who gets in and out He surrenders, but he gets [00:12:00] overwhelmed, and he gets attacked by a whole gang of people, and their landing blows on him, and in no time at all, he's severely wounded unconscious, bleeding from his face, his head, his mouth, all over the place.
He's a bloody mess and then The prisoners go all over wherever they can go. They try to arm themselves. They try to grab as many hostages as possible and at this time, this is one of the few times you could call this a riot. This is when the riot was happening in these first hours. There's a lot of rape.
There's at least 2 instances of it. There's a lot of instances of assault. There's no murders or anything besides William Quinn, who's severely injured. Very quickly you see black, the black Muslim population and the politically minded prisoners take the lead in trying to organize everybody.
So they, everyone finds themselves in D yard. And they quickly draw up elections, and they decide on leaders from each different cell block, from all the, [00:13:00] there's something like 1, 200 prisoners in the D Yard right now, while the rest of the prison, everyone else ran to their cells, because they didn't want to be involved in any of the violence but about half the prison is in D Yard at this moment, and Things are very tense, they ask for a doctor, they ask for food, etc.
And they want observers. They want observers from across the country. People who are associated with the black liberation movement, with the civil rights movement. Radical politics, radical lawyers. And a bunch of these people, and they range the gamut, there's not just radicals there, but there are.
Plenty of radicals there. There's there's liberal minded Republicans. There's there's Democrats from across the spectrum. There are radical lawyers like William Kuntzler who defended the Chicago seven. There's people like. Tom Soto, who was a member of YAF, which was the Youth Against War and Fascism.
They were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War et cetera. It was a coming [00:14:00] together of maybe not center and left people who wanted to see an end of this hostile situation before it devolved into serious violence or it devolved into a massacre. Because The second the uprising happened, that was the first thing that everyone was thinking, like, how do we take back the prison?
What do we do? And they start calling in police from across the state, they start bringing in armaments they bring in rifles, they bring in shotguns they're waiting. The main thing they're waiting for is a thing called CS gas and that'll be used, devastating effect down the line. There are, there's this situation now, and the observers are showing up, slowly but surely, and eventually, they come to an agreement there's 28 points that they can agree on.
One thing they can't... Get a judge to sign off on is amnesty for the prisoners because they want amnesty because at Auburn, they were promised amnesty. They didn't get it. So they want it in writing [00:15:00] from a real judge that they're not going to face reprisals or Or legal repercussions for the uprising that they, that took place because with William Quinn's condition deteriorating by the minute there was a very good likelihood that he was going to die and the death of a CEO carries with it a death sentence if you're found guilty and given the full measure of the sentence, but even with William Quinn, he was saved by prisoners yeah.
I don't want to say the guy's name wrong, so I won't, but one of the prisoners came across his unconscious body and he got four of his fellow Muslims to carry him down the stairs or carry him to The state controlled side of the prison on a mattress and they had to slog through like water because all the piping system was a mess.
There was blood on the floor. It was a real harrowing like journey. And once the police get William Quinn's body, they don't send them to the hospital. They just [00:16:00] leave them on the side of the on the side of the prison and it takes up to an hour for him to go see a doctor. And even then, when he's at the hospital, he's never sent to ICU.
There, there are a bunch of problems with the way he was treated, but he would be dead in a few days from the severe brain injury that was inflicted by no doubt, the prisoners who were rioting, but probably could have been helped along if. The state or police, someone stepped in and tried to give him adequate care, but that just didn't happen.
Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast. com to learn more and now a quick word from our sponsors. But I think it's really interesting to get into the political and economic geography of New York and why these prisons are located where they [00:17:00] are.
So most of the population of New York, I think it's well over half, it might even be closer to 60 percent of the population lives in the New York City area. So right there, you're going to see that Prisoner populations weighted more in that direction, and I think it's weighted even way more in that direction.
Most of the prisons are in rural upstate New York. And it's interesting because in New York state, it's basically cut in half by the form. It still is the Erie Canal, but there's a series of cities that were once pretty wealthy, but even by the 60s and the 70s were. In post industrialization.
So you have Albany and Syracuse, Rochester Buffalo and a smaller towns that were wealthy at one time but we're on the downward spiral. But then you have places like Attica that never really were wealthy at all. They were just pretty much rural towns that were at a [00:18:00] crossroads. I think, yeah.
Attica might have had, I think you mentioned that they had a dog food factory, and I think they may have had a factory that made horseradish sauce. That's all they had. Yeah, it wasn't a very productive segment of the state, for sure. No, and... For even and back then it was a lot more removed.
Even today, the closest city was Rochester. That was about an hour and a half away. And I think Buffalo is about an hour and a half away. That's where the closest hospitals were. They didn't have very good local hospitals there. You're really talking. communications wise, like everything, even in the sixties and the late seventies, like how remote of an area, a place like Attica was from Auburn is in Auburn, which is right outside of Syracuse.
But that prison I think was built like either the late seventeen hundreds or the early eighteen hundreds. Have you ever seen it? It's [00:19:00] terrifying just from the outside. I can imagine. I'm not sure. I haven't seen a picture of Auburn specifically but Attica looks just as foreboding. And that was built much later, which is quite something.
I think I'll share a little on my own personal experience. I interviewed for a job at Attica, but I didn't wind up taking it. I was a it was right when I graduated from teaching school and I was just looking for a summer job. The jails all had all the New York State prisons had summer jobs. So I applied for one for them and I eventually got one at Wendy Correctional Facility, which is also an maximum security prison about an hour, 45 minutes from Attica.
And so I worked there and got a little bit of an inside, the most, I'd say the most interesting part to learn about was I got the Prisoner Handbook, which was really interesting. And I read that cover to cover just because it was fascinating. You saw the evolution of [00:20:00] things of there was a grievance process and a lot of that stuff had been put into place after Attica.
Really that whole time period and probably up until this day, this was maybe 15 years ago. So I'm a little out of touch with what the newest is, but I felt like even at that point, which would have been a good 35 years after Attica, that it was still a post Attica system in place.
And That was for the good, the better and for the worse, like both of it was a post Attica system. Because just what you were saying, there was no communication. There was very little elasticity between counties and state apparatuses. There was no way to communicate one with the other, even in Attica.
The phones, you could only make one phone call at a time. So if you go to, if you go to call up, you'd have to wait until whoever just called up was done making their piece. And on top of that, there was no [00:21:00] system in place for a riot. So like you were saying, for better or worse, I'm sure following Attica, that was the first thing on everyone's mind, is we need to make a comprehensive system for when a riot happens, what we're going to do.
And Probably an even worse riot in New Mexico State Prison in like the 80s after this, but that didn't have to do with state violence. That was like a gang situation and it just devolved into another bloodbath with the protective custody once they broke in there. But Attica wasn't like that at all.
In the end during the occupation, the siege, whatever you want to call it by the prisoners, three prisoners did die two were accused of treason. Because they spoke to a news team, and then another guy was just raving incoherently about how we're all gonna die. The end is nigh. He was, it turned out being right, but he was also, he also ended up being murdered.
This wasn't like a authority based decision. They weren't like, oh, let's kill these guys before they... Do whatever. This [00:22:00] was like someone just snapped and killed these three people who they assumed were snitching or whatever. But like you were saying, there's a serious divide between New York City and New York State.
You see it even in this most recent election New York state voted overwhelmingly Republican. A lot of our state or the state legislatures of New York are now Republican because there's a very deep divide between the urban and the rural suburban. And just like you were saying, you have some background with.
With New York state prison. So do I, my grandmother worked for Nelson Rockefeller. She was the his only Spanish speaking assistant. So anyone in New York state who was Latino, who sent a piece of mail to Nelson Rockefeller at that time, my grandmother probably read it and responded. And on top of that, my grandfather was a teamster.
He worked as a garbage man for years and he was, he was not a witness to, but he was around during the tombs uprising. The tombs was like this the [00:23:00] jail system in New York City. That's what they called it because it was such a hell hole. And this rose up, but he would previous to this. And after this, I assume he would smuggle in, he would smuggle in playboys.
He would smuggle in cigarettes for the for the prisoners and everything. And they loved them for it. They let them like eat with him. It was very, it's a very interesting that our lives are so intertwined by. By the prison system and so many people's lives are. This is a 2 million person chain of suffering.
That's how many people are in jail right now, which is an absurd number compared to how many people live in America compared to the prison system in other countries. It speaks to a very severe imbalance in the way we do things. I think a big part of it is and what I saw, it was really. It was a punitive system that was pretending that it was a penitential system, like they, they spent gobs and gobs of money on [00:24:00] rehabilitation, but the, at the really at the core, I felt like it was just housing people that they didn't really have a philosophy on how to reform people.
Yeah, despite half of the prison, the half of the employees were seemingly some sort of social worker or another, but they just didn't have a philosophy like the education didn't really have a philosophy on what to make these people. More educated and more purposeful and none of it. It just seemed like doing things to check off boxes.
Yeah, we're, we have an army of social workers. We have tons of teachers. We have all of this, but it didn't seem like there was a philosophy driving it. This is how we're going to get these people because another thing is like, You have the corrections officers who, even at that point, their base pay wasn't incredible.
I don't think anybody was going, has ever gone to become a prison guard to [00:25:00] make a fortune. They can make a decent amount of money with overtime, but you're still working in the prison despite your overtime. And they Even, I think to now, they're minimally trained for their job. I've been watching yeah, I've been re watching The Simpsons.
And there's a bunch of jokes about corrections officers in there. The guard hands Homer the nightstick. He said, this hand, this side's for holding, this side is for hitting. And he's okay, great, when does my training start? And the guard answers, it just finished Michael Smith that you brought up in his memoir.
And I think this is pretty common that you got on the job training. Like you said here's your stick, figure it out. Now there's a an. process, but I still think it's only a couple of weeks long. It's not a psychotic, like when I went in for the training for the, for being a teacher there for the summer, there was a two day training and I would say it was [00:26:00] a good training on two days for two days.
And I would have loved more of it. And a lot of it was really, which I think that hopefully that they're doing is the psychological training of how to deescalate and like strategic deescalation and strategic escalation, like both of them and that really drilling into your head. And I think that this is Yeah.
Because I think on all sides of it, we can very quickly demonize the inmates and we can glorify them and we can demonize the prison guards and we can glorify them. And the administration is probably just worthy of demonization. But it's easy to either demonize or glorify every side of it, but they're all.
Like in, amongst the criminals of the people I saw, there were some guys who were just like, they got caught up in some real bad stuff and they were, they seemed like honest to goodness good people, but [00:27:00] there were some. Yeah. Bad, violent people in there that genuinely deserve we were allowed to look through their files, and we were almost encouraged to do it.
And I reached a point, there was one I looked at it, and I just put it right back, because if I had looked at that file any longer that would, that'd be in my dreams. I still think of it to this day. And... It's like there, I, it's such a complicated system that can be flattened out into 2D very easily.
And I think that was like the one thing that I came out of it is it's a very complicated thing. Yeah it, and it's like you were saying, both sides are not to blame and both sides aren't the cause. They're both victims in a system that doesn't really work or at least doesn't work as well as it could be.
Certainly not as well as it could be. It's like you were saying, I doubt how much more training there is now as opposed to when Attica happened, and I'm not sure what [00:28:00] level it is at, or if they're teaching de escalation or strategic escalation like you're talking about. I think it's so much about a push and pull.
You have authoritarians on one side who want one thing, and they're trying to push that way. And then you have... The liberals on the other side who are trying to push this way and they're trying to make it, reform based while the other people are trying to make it punitive based. And in the end you have this sort of two headed monster that doesn't know what it wants and it's not doing really either.
Yeah. I think that's probably the thing that it really, that it turns into. It's just housing and it's such a large number of people that it's. People who are, people who maybe need more that there's not. And it almost seems like the counseling is one size fits all. There isn't that there's some people who need a very different type of counseling.
There probably are people who are in there. The unit, the particular unit that I was [00:29:00] working with was with prisoners who were mentally challenged. They weren't mentally challenged enough to be in a totally separate facility that are for people of asylums or places, state hospitals, but they were definitely that mentally challenged to such a degree that if they were in a general population that they would have been abused beyond all belief.
And a lot of the guys like they had to almost be recruited for this particular unit because they saw the guards and the administration saw that there were certain people who were they were just abused and we can get into the school to prison pipeline that these people should have been picked up long ago that there was one particular guy, it was because he was so mentally challenged and he was so easily manipulated.
The people on the street used him to do things that they know that he would have probably gotten caught [00:30:00] for and he did and that's why he was in jail is because he was manipulated on the outside and by criminal elements and that's why he's in jail with does that person need the same sort of programming of rehabilitation?
That's somebody who Is genuinely a criminal mind. It's totally different thing. And I don't think that the systems are set up at all to deal with those because essentially the prison system is done on the cheap. I think when I was there that each meal per prisoner was set at something insane, like a dollar and some change per person.
So that included their napkins, the cleanup, The utensils, everything had to be done in under 2 per person, per meal. Holy moly. Yeah, when that's the system you're working with and because both parties like to talk about being tough [00:31:00] on crime, they love talking about that. That's one of the few things that is bipartisan in this country.
Both parties. Love to be hard on crime. You want to look at Bill Clinton talking about your super predators or whatever he said, or you want to look at Ronald Reagan talking about, Detroit welfare Queens or whatever it's all pretty obvious what's going on. And it's very easy to demonize people who commit crimes because.
They committed most people. Yeah, they committed crime. What do you it's very hard to argue for that. It's like you said it last time we were talking. It's very hard. The easiest argument is usually the one that wins out. And it's very easy to be tough on crime. It's a lot harder to be like, Oh, we need to raise your taxes ever so slightly.
So that these 2 million people literally in bondage to have an extra meal a day or an extra shower. And that's really where the that's where the tire meets the road. That's where it is. And that's where it usually stops the second. Oh, you're [00:32:00] gonna raise my taxes.
That's it. Because that's really the only way or you keep investing in private prisons, which I think is just as a big of a crapshoot is anything else? Maybe even a little bit worse because you want to talk about profit. That's a completely profit driven. Apparatus then, and then I'm not sure if that's the solution.
Maybe it is, but I'm not sure. I think both of the systems, whether it's private or it's public, it's the Baptist and the bootlegger coalition where they both, they have diametrically opposed needs, but they wind up or viewpoints, but they wind up getting to, they need the same thing. I think that. The whole prison system, private or public, is it, the incentive is to have people in there.
You don't work if there's no prisoners. I think that's become so ingrained. It's just like that. It's the U. S. is like this Gord, Gordian knot of intractable problems that. You need to solve that [00:33:00] before you have two million people in a prison system, like that's, a whole bunch of things have gone wrong before we have two million people sitting in prison.
Yeah, and let's talk about the elephant in the room, a good portion of them are black, a good portion of them are Native American, a good portion of them are Latino. Very few of the percentages are actually white. Obviously there are more white people in this country, so there are more white prisoners, but if you look at the percentages versus population, it's staggering, it's three times as many black people that are.
In prison that are composed the population that can't just be because that's the way it is. It doesn't work for me. I need a better argument than that. I think that we have a really problematic not only justice system but corporeal punishment system. We have, like you were saying, it's all about the bottom line.
It's all about the dollar. If you could throw more people in jail you get a little bit more money. And if you [00:34:00] get a little bit more money, then you can take that extra vacation to Barbados this year. And that's really where it ends. And it stops being about humanizing people. It starts being about housing people, like you were saying.
Yeah, I think also one other thing is the strangeness of the 60s and the 70s, all that stuff just came, all the social justice issues and issues of things like you had been saying really the race problem in the United States begins in 1865 after slavery and So many things a hundred years later come to a head where it's a system that wasn't designed and didn't really understand it.
Could you think of it now, if there was a a riot in a prison, that's an uprising, it would never, you don't hear about them now because. They designed the system that those things get crushed. Like you're not going to have a thing like Attica today because they have teams that it's special teams that go and just break that up brutally and hide [00:35:00] away.
Yeah. First five minutes of the uprising is not even a chance for it to take a breath. And could you imagine today that if something happened where they would negotiate with the prisoners like over the course of the weeks and that's happened in an episode of this podcast where I'm one of the mafia people, Joey Gallo was in a prison riot and he was a part of the negotiation.
Crazy Joe. Crazy Joe. Yeah, he was he was seen as somebody who could work between the Italian, Irish Predominantly the prison system, and then he was friends with a lot of the African Americans and the black Muslims. And he worked in between. And that one, I can't remember what prison that was at but they were happening all over the place and they were negotiating.
Could you imagine that happening today? It wouldn't happen today. Depending on the state, maybe. Maybe if it happens in Vermont. Bernie Sanders would be talking with the prisoners, but anywhere else, I don't see it happening. [00:36:00] Even in like California. Even in California. It definitely wouldn't happen there.
And... And like you were saying, it's, it, this is all a response to the post Attica world we live in, and now we should probably talk about the retaking how that's a get into that. Over time they're still debating the observers are debating with the prisoners. The prisoners are debating back with the observers.
Very tense situation. Eventually, though, at some point, the state just decides, this is it. You're going to accept the 28 points we put forward or we're storming the place. And this was Nelson Rockefeller's choice. He could have showed up there and he was asked to show up there numerous times, at least.
Individually by individuals, four or five times, and then just in general by the news media, et cetera, probably dozens of times, but each time he refused to show up, he felt that if he was there, he wouldn't be able to fix the problems and it would just make his [00:37:00] administration looked weak. When they were trying to look incredibly strong with the, a new election coming up and Nixon's the guy in charge, he wants to be able to kowtow to him and show that he's tough on crime too.
He's not just like a liberal Republican, which is what he was defined as previous to this. So he says the National Guard's not going to lead this assault. It's going to be the state police. The state police have no plan for taking a prison. This isn't in the pamphlet. This isn't in the book.
The National Guard does. Why they aren't allowed to do it is I feel they are. Nelson believed that New York state troopers should take their facility back. That was the argument. It didn't matter that the troopers weren't trained to use the rifles they were carrying. It didn't matter that, the most of the prisoners would be incapacitated already by the gas. We're going to drop on them. But this is what needed to happen. It was led by the local Batavia unit in Batavia, New York Troop A. They led the attack on the catwalk. [00:38:00] And let me just talk about the loadout real quick.
These were 270 rifles. They used unjacketed bullets, which go against the Geneva Conventions. Then there were hundreds of shotguns brought in. All the shotguns were using buckshot and pellets and slugs. Bunch of people brought in personal weapons. One guy had an AR 15. One guy had a Thompson submachine gun that he fired at least 12 rounds off of.
One guy had a deer Slayer shotgun. With 12 gauge slugs in it. A bunch of people brought in revolvers, 44 Magnum rifles, bunch of things like that. It was and. A big thing about this whole thing, too, is not only did William Quinn die, but the FBI, using a thing called COINTELPRO, subtly dropped the hint that not only was he murdered by prisoners, he was castrated, and he was thrown from a second story building.
So this was this [00:39:00] inflamed all the state troopers who were... We're sure that the people who rebelled were, were absolute criminals and they weren't seeking anything they weren't seeking a redress of grievances or, human rights or anything. They wanted to just, cause hell.
They wanted to stir the pot, they wanted to make America look weak, and if they could kill as many guards as they do it, that's what they wanted to do. Like the stand that the prisoners built to be heard in D Yard, it wasn't a stand, it was an execution platform where they're gonna behead the hostages they still have.
In reality, the hostages were treated incredibly well. They were given medicine. They were given a place to sleep while all the prisoners just slept on the floor. They slept on mattresses. It wasn't a it wasn't by any means it was a hostile occupation, because they weren't supposed to be there, but.
By any other sense of the word, they were treated incredibly [00:40:00] fairly much more fairly than any prisoner would probably be treated in American prison system today. They certainly didn't have to strip naked and get cavity searched or anything like that. They were just left to their own devices and the black Muslims among them and the, more sympathetic of the prisoners formed human circles around them.
Big Black Smith was the leader of the security detail for the prisoners. He wasn't religious. He wasn't, he wasn't a political guy. He was just six foot six. So it helps if your security detail leader is six foot six. But yeah the assault is planned for around 10 a. m. on September 13th, 1971.
First, they drop CS gas into the yard from helicopters. Now, CS gas isn't a gas, really. It's more of a powder. And this powder attaches itself to oxygen. And it just strangles whatever oxygen is in the air. In turn, this strangles anyone who didn't have a gas [00:41:00] mask. Who is anywhere near the prison.
This was for everybody who was outside the prison, the news vans, everything, people who the observers who are in a different room with a closed door were feeling the effects of the gas and this made people throw up profusely one guy said he threw up until he threw up blood. If you want to talk about being incapacitated, every single person in D Yard is incapacitated right now.
You don't need to fire a single shot. Instead, they first clear the catwalks. So the catwalks, they have prisoners, hostages are brought up to the catwalks because the prisoners quickly realize this is going to go down soon. So we need to let them know that we still are in control of these people's lives in some sort of way.
So they clear the catwalks, a hundred different shots ring out, a bunch of people are felled on the catwalks, mostly prisoners, two hostages are killed on the catwalks, Mike Smith is shot four times in what appears to be an intentional attack there were four rounds from [00:42:00] I believe it's Thompson submachine gun that go into his abdomen and they explode on impact.
One of the shells takes away a base, the base of Mike's spine and a bunch of other ones just stay crammed in there and just burn him up. He's saved, this isn't the first time he was saved, by Don Noble, who is his prison guardian. He pulled him out of the way of a hail of bullets that were coming right for him.
And then it, from there, this assault takes nine minutes, In real life, this would have taken a blink of an eye, but in those nine minutes, something like 900 rounds are fired, or 300 rounds are fired. Countless pellets are fired, and each one of these pellets isn't just one pellet, it's about 14 different pellets per, pump of the shotgun.
This would, this spread all over the place, and it caused absolute devastation. People were just absolutely murdered. Kenneth Molloy. He was shot 12 times in the head. By by two separate personal [00:43:00] weapons, two guards came up on him, ripped his skull apart. They literally, his eyes were ripped to pieces because of the bone was fracturing in his skull.
Another guy so in this time, there's countless. Instances of racism, of hate based crime, torture. Big Black Smith gets the worst of it. He's he's forced to sit on a weight bench for about five to six hours balancing a football on his chest. And the guards around him told him, if you drop the football, we're gonna murder you.
And they would drop cigarette butts on him. They'd let a round off and let hot shell casings drop onto his chest. All the while saying the most horrendous things. Cause this was the guy who was accused of being William Quinn's castrator. So he was special, especially singled out and he was beaten within an inch of his life following the torture on the table.
He had to run a gauntlet. Everyone else [00:44:00] had to run the same gauntlet, but he got it especially bad. He faced. Sixty officers alone, and they were hitting him with two by fours and batons and nightsticks, anything they could grab a hold of. He had both of his wrists broken by the end of it. By the end, he's just grabbing his wrists, trying to protect himself.
His head is split open, and then they play Russian Roulette with him after he makes it past this gauntlet. That was a very... Favorite tactic of the CEO is after the retaking. It was to play shotgun. It was shotgun roulette actually, it wasn't Russian roulette. And they would make people drink urine if they were thirsty.
It was really horrendous. Imagine the worst abuses of any third world country in South America. Or the worst abuses in any African country that's been ruled by the same dictator for 40 years. This is what we're talking about. And it's not like the investigations following this go any better.
It's just as bad. It's just as [00:45:00] disheartening. It's just as undemocratic. It's just as dehumanizing. Witnesses are harassed. They're threatened. One witness who right at the end had a change of heart. He didn't want to tell on his guys. He had a gun pointed at his face and what the guard asked the other guard, you see that black jump out the window.
And the meeting was clear that, you're gonna, you're going to testify right now, or we're going to murder you. And this was the kind of state that it was in. This didn't happen in the deep South. This didn't happen in. Cuba or Venezuela. This happened in New York state. The most, uh, or arguably one of the most progressive states in the country, at least for the majority of the citizens.
And it still hasn't not only has it not been really acknowledged, has it been apologized for? The most basic thing that I think you could do is apologize. And it's again, a multi party thing. It's not like just [00:46:00] Republicans are refusing to apologize because they were the ones in charge. Democrats, who supposedly support equal rights under the law, and, racial equality and everything, refuse to apologize.
Kathy Hochul, who's the Democratic governor right now, said, Oh yeah, people were really affected by that. And that was it That was all she had to say about it. She never, she didn't apologize. She easily could. It seems like a win. If I was a Democrat, I would be like, Oh, I'm going to apologize for this right away.
This is an easy political win for me. But, either she's, she wants it to disappear. She wants the memory of Attica to disappear. She, is either worried that her original constituents in Erie County have a problem with it, or she's keeping it in her back pocket. Those are the only 3 options that are really available to her.
I suppose she just doesn't want to cause a fuss. That's the most obvious one. She doesn't want to make anyone upset because even with the amnesty that was proclaimed [00:47:00] for the Attica Attica victims following this the first people upset were the police unions and the, and patrolman benevolence association.
They considered it a slap in the face, that this, these crimes could go unpunished, even though most of the crimes committed that day were done by New York state officials and New York state. Really, the one I think who is most responsible is Nelson Rockefeller. At the end of the day, the buck stops there.
Obviously, there were other people involved. Spiro Agnew was super involved with the FBI and getting information on the Attica people. Richard Nixon just deferred to his judgment. If he wanted to Nelson Rockefeller could have made a difference, but he chose not to for political reasons, which is fine.
And in the end, he was rewarded for it. He became the vice president under Gerald Ford. In a lot of ways it worked out well for him. It didn't work out for, any of the 40 [00:48:00] people who were butchered. It didn't work out for, 40 people have, that's what 500 family members, friends.
Didn't work out for any of them who have to deal with the repercussions. Not only that, there were a hundred other people wounded. They have to live with that. People have to live with the racism they experienced that day. They have to live with the torture. And the police officers who may have committed murder have to live with that.
The officer who supposedly killed Kenneth Molloy says he dreams about brains still because he sees this guy's brains coming out of his head as he's blowing it apart. And that's real. It's a bunch of individual acts of horror culminated in a state designed massacre. And that's really what it was.
Like you were saying, everyone was the victim. It wasn't just the prisoners. It wasn't even the hostages. Because the hostages were butchered too. Most of the [00:49:00] hostages didn't die on the catwalk. Only two hostages died in the catwalk. Most of them died in the hostage circle, which is pretty crazy.
Someone ran up to a police officer, ran up to the hostage circle and everyone on the catwalk saw this and they started blasting too. So that spreading their shotgun blasts. Over, 20 feet or something, it's gonna go everywhere, and it's a miracle that anyone survived, especially in the hostage circle.
It's a miracle so few people died that did. It could have been, it could have been a dozen times worse. It could have been, 200 people dead, easily. Easily, but I guess in that sense, there was some measure of restraint shown.
Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I think you bring up the, I think the, one of the most fascinating points is the politics. It's all political at, but you [00:50:00] can basically take out Republican and Democrat there. It's just politics. Nelson Rockefeller was a liberal Republican. He was not some rock ribbed right wing extremist.
He was about as liberal as you could get, but he did this completely illiberal thing to. Because you just don't know what else to do. If I do, I want to appear weak or do I want to appear tougher somewhere in between, or that, do I want to solve this problem and sweep it under the rug, that's what they really want.
It was all about what could save face. And then they give it to these people who they've. Kim completely filled with hate. Like I would, that's a study to see yeah, totally brainwashed. Yeah. COINTELPRO. Jams the people's heads full of, purposely gins up as much hatred and then gives them an outlet for the hatred.
And I just, I wonder, from the top of your head, why in the 70s, at this point, [00:51:00] there's such gluts of violence? It's just everywhere. It just, it seems like the cork's been pulled out at this particular moment in the late 60s and the early 70s that we don't really see before that, and we really don't see much of it after, but in that maybe five years of just absolute violence.
Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with World War II, honestly. You go back to World War II, America is fighting supposedly against fascism. It's fighting against anti Semitism. And then, when black veterans come home, they're lynched in their uniforms. People were seeing the hypocrisy laid bare in front of them.
This wasn't the city on a hill that it was supposed to be. This wasn't some beacon of democracy in the world. This was actually some of the places were incredibly backwards. And the way we treat anything that's other, even [00:52:00] today. thAt's how we've treated them the whole time.
This isn't some. New phenomenon where, you know, if people who are the other up have an uprising in America, they're always crushed. You want to go back to the first uprising in American history, the whiskey rebellion that happened because poor people wanted to maintain their economic privilege of trading in whiskey.
And powers that be didn't want this, so they changed the law. They made it almost impossible to trade and barter in whiskey. And, the ulterior motives were obvious. George Washington was the number one producer of whiskey in the entire country. It's so interesting you bring that up, because it's basically, as soon as the United States is formed, these backwoodsmen...
Who, like you said, that's their only real trade good, is whiskey. They're saying the same things that George [00:53:00] Washington said a week earlier, when he wasn't in power, and then as soon as he's in power, he crushes them like the British were trying to crush him. I think that's a part that you can't even really teach in school, because it's so discordant.
Yeah. And people trying to mention it really quick and then you run away. Yeah people try and brush it up. But I think if you really look at it, it's really hard to square that. Yeah, but it was. It was the first stamp. This isn't what America is. It's not made for poor people. It's not made for the other.
It's not made for different people who have a different opinion than, the status quo. It was made for this burgeoning bourgeoisie. There's a reason why France. The Dutch, the Spanish, all joined on the United States side, because these were civilized folks who could, who wanted to bring civilization forward.
[00:54:00] And that's why they joined up there. It wasn't because this was some radical movement of da. If that was the case, we would have joined with the French Revolution when we went at the beginning, but we didn't. We waited until Napoleon was the emperor. Yeah, it was a reactionary revolution, not a radical revolution.
Yeah. And it's it's just a hypocrisy that almost any country has to deal with. There are revolving factors. There were people during the American Revolution who could definitely be considered radical. You look at someone like Sam Adams, super radical for his day. Probably would be considered a terrorist today if he was still around.
But there were also people who were extremely conservative. What's his name? John Dickinson of Virginia. He was an extremely conservative guy who was even against independence. But in the end, he ended up fighting for America because he still loved this country. He just didn't love it that way.
So you see [00:55:00] this it's just this constant dichotomy. The more I look into history, the more I realize that these. I don't know what to call them, opposing forces I don't want to sound like too much of a Marxist, but that's really what it is, these opposing forces throughout history, throughout time they come together, and the result is something like Attica, is something like the 60s and 70s, it's something like World War II, it's something like the American Revolution, they all rhyme together in their own special way, and African Americans have been being treated poorly in this country since its inception, since it first started.
Like you're talking about American history the American Revolution, African Americans were promised their freedom if they fought for the... If they fought for George Washington and the national army, they didn't end up getting it most in most cases, I'm sure some probably did. But yeah, it's just something we have to contend with.
And the thing that I think we should not do is just pretend like it doesn't exist [00:56:00] or try to pass laws against it, even being taught. This is a really strange place that. We're in, and because we're so different, there's so many different opinions. I understand that, but there's a difference between having an opinion and then denying the right for someone else to have an opinion too.
Yeah, absolutely. And going back around to prisons, I think it's so hard. We've been in the series talking about people like John Gotti and Vito Rizzuto, who were, they're not good guys. Let's not Try and wash that over. They've murdered people. They've been responsible for murders drugs, but then we're putting them in jails where they're basically vanished.
You're in yourself for 23 hours a day. And the only time you have outside of yourself is an hour in a cell. That's just a little bit bigger. Then the cell you were in, sometimes they don't even get to go into a [00:57:00] place that even has any natural light. Yeah. Yeah. And I even find I struggle with that myself.
Like we have to show some humanity. So if we're putting people away that we're saying that are absolutely incorrigible for life, but we're still treating them like that. Like, why not just kill them? I think that you're essentially killing them without your. They're basically the powers are, they can't go all the way with the death penalty, so let's just essentially give them the death penalty, but oh, we're anti death penalty, but you're essentially killing them, and then at the same breath, if you look at John Gotti, where somebody like Sammy Gravano gets out scot free, and he gleefully admits he killed 19 people that's the justice system we're working with yeah it's quite something.
We're definitely at a crossroads, but it feels like we've been at this crossroads for a hundred and fifty years. Yeah. I just don't know when it's gonna it's gonna [00:58:00] snap, and it's gonna snap one way or the other. Either people are going to support reform or they're going to support punitive measures and they're going to support, like you're saying just get rid of them, it's plenty of people support that.
I'm sure people who are listening to this right now are hearing about the retaking and to be like that. That's what they deserve. They broke the law. That's just what happens. And there is, of course, that. That level of thinking, but like you're saying this argument doesn't go around toward white mafioso for some reason, like it's not the same thing.
It's it's interesting. It's us as a country. It's our big our big sin as a nation, I think, is not only the prison industrial complex, but the way we treat different people of different religions, ethnicities, whatever. It's a part of us, and it's a part, probably a part of humans.
I don't know. That doesn't mean that it's good. That doesn't mean you should encourage that part of you. [00:59:00] That's your... That's your Neanderthal talking. That's your that's your really terrified, there's only 20, 000 of us left in the entire world, we need to preserve our way of life thinking that's where that comes from evolutionarily.
But that doesn't have any place, I think, in society anymore. I think we can confidently move past it. I think instinctually we want people who've done wrong things to be punished, and I think we all struggle with that, that we want them to get really punished. I think a funny thing when we were, when I taught in the prison was on Fridays we would watch movies and sometimes the movies would be cops and robber movies.
And these criminals, a lot of them were doing life sentences to a man they always rooted for the police in these movies. Like you would think that there would even be one rebel who is anti police to a man, [01:00:00] like I think instinctually when you would strip it away. And I'm sure if you would talk to them on a political basis, they were all against the police, but once seeing it presented fictionalized.
They would they would root for the quote unquote good guy and root against the bad guy. It's like with anything. It's how the story is presented. You could present it the other way, and I'm sure there have been movies like that, but for the most part, that's the way it's presented is the way it is.
It's not how it is, it's how it appears to be. Oh, that'd be an interesting experiment to run. To have the, to have that the script flipped, so to speak, on that. I'd love to see that. Maybe I'll go try and get a job again in the summer. I think to wrap up for today, from what you learned in the Attica riots and from the, and from just that general time period, is there one thing that could be changed?
To make things better? Or does the [01:01:00] whole system really have to be evaluated? Can we make the system better with the prisons? Following the riots, there was an initiative to have prisoners a part of the decision boards for for the prison. They would give their two cents on what they needed or what, their fellow prisoners needed.
That seemed to be a good idea, but what happened is, they were just ignored. You just ignore this one individual who... Was voted on by their peers at, by the end, no one even wanted to run for the position. Someone was just chosen because no one even was voting for it because they knew it was just a nonsense position.
But if something like that could be done, maybe that would be better. Maybe if we gave even a little bit more money to. To prisons, then that would go a long step forward. More training for correctional officers. [01:02:00] I think that a lot of times. Yeah, I think that's pretty, that's a pretty general statement, but giving them more money is obviously easier said than done.
It would be nice if we, just held back I don't know, yeah. 20 million that we were going to give to the Ukraine or to Ukraine, sorry or to the military industrial complex. If we could give that to prisons, that wouldn't be a bad idea. But again the first argument from either side, take your pick is going to be, oh, they're trying to.
They're trying to go easy on crime. They're not enforcing the laws like they should be. This is America. If you break the law, this is what happens. And this is, we know the arguments and it's just going to be that ad nauseum. I would like it if something like that happened, but again, yeah.
I think that would be the response. I'm not sure if there's a clear cut answer. I and even if there [01:03:00] was, it would be something. Out of reach Oh, stop using people for profit. They would, politicians would hear that and be like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Yeah. I think that the, it's always a problem of obviously there's some really structural problems that need to be.
Fixed, and there's probably, there's very little will to fix any of those problems, and so is slapping some paint over the rusted wall really going to solve the problem? No, but it looks a little better, and so the rust comes back, and then do we paint it again, or do we really fix the problem? Then you just blame the painter.
Yeah, and exactly. Yeah, to follow that metaphor through, and it just, it keeps getting bounced back and forth until you have. A real problem. And I feel like in a lot of ways that we're really at this point, getting on 50 years from Attica. I did my math wrong. Where that there's some serious [01:04:00] problems.
And is that going to boil over now? Is it maybe never going to boil over? But the problems that happened at Attica really haven't been sufficiently addressed even half of a century later. If anything, they've gotten worse. It's just as overcrowded, if not more than it was then. Maybe politics isn't as big of a issue in prisons as it was then.
But that could change very easily. Everyone talks about us being in the new 60s, or I hear that all the time. It could very easily happen again. I'm not sure if another Attica uprising happens again, but maybe another pretty bad riot. I think that is very possible. And that would be shocking.
And probably what would happen if that happens is you just double down on being even stricter. That probably, sadly, what it would be. I want to thank you so much for coming on. We've really just scratched the surface of what you talked about in your series and your series of just scratching the surface of what was going on and what's going on with the [01:05:00] penal system in this country.
But I think we've given people a good place to. Definitely start off to go listen to your episodes and then maybe go learn a little bit more about this whole situation. If people want to go listen, which I highly recommend they do, how can they find your podcast? So you can find it wherever podcasts are.
It's the Turning Tides podcast. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple. We're on any of them. Take your pick. Thanks again. I definitely definitely go and listen to that episode and go listen to your series on the Risorgimento and on the history of Puerto Rico. You're, you've got a wide spectrum of different things that you're looking at.
Is there any, can you give us a little sneak of what might be coming up? So what's coming next is the life of Amir Timur, as he's known to history. Tamerlane he was an Asiatic conqueror. Very little is really documented about him. It's very niche [01:06:00] subject. Rose out of Central Asia and his empire expanded from the gates of China to Cairo.
South to Baghdad, up north to the gates of Moscow. So this guy had a huge expanse of territory and he built it all basically by himself. People talk about Alexander the great, but he had his Macedonians. This guy had to forge an alliance of tribal confederation, like a tribal confederation of peoples to even get into the, get out of the gate.
And after that, I'm setting sail. I'm getting on my Prahu and we're setting sail for Singapore. We're going to talk about the Orang Laut, how they discovered the island, how they created the first initial settlements there. Up through Stanford Raffles, who's one of the most interesting, weirdest dudes in history, how he founded the modern [01:07:00] colony, the British colony of Singapore.
Up through the Imperial Japanese invasion and desecration of the place for years. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I can't wait to listen to all of that. Thank you again for coming on and you're always welcome. Oh, that's awesome. I love so much being on. It's a lot of fun to, to talk to you. I think we should definitely talk again about some mafioso stuff.
That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. I'd love to talk about Lucky Luciano. He's a a far off relative, a far flung relative of mine, yeah, let's definitely do that. I think people will love that. And a deep dive into Lucky Luciano is you can always talk about him. He's one of the most fascinating characters, I would dare say, in American history.
Yeah. Probably responsible for us winning World War II in a lot of ways.[01:08:00]
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