Published in 2016, University of Michigan historian Heather Ann Thompson’s Pulitzer-prize-winning history of the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising, Blood In the Water, was released in paperback this fall. Thompson was in Milwaukee recently to speak at a series of events spotlighting mass incarceration. She spoke with The Progressive contributor Erik Gunn about the lessons of Attica and the prospects for decarceration in the era of President Donald Trump. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Erik Gunn: What are ways that the Attica uprising echoes today?
Heather Ann Thompson: This was an uprising of prisoners for basic human rights 46 years ago now. In ways very alarming and eerie, we are right back where we were in 1971. In some respects, we’re in much worse shape, because we failed to heed what the men inside of Attica were asking us as a society to do: to treat people behind bars, no matter what got them there, as human beings.
The Attica story is both a cautionary tale about what happens when you don’t get history correct, when you don’t know the full story, and when the voting population listens to what state officials tell them uncritically.
Q: Attica is seen as a political event, and yet we read about prison riots and uprisings since then, and they aren’t framed that way.
HT: This was a rebellion that took place in ’71, so it took place in a broader context of civil rights rebellions on the outside. The state correctional facilities saw it that way too. They saw it as part and parcel of the Black Power rebellion. The Attica brothers’ demands—decent food, religious freedom, more humane parole rules—[were] remarkably basic human rights demands. Part of the reason it was referred to as the “Attica riot,” and why all uprisings today are referred to as “riots,” is to minimize the legitimacy of what just happened and to suggest to the public that this was a bunch of violent criminals losing all sense of decency and terrorizing their captors.
In 2016, on the anniversary of Attica, roughly 24,000 prisoners launched protests. I say “roughly” because prisons are such closed institutions, there’s undoubtedly much about this that we don’t know. The only reason we know anything about the horrors that took place at Attica was, not only were the folks inside determined to keep telling their stories, but folks on the outside—lawyers, college students, community members—just kept banging on those doors and demanding access and demanding to know.
Q: What tools are available, to media and activists, to obtain that kind of information?
HT: We have the same shoddy tools that have been there since Attica. Every Freedom of Information Act request can be denied on grounds of privacy or security. Prisons are uniquely protected under the guise of security not to let anyone in, not let anyone know what’s going on.
The only successful reporting that I’ve seen is from folks who are relentless. They just don’t go away; they keep demanding access—sometimes enlisting elected officials, sometimes filing suits, through the ACLU or the Center for Constitutional Rights.
But for young journalism students today, there’s a sense in which they ask the question, and they trust the state official’s answer as truthful, or, if they are told they can’t have access, they accept that.
For young journalism students today, there’s a sense in which they trust the state official’s answer as truthful, or, if they are told they can’t have access, they accept that.
Q: A few years ago, there was beginning to be a meeting of the minds between progressives and conservatives around criminal justice in general and incarceration in particular. How much of that was hype and how much of that was real?
HT: Even up to the eve of Trump’s election, I think that there was real momentum to begin the process of decarceration and to seriously rethink how we deal with social ills in this country.
In 2015, I had the opportunity to speak at a historical convening, the Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform in Washington, D.C. There was everyone there, from the Koch Brothers to the ACLU. Newt Gingrich spoke, but he was on the same panel with Cory Booker. There were formerly incarcerated folks there. I can remember feeling very emotional.
I think today, despite Trump’s election and despite Jeff Sessions being the Attorney General, at the community level I see that that same momentum. Whether I’m in Milwaukee or Detroit or East Lansing or Cleveland or L.A., I see that the community momentum for decarceration and rethinking the criminal justice system is still very vibrant.
But the federal landscape does matter. It sends a message to state legislators in particular of what’s possible. It’s very alarming that we’re seeing again kind of this re-embrace of draconian laws in places like Colorado, which are now again consideration truth-in-sentencing legislation, even though we have long shown that this is devastating economically and socially. We’re in dicey times. I think there was a very real possibility for reform, but I also think there’s a very real possibility of backlash. The bell has been rung yet again for “law and order.”
Q: How big a difference did the election of Trump and the appointment of Attorney General Sessions make in terms of that shift?
HT: When Barack Obama did things like outlaw solitary confinement for juveniles, federally that sent a certain message to the states, and likewise, when Jeff Sessions says to his federal prosecutors across the country “Prosecute to the fullest extent of the law,” that sends a different message.
One thing is for sure. The lack of will to prosecute police shootings at the federal level, the lack of will to file civil rights cases—this is a very alarming trend. One of the most important elements of that criminal justice reform movement was an understanding, even across party lines, that this was a racially unjust system . . . not just racially disparate, it was a racist system.
The lack of will to prosecute police shootings at the federal level, the lack of will to file civil rights cases—this is a very alarming trend.
That piece of the criminal justice reform package is seeming to fall out.
Q: In the 1990s, even centrist Democrats were, in retrospect, on the wrong side of some of this history. How much do you fear from that segment of the governing class?
HT: We created mass incarceration with bipartisan will. There were more people imprisoned in the Clinton Administration than under any other. There was more devastation done by laws at that time, such as the Violent Crime Act. This is not a party issue.
One of the reasons why the criminal justice reform movement was so vibrant in 2015 and 2016 was not even because moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats or even left Democrats woke up one day and said “Huh! This is a crisis! Maybe we should do something about it.”
They were really forced to do something about it because of community activism. Ferguson had exploded, Baltimore had exploded, Chicago was exploding, and frankly the issue of police accountability and the devastation of incarceration became a front-and-center issue for Congress, for state legislators and for prosecutors and for police because they couldn’t avoid it. It was community activism that forced the question. It would not at all surprise me, if there’s going to be a backlash, it will also be bipartisan.
Q: For someone reading this, what would you say about what to do, other than just feel helpless?
HT: People can do something where they are. Teachers can educate people about this crisis. Cities can open their doors to formerly incarcerated young people. The federal government can open up financial aid to people with convictions. City employers can get rid of the box so that formerly incarcerated people can have jobs. Community people can work to ease re-entry for people coming home. People who are home with their children can take a few hours a week to simply mentor and help children of the incarcerated, who have been orphaned to incarceration. There’s literally no shortage of ways in which people can intervene.
People can do something where they are ... There’s no shortage of ways in which people can intervene.
Q: As you look at the landscape, what gives you the most hope?
HT: I’m a historian. No matter how repressive and oppressive a given moment in history can become, I also know that activism works and that change is inevitable. It gives me enormous hope to know that with enough momentum and education and good will, this is absolutely un-doable. Human beings created this, and so therefore human beings can undo this. And that gives me enormous hope.
The other part that gives me hope is that I’ve given more talks in the last twenty-four months than I can count. And no matter where I talk about incarceration and its devastating consequences, when people hear what’s really going on, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities, they are appalled and they are moved. They don’t think it’s fair, they don’t think it’s right.
People have an enormous faith in their country, what it stands for, and what it should be about. And that gives me hope. I had an opportunity to give a talk in a tiny town in Kansas where I spent every summer as a kid. This is an all-white community, largely rural, farming; probably most of them voted for Trump. And they were appalled. They were moved by the story and the reality of what we’ve created. And they also angry that they didn’t know about it. I have this enormous faith in the power of education and the humanity of other people.
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Wisconsin writer and reporter Erik Gunn has written for The Progressive on the death penalty, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, and other subjects.