Attica Prison Uprising 101: A short Primer

New Resource: Attica Prison Uprising 101 – A Short Primer

This publication about the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 is not intended to be a curriculum guide, but a brief primer for educators and organizers.  It includes a timeline of events (with primary sources); testimonies from Attica prisoners; poetry by Attica prisoners; sample activities for youth; and other suggested resources.

We do not claim to have addressed all of the complexity of the rebellion in this short document.  This is by no means intended to be the definitive word about the context and meaning(s) of the rebellion.  We simply offer this resource as another in the long line of publications that have been produced about the Attica uprising.  We do so knowing that we will omit a lot important information. This is unavoidable.

We had been looking for exactly this type of resource to foster our own popular education efforts and activism on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Attica rebellion.  We didn’t find anything that quite worked so we took it upon ourselves to create what would be useful for us.  A core value of ours is to share information with others in order to facilitate movement-building to eradicate incarceration.  As such, we share this resource with you.

This guide was produced by organizers and educators rather than by historians.  While we tried to be objective, we are not neutral.  We state this unabashedly and honestly.  We sincerely hope that this material is useful to you if you plan to discuss the Attica uprising with your students, community members, and others.  We encourage others in the future to add to our collective knowledge about the Attica Rebellion and its legacy.

If you have any questions about this resource, please feel free to contact Mariame Kaba at mariame@project-nia.org.

Finally, we invite you to freely reproduce and distribute this primer.  We ask that it be disseminated at no cost and that Project NIA (www.project-nia.org) be acknowledged as producing this resource.  We love hearing from folks about how they have used our resources so make sure to drop us a line!

You can download the Attica Prison Uprising 101 Short Primer here:

http://niastories.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/new-resource-attica-prison-uprising-101-a-short-primer/

If you are in Chicago, join us in September for several events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising:

http://niastories.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/atticas-legacy-a-listing-of-events-september-2011/

Peace,

Mariame Kaba
Founder and Director
Project NIA
www.project-nia.org
Building Peaceful Communities...