This article is reprinted from the September 28, 2016 issue of CHALLENGE. Although September 9, 1971, marks the beginning of the Attica Prison Rebellion, this month we commemorate Black August, a holiday honoring the bravery and sacrifice of the Attica prisoners, as well as the bold and militant leadership of Black workers from the prison galleys to the streets around the world, fighting against the imperialist system and its violently racist policies.

Today, the U.S. imprisons more workers than any other country in the world. More than 2 million-primarily working-class blacks-are incarcerated. This is a 500% increase since 1973, equivalent to 5% of the world’s population (American Civil Liberties Union). This is no accident; mass incarceration is one of the racist tools used by the bosses to solve the crisis of their declining system. The rulers use prisons to extract racist super-profits from the near enslavement of black workers, while maintaining a surplus of marginalized unemployed workers whom they deprive of benefits and jobs. More importantly, the rulers use prisons as a means of crushing black worker revolutionary potential and the unity of the working class.

The exponential growth of mass incarceration was the result of the U.S. rulers’ manufactured war on drugs, which they saw as their solution to the Black worker-led rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s. With the rise of racist murders of workers in prisons - from Rikers Island in New York to the Elmore County jail in Alabama - the Attica jail rebellion remains tragically relevant. Liberal rulers are trying to scare working people into voting Democratic with the prospect of a Trump presidency and Project 2025. The mass incarceration policies they warn are coming with Project 2025 are already here, thanks to a long list of Democrats, including Big Fascists Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Then as now black workers remain central to working-class liberation as the key fighting force for communist revolution.

Not only are conditions worse today than they were during Attica,… Attica once again…. is synonymous with prisoner resistance.
—Heather Ann Thompson, history professor at the University of Michigan, (Jacobin, 9/9)

Fifty-three  years ago, Black imprisoned workers led their white and Latin counterparts in a rebellion against the racist deplorable conditions at Attica prison in northwestern New York State. Today prisoners nationwide are organizing once again. Capitalism is a never-ending disaster. For workers, students and prisoners worldwide only communism is a solution: a world without racism, sexism or imperialist wars.
Concentration camp

In September of 1971, the conditions at Attica prison in the northwest corner of New York State were brutal. Inmates suffered from starving bellies, untreated infections, falling teeth, lack of toilet paper, and showers only once a week often without any soap (Jacobin, 9/9). With about 2,300 inmates, Attica was overcrowded to almost twice its capacity. The prisoner population was 54 percent Black, 9 percent Puerto Rican and 37 percent white. All 383 guards were white.

So the prisoners organized. They read Marx and Frantz Fanon. They formed the Attica Liberation Faction uniting different political groupings. They had educational rap sessions in the prison yard. They put together demands for improved conditions and sent them to state, city and prison officials. All demands for change by the prisoners were ignored.

Rebellion

After a prisoner fought back against a brutal guard, the prison bosses ordered a crackdown that led to a violent fight. The prison guard was beaten and eventually died. But a small group of more politicized prisoners immediately changed it into an organized rebellion. Meetings were held, demands were discussed and formulated, and leaders were chosen. A central part of the prison called Times Square was fortified. They chose a negotiation committee. They figured out how to feed 1,300 people and obtained medical care for those most in need.

Rockefeller’s fascist savagery

But New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller and various authorities were not interested in negotiations. They had a two-pronged racist strategy: spread vicious lies about the rebellious prisoners and viciously attack them as soon as possible. Both the media and various officials spread racist lies about supposed atrocities committed by the rebels, including slitting the throats of the hostages. The attack by the state involved hundreds of state cops, National Guardsmen, and both current and former prison guards. They were handed weapons from a supply truck without regard to serial numbers and they had their own personal weapons.

Road to mass incarceration

The attack started with a gas that incapacitated the rebelling prisoners. This was followed by fifteen minutes of indiscriminate shooting that slaughtered 29 prisoners and 9 guards. After the prison was totally secured, four more prisoners-leaders of the rebellion- were hunted down and killed. That was followed by vicious beatings, torture and no medical care. Heather Ann Thompson: “In the aftermath is when the real brutality begins. The doctors are trying to help prisoners, while guards are dumping them off of stretchers, kicking them, urinating into wounds, making the most horrific scene unfold.” (Democracy Now, 7/9).

President Richard “Nixon repeatedly assured Rockefeller he did the right thing, because Attica was “the Blacks,” and part of a nationwide conspiracy by the communists and Black radicals to undermine [U.S.]” (truth-out, 9/9). Within a year, Rockefeller enacted a law that formed the seeds of the “war on drugs” (racist war on workers) operation.

Attica scared the bosses, and they reacted with more terrorization of the Black and Latin working class. In 1970, the year before Attica, there were nearly 200,000 people in prison. By 2015, that number was 2.3 million people, a 400 percent increase in the rate of incarceration (Five-Thirty-Eight, 2/12/16).

Attica is a symbol of working-class rebellion and viciously racist aftermath. Attica today means fightback against racist state terror.
Prisons can be a site of struggle and fightback. At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan 400 prisoners protested today to commemorate Attica. And more are organizing again against deplorable prison conditions throughout the country. Nationwide protests are growing against racism and sexism. More than ever, we need to fight for communism to end these capitalist atrocities once and for all.