Parola Perspective: On Heather Ann Thompson's, "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and it's Legacy.

By PWP contributor Brooks Parola Formerly of Flint.

Folks, I HIGHLY recommend, Heather Ann Thompson's Pulitzer Prize winning, "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and it's Legacy".

Leading up to that uprising, people KNEW about bad prison conditions, and were ready for reform. But after the uprising, due to gov't. lies and misinformation, (used to justify the police going in and shooting/killing not just prisoners, but hostages as well) prisoners to this day have not gotten the reforms needed to prevent these types of uprisings, and people's attitudes about prisoners have completely changed. Today, we view prisoners as animals, and that attitudes comes from the lies the gov't. said about the Attica prisoners.

"Nonetheless, the false statements about what happened at Attica profoundly shaped how Americans saw that uprising in particular and prison activism in general. “On the eve of Attica, right as the prisoner protest was starting, Americans were quite sympathetic to these prisoners; they understood that prisons were hellholes that needed reform,” Thompson says. “And after Attica they are quickly deciding that, no, these guys are animals.”