For four days in September of 1971, prisoners revolted, taking over the institution that incarcerated them in upstate New York. By the time the dust settled in Attica, 33 prisoners and 10 guards or staff had been killed – notably all but one guard and three prisoners were killed by law enforcement gunfire when the state violently retook control of the prison. While the Attica rebellion has become fairly widely known, our guest has written a powerful book that reframes that rebellion not as a singular uprising, but as one important piece that contextualizes a series of rebellions by prisoners, engaging in tactics that include counter-violence, against the violence of the white supremacist capitalist framing of our society itself, asserting that US prisons are literal sites of war. Our guest is Orisanmi Burton, a Professor of Anthropology at American University, who describes this framing in his book as the Long Attica Revolt, or in description, “revolutionary struggle for decolonization and abolition at the site of the US prison”. His book is called “Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, prison repression, and the long attica revolt.” Prisoners in, at least New York, Florida, Michigan, and California, have been banned from reading it under fears that it may itself incite rebellion. That’s a claim that our guest today rejects.
This week’s Resistance in Residence artist is Palestinian playwright, author, and screenwriter Betty Shemieh, who has a new novel out called Too Soon.
Check out Betty Shemieh’s website: https://www.bettyshamieh.com/
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