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feftrey hart
Campus and prisons
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Throughout the five days of
the prisoner rebellion at Attica,
a weird kind of double image
kept imposing itself. These
prisoners were civil criminals,
sure enough, and there they
were in a real prison- none
more real and prison-like than
grey and turreted Attica-and
they were visibly surrounded
by thousands of real guns
which eventually would fire.
But the whole thing was
uncannily reminiscent of the
campus rebellions of the 60s,
both in tactical detail and in
rhetoric. Continually imposed
upon the image of Attica was
that of Berkeley, Columbia,
Harvard.
The prisoners began by
"seizing a building." Even as
the student militants, they
were alert to the central role of
the media in these things: an
event is real these days only if
it occurs on the TV screen,
and, therefore, a TV
cameraman appeared at
Cellblock D and spent more
time inside it than anyone not
connected with the prison.
Like the campus militants
of the 60s, the prisoners had a
list of demands, and, as in a
campus insurrection, they
began with, relatively practical
reforms. These function as a
come-on for the average type,
but then the inmates
deliberately escalated the
demands to the point where
they could not possibly be
accepted by the authorities,
the whole point being to
provoke a "confrontation."
(No, no, you wanted to tell the
prisoners: Governor
Rockerfeller is not Grayson
Kirk and Commissioner Oswald
is not a dean!)
Knowing it to be
impossible, the prisoner
revolutionaries demanded the
removal of legitimate state
officials, and transportation for
themselves to some
"non-imperialist" nation like
Cuba or Algeria.
As on the campus,
protracted "negotiations" went
on, around the clock, haggard
officials emerging from time to
time to speak for the benefit of
the ever-present media. And,
like the student militants, the
prisoners demanded "total
amnesty" the point there
being that the authorities
themselves should bestow
legitimacy on the insurrection.
The tactics and the rationale
were right out of the 60s. It
was as if all those strident chic
paperbacks in the campus
bookstores had suddenly come
to second birth at Attica.
The prisoners were actually
living out the myth: America is
a "fascist" and "imperialist"
state; countries like Cuba and
Algeria are "free"; the
inmates-holdup men, muggers,
pimps, narcotics pushers-are
"political prisoners." By'
"negotiating" for the
astonishing period of five days,
and by letting the political
militant, Bobby Seale, into the
place, the authorities
themselves did much to sustain
these delusions.
The five days provided for a
kind of alumni homecoming of
60s figures.
But, even as all this went
forward, a chilling recognition
entered. The dilettante
revolutionism of the 60s, really
a hothouse product of the
campus, when transferred to
the prison at Attica produced a
withering hail of real bullets
and a pile of too real corpses.
(Distributed by King Features
Syndicate)
arthur hoppc
V ' On hoinn nfrnirl
' Will Villi V4 I V4
(Ed. Note: Once in a while,
Arthur Hoppe departs from his
customary satrical writing to
produce a column with a more
directly personal, serious
approach.)
It was a lovely summer day,
white clouds scudding in a blue
sky. Coming toward me on the
sidewalk were two young men,
one short and moustached, the
other tall and wearing dark
glasses. And I was afraid.
I felt the ugly fear rising in
me while they were still half a
block away-the ugly fear that
becomes more familiar with
each passing day. As always,
the fear was impersonal. I had
never seen either one of them
before. Our lives had never
touched.
I was afraid simply because
they were young and poor and
black.
They walked the way more
and more young blacks from
the ghettos seem to walk these
days: with a certain cool
defiance and (perhaps I
imagine it) a secret pleasure in
the knowledge of my fear.
And, make no mistake, I
feared them. I fear all who are
young and poor and black and
walk that way. We were still 50
yards apart. I thought of
crossing the street. The traffic
was too heavy. I hated the fear
that grew within me.
It wasn't always that way. I
thought back on how it used to
be. Was it only ten years ago?
Remember? We worked
together then. We marched
together then. We sang, "We
Shall Overcome" together and
listened to Martin Luther King
together and talked together
over endless cups of coffee of
how the day would soon come
when the color of a man's skin
would no longer matter. That's
how it was then-ten short
years ago.
And now my stomach
churned with fear.
Ten years ago we were
slowly closing the gap.
Remember? We were slowly
getting civil rights laws passed.
We were slowly integrating
neighborhoods, slowly
achieving equality of
opportunity. All too slowly.
And now the gap that was
closing then has somehow
widened into a fearsome
chasm.
Now the militant young
black leaders talk not of
brotherhood and love, but of
killing the pigs and offing the
honkies. So pigs are being
killed and honkies offed. Nor
do they talk to us. No, we no
longer work or march or sing
or listen or talk together.
I like to think I understand
a little of what these young
blacks feel. Every man needs
something from his fellows.
And if he can win neither their
love, their respect nor their
admiration because the game is
stacked against him, he will
gladly settle for their fear.
As these two young blacks
drew closer, I thought I
understood something else. I
thought I understood the fear a
young black must have felt in
the South when the Ku Klux
Klan was riding high. And my
black friends (they are all too
few now) might well say there
is a justice in my reaping what
my fathers sowed. Maybe so.
They were close now.
Suddenly, I realized that I not
only hated my fear, I hated
them for making me afraid, for
making me less of a man. So
now it is their turn to sow fear.
But soon it will be their turn to
reap hatred, for we come to
hate what we fear. And then, it
will be our turn to sow fear
once again.
At that moment, I knew
what I should do. I should look
up into their eyes and
smile-smile with the love and
respect and admiration we
human beings should have for
each other.
I didn't. I didn't because I
was afraid.
So we passed, I looking
down, they... I don't know if
they even looked at me.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
As always, once the
immediate danger was gone,
the immediate fear eased. But
now, having thought back over
the years that have passed, a
new kind of fear grows within
me. It is a fear for the years to
come.
(Copyright Chronicle
Publishing Co. 1971)
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1971
PAGE 5