Mr. Ratner tells Paul Jay that Gov. Rockefeller ordered the 1971 massacre of rebelling black prisoners to send a message throughout the US prison system. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced March 10, 2014 with Paul Jay.
STORY TRANSCRIPT
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. Iâm Paul Jay in Baltimore, and weâre continuing our series of Reality Asserts Itself interviews with lawyerâI should say, radical human rights lawyer Michael Ratner, who now joins us in the studio.
Thanks for joining us again, Michael.
MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Nice to be back with you, Paul.
JAY: And just anotherâone more time, Michael is president emeritus at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Heâs chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. Heâs also a member of the board of The Real News Network. And all kinds of other stuff.
Letâs pick up the story in 1971. Youâve just gone through this decade which isârevolutionary is the only way to describe the 1960s all over the world, and nobody knew where this was all going to lead. But in 1971, one of the seminal events, I think, was prison uprisings. There were several, actually, including one in Quebec around the same time. But the best-known was Attica, and you became involved in that.
RATNER: You know, after I clerked for Constance Baker Motley, the only woman black federal judge, I took a job at the Center for Constitutional Rightsânewly formed, came out of the southern civil rights movement, giants of the civil rights movementâWilliam Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy, Morton Stavis. Giants. And they were the front lines, really, of the civil rights movement and of defendingâreally, defending what weâre calling the revolution that happened in the â60s. And part of that included the Chicago Seven or Eight case, the one about the protests at the Democratic convention. They had a whole section defending Vietnam War resisters, soldiers, and others.
So it was an incredibly amazing place to be. Tiny. You know, a dozen of us there, maybe that, in a loft off, like, the worst porn district in New York, 42nd Street. Veryânot a lot of money. But an exhilarating place to go. And despite where one could go at that point coming off a clerkship and all that, I decided to go to the Center, because this is the kind of work I wanted to do.
So I walk into the office, which isnât reallyâno one has separate offices. Itâs little dividers. Itâs linoleum floor. Itâs up a loft. And Iâm there really literally three or four days. Itâs September 1971. And during that period, Bill Kunstler is up at Attica, where there has been a takeover of whatâs called D Yard in the prison, and thereâs hundreds of prisoners whoâve taken over D Yard. And Bill Kunstler is part of the negotiating committee to try and figure out with the state to negotiate how this is going to come to an end. Tom Wicker was there, the New York Times reporter; Herman Badillo, a politician from New York. A prominent set of negotiators.
And [incompr.] remember Attica. I donât remember the numbers, but thousands of prisoners, 90-some percent black and Latino. I think zero is the number of black or Latino guardsâall white. So youâre talking about, I mean, just deep, deep discrimination, both in the population as well as how itâs being guarded. And there were huge, legitimate complaints. I mean, Attica looks like a medieval fortress, and it probably was like that inside. So thereâs the Attica prison has had this takeover, and as you said, there were many prison riots or rebellions is what we call Attica, Attica rebellion, going on across the country, and even in Canada and other places. And Bill is the negotiator.
And then finally the negotiations really break down, most likely over the amnesty issue, but perhaps some other issues. One prison guard, as I recall, had been killed. I donât know the circumstances. In fact, no one was ever convicted of his murder in the end. But one prison guard was killed. And the state was run by Nelson Rockefellerâwas the governor. We now call him âthe Butcher of Atticaââand then heâs dead, but I still call him that. And then on, I guess, itâs September 11, actually, I think, is the dayâthe same day as the coup in Chile two years laterâand September 11, could it be 9/11 also? Itâs conceivable. I think they were all thenâI donât remember the exact day for Attica, but I think September 11. They say that the negotiatiors canât go in any longer to negotiate with the prisoners and talk to them, and thereâs a picture of Bill walking out saying, I just fear the absolute worst.
JAY: Bill Kunstler.
RATNER: Bill Kunstler coming out, Iâsay, I fear the absolute worst. And what happens: you see in film shot of the National Guard who have been called with their big guns to line the walls, you see them raising their fists and their guns, âwhite power, white powerâ. This is the people who were going to supposedly put downâ.
JAY: They actually start chanting âwhite powerâ.
RATNER: Yeah. Weâre going to put down the Attica Prison rebellion. And what happens is a massacre. They fire intoâmostly arbitrarily just into the yard, killingâI think itâs 32 people and nine guards orâI donât remember the exact numbers. But they also target some of the more politically active people and kill them. So itâs murder, straight, straight murder.
And then the report thatâs put out in the press is they had to do it because the guardsâI mean, the prisoners were killing people and they were killing the guards and were castrating the guards.
~~~
NEWS PRESENTER: Good evening. Before the four day insurrection of New Yorkâs Attica State Prison came to a tragic end this morning. Negotiations gave way to force, making this the bloodiest prison incident the country has seen in four decades.
NEWS PRESENTER: In the final hours of the revolt, led primarily by blacks, the inmates murdered nine of their white hostages. Twenty-eight convicts were killed by state troopers and sheriffsâ deputies, who regained control of the prison.
~~~
RATNER: Iâm sitting with my partner at the time, Margie Ratner, whoâs later Margie Ratner-Kunstler, but sheâs a lawyer I work with, and we say to each other, this is complete BS. I donât believe anything weâre reading. But that was the dominant narrative for over a month, that guards were castrated by the prisoners.
JAY: And it turned out not to be true.
RATNER: Completely false. Nothing to do with it at all. No guards were killed in that exceptâthe only guards that were killed by that were by the bullets of the National Guard and Rockefeller ordering it. Thereâs a greatâitâs a Tom Paxton song, Judy Collins sang it, and itâs from the point of view of a prison guard whoâs taken hostage, and theyâre being shot. And he saysâand theyâre talking to each other, and he says, you know, first they say, donât worry, theyâre going to free us, and then he says the shots start coming, and they sing, had they only taken Rockefeller hostage, then they actually might have done something to solve this thing. But working-class guards are essentially dispensable, like the prisoners.
So Iâm there, Iâm at the Center. Weâre monitoring the situation âcause Bill is ourâyou know, one of our leaders at the Center, Bill Kunstler is. And they immediately send a group of us up to Attica right after the rebellion is put down. And my job is to go into the prison hospital and interview people whoâve been tortured and beaten, because after they retook the prison, they forced all the prisoners to run through a gauntlet of guards nakedâthe guards werenât naked; I mean the prisoners were nakedâand they were just beaten. They had to do it on glass. All kinds of really bad stuff. And, you know, I donât actually have a lot of memory of being in that hospital room, but it was a large room, you know, maybe, you know, 100 feet by 50 feet, and it was very large, with scores of people in their beds in all kinds of terrible shape, having been tortured and brutalized by the guards. And my job was to interview them to get evidence about what happened to them.
JAY: And what had been their demands?
RATNER: Everything from better food, exercise, demands that areâ.
JAY: They were simple reforms.
RATNER: Right, that would be similar to most prisonersâ requests and demands today, because very little has changed. So, exactly right. Simple, very simple reforms.
JAY: And it was put down with such violence becauseâ?
RATNER: You know, I thinkâI donât know what was in Rockefellerâs mind, but I think they didnât consider prisoners to be human, and so they figured theyâre just dispensable, theyâre all criminals; and secondly, probably âcause they wanted to send a lesson. You know, New York had a lot of prisoners. I mean, I thought it was a lot of prisoners then. Of course, the country now has, like, six times the number of prisoners we had in 1970. I think there were 600,000 in the country. Now thereâs two and a half million. Soâor five times the number, but whatever. There were a lot of prisoners. And so they wanted to send a message: you rebel, you will be murdered. I think thatâs just clear.
And whatâs interesting is they thenâ. Anyway, we were told to interview the prisoners, and we broughtâthere were various lawsuits for conditions and what happened to them. And my instructions wereâI was a new lawyerâwas do not ask them anything about what happened before the massacres, because [incompr.] going to be criminal cases. And ultimately there were a huge number of criminal cases brought by the state against the prisoners. Huge. I mean, for murder, everything. Hundreds of cases. And there was a big defense teamâI was not part of that, but that was the National Lawyers Guild and the Center and others to defend those people. And we broughtâI brought a suit to say, this is unfair. You have toâto be justice here, you have to go after the National Guard. They threw me out on that basis, but ultimately thatâs what prevailed; ultimately it became so obvious that the National Guard had just caused massive death and there was no looking at what they were doingâand some of the prosecutors started to resign, actuallyâthat the entire cases fell.
JAY: Against the prisoners.
RATNER: Against the prisoners. None. Zero. And eventually, after many years of litigation by a woman named Liz Fink and others, there was compensation paid to a number of the prisoners. It took 25 years.
JAY: Any National Guard or, more importantly, people that gave orders to the National Guard ever held accountable?
RATNER: No, never. Thatâs not something that would ever happen. And, of course, now we have a park by my house called Rockefeller Park, and itâs [incompr.] I want them to get stickers made that say, you know, âButcher of Atticaâ, but for me personally, of course, because for me personally, you know, it was devastating to see it. I mean, Bill was shaken, Bill Kunstler was shaken more than probably anyone because he was in there with negotiations, but all of us who went up and became personal friends with prisoners were just shaken by the thing, by the death, by the cruelty of it, by the inhumanity of it, and by prisons in general.
In one instance from it, we once took one of the prisoners whoâd gotten out upstate with us and to a farm or something, and we were using a chainsaw to cut wood. And he said, oh, can I try that? Heâs probably a 35-year-old prisoner. And we give him the chainsaw, and he pulls the trigger back all the way, and the chainsaw jumps out of his hand because the personâheâs 35, he had never in his life used a power tool. Heâd been in juvenile detention and prisons his whole life and never been trained even to use a power tool. And those kind of stories. I mean, it just wants toâit makes you want to just cry. I mean, thatâs all I can say about it.
JAY: By this time youâre fairly radicalized, but this must have taken you another step.
RATNER: Oh, yeah. I mean, this was reallyâI mean, this you sawâI mean, look it, Iâd seen the South, Iâd seen segregated schools, Iâd seen all that. But to be in a prison where that kind of massacre and slaughter and abuse and torture had happened, and to happen right in New York, and a, quote, northern state, it was astounding to see that.
But at that time in the office, everythingâs happening. ThereâsâVietnam is still going on, so thereâs all the people resisting going into Vietnam. I represented people who were doing fragging, you know, rolling their grenades into the second lieutenantâs tent. And, you know, we did pretty well in those cases. I mean, you know, there was a huge amount going on. There was warrantlessâ.
JAY: Yeah, for people who donât know, this fragging became a fairly common thing in Vietnam, where privates would throw grenades into their officersâ tents.
RATNER: And, you know, youâand they didnâtâthey oftentimes didnât get accused, convicted of murder or life sentences.
JAY: Because?
RATNER: I just think it was so brutal, the whole war, and they said people just lost it, and they justâthey were given ten years or five years or something, but oftenâ. And then there wasâof course, the National Lawyers Guild and others were running coffee shops all over the country, at military bases, to recruit people. So Vietnam was still very heavy in 1971 and 1972, very heavy, as well as the remnants of the civil rights movement.
It was also the beginning, in New Yorkâwhich was a big part of my activismâof the Puerto Rican liberation movementânot the beginning. For me it was the beginning. It had been going on forever. But to get Puerto Rico free from, you know, the U.S. And I got very involved in the Puerto Rican movement, starting in the early â70s. I wasâalthough I never joined a political party, I was very close to the Puerto Rican Socialist Party at that point, represented everybody from Vieques demonstrators to Puerto Rican draft resisters who refused to go in because, they said, weâre Puerto Rican, weâre independent, we donât even have a right to vote. And it becameâin New York, at least, a thrust of a radical part of our movement was led by the Puerto Rican independence movement.
JAY: Okay. Weâre going to continue our series of interviews with Michael Ratner on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.
