[S]ince the days of Attica, the US prison population has increased more than sixfold. We have become the world’s first prison state, with nearly 70% of prisoners coming from the nation’s brown and black one quarter. Imprisonment has become more and more the fate of the lowest income blacks as well. A college educated black man today stands one third the chance of incarceration he did in 1970, while today’s black male high school dropout is seven times more likely to be jailed than his dropout uncle in 1970.
We’ve come a long way since Attica, and not all of it the way we’d like. The lasting lessons of Attica are that little will change until current and former inmates, many times more numerous today than in 1971, again take their destinies into their own hands…and organize themselves and their communities in a political fight to roll back the prison state in their lifetimes.
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