Resource: “The Dignity and Justice That Is Due to Us by Right of Our Birth”: Violence and Rights in the 1971 Attica Riot

After analyzing the space of possibilities that existed for thinking about the violence of incarceration and the basis of rights, this Note suggests that these possibilities were narrowed due to the narrative pull of the riot. Part I situates American prisons within American society. Part II analyzes the space of possibilities for addressing the conditions of life within the prisons. Part III walks through various outgrowths of the failed negotiations and rioting at Attica: the stream of litigation and narrowing of the prison reform movement. This Note amplifies the rights claims that inmates made in the early 1970s, pushing back against the deafening debates on the retaking of the prison, and against the notion that claims about rights and about justice could be heard only when spoken by lawyers.