A part of the Corrections Documentary Project

Word by Masai Ehehosi
Produced originally for Critical Resistance Northeast Conference
Featured at the 2001 Black Panther International Film Festival

To better understand what struggles we face today, we can look to history to help us interpret the present and our place within it. Attica: Roots of Resistance (2001) gives a brief yet compelling portrait of one of the U.S.’ most infamous rebellions, and a most brutal example of state repression that was deployed to destroy it.

The video places the 1971 Attica uprising within it’s proper historical and political context: the peoples’ liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s, at the the intitial rise of today’s prison industrial complex.

As an organizing and public education tool, it leaves us to question whether the state’s violence in ’71 has been tempered, or merely built invisibly into the walls and structures of today’s system.

2001 / 11 minutes