A Pulitzer Prize-winning book written about a New York prison uprising is reportedly banned in New York prisons.
Heather Ann Thompson’s “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy” tells the story of the 1971 Attica Prison uprising that left 32 inmates and 9 hostages dead. However, according to New York state prison officials, the book advocates “acts of disobedience” toward “law enforcement or prison personnel,” Reason Magazine reported.
Heather Ann Thompson’s book on the Attica Prison takeover is banned in New York prisons because officials want to keep out materials that advocate “acts of disobedience” https://t.co/ymuqACv90Q
— reason (@reason) July 14, 2022
The Attica Prison Uprising took place over the course of five days, when 1,200 inmates took over Attica prison. They subsequently released a manifesto of 33 demands for better prison conditions that included “better medical treatment, religious freedom, higher wages for inmate jobs and basic necessities,” according to CBS News.
“We demand an end to political persecution, racial persecution, and the denial of prisoners’ rights to subscribe to political papers, books or any other educational and current media chronicles that are forwarded through the United States Mail,” the prisoners wrote in a manifesto. (RELATED: John Lennon’s Killer Denied Parole Once Again)
The New York Civil Liberties Union and Civil Rights (NYCLU) Clinic filed a federal lawsuit challenging the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s prohibition violating the First and 14th Amendments last March.
“The people inside just want to be able to read their own history, what happened in the state that they grew up in, what happened in the places where they reside day in and day out,” Thompson told Reason. “They, constitutionally and as human beings, have the right to read, and I, as a U.S. citizen, have the right to have what I have written read.”