I hate to be the cause of reduction in buys, but good evening. Im herald holzer, director of roosevelt house and on behalf of the Hunter College president to his in the room tonight im delighted to welcome you all to the home of franklin d. Roosevelt and eleanor roosevelt. One of them is going to be talking about gubernatorial administrative work today, he was the new york state governor before he came president and his wife was the conscience of the empire state just as she later became the conscience of the country and the world, who was never afraid to confront challenging and uncomfortable issues like the one we are going to discuss this evening, even if her own confronting husband, privately of course because this was the 1930s. I think you all know as well, the history of this amazing space. Was originally a wedding gift to franklin and eleanor from his mother sarah, and it came to the newlyweds with only one stipulation. Sarah herself moved in and stayed in residence for the next 40 years. Houses, and technically there were two of them, had separate doorways, one on the west for sarah and one on the east for franklin and eleanor, sarah quickly sliced through the dining room, which we will visit later during our reception, extensively, as she put it, to make the room more accommodating for large dinner parties. But eleanor later remembered she ended up having the run of the house and appeared on fdr and eleanors side of the house as eleanor put it, at the most unexpected times. After sarah died fdr put the house up for sale and what jennifer always calls, the best real estate deal of the century, sold it for 16,000 to Hunter College, cutting the original asking price by 10,000 and donating another 1000 to buy books for the student library. Became and a long served as an Interfaith Center for the girls of hunter, and then the great transformation of the 21st century began after raised awareness and funding, and armed with an rehabilitaten to and transformed the roosevelt house into a Public Policy institute. It is today, for Public Policy students and human rights students, some of whom are here for this program tonight. For students of architecture, the space we are sitting in tonight was carved out of what was the old kitchen space. One a word about gubernatorial connection, which i offer as a kind of full presence ofin the mild colleague mike klein who is here tonight. Both of us proudly served in the administration of governor marielle cuomo, governor mario como and whether it was the lessons of attica or his own innate patients, and negotiating ability, mario cuomo was able to face a prison uprising of his own, at sing sing, just days after he was sworn in as governor in 1983 with a striking differently with a strikingly different result. Hostages were taken and demands were made but no blood was shed. Thats a memory i wanted to share. Lets turn the clock back 45 years from today. Restored house was just to be a forum for this kind of discussion. The event we are gathered to reapproach is the attica prison uprising of 1971, its causes, its meeting, and the trip its meaning and the truth of the events. Dr. Heather thompson is a scholar,orn and based teacher and activist who has a search who has served on the of unc,faculties temple, and the university of michigan. The author of many important articles on criminal justice and mass incarceration for the New York Times, time agony and the atlantic, she previously authored a major book on politics, labor and race in modern detroit. For the last 10 years she has been researching and writing this exhaustive, definitive and universally acclaimed new book, blood in the water the attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy. It takes us back to the trigger point for the deadly events of 1971, and the response by guards and government. Divesomplish this deep she interviewed surviving prisoners, hostages, as well as Law Enforcement veterans, former government officials, medical examiners, journalists, the list is astonishing, including along the way such familiar names as tom wicker and hermann badillo. Gail badillo was here tonight and we should welcome her. Let me also of knowledge one of our own who played a role in that examination after the uprising, our own Advisory Board member who serves as chairman of the new york city board of correction at the time of attica , and is mentioned in the book and was quite a critic of the report. And of course i mean bill vanden koop. The times has hailed the book as remarkable, a book that helps us understand why one group of prisoners rioted and how many others shared the costs. Laste way, the news of the 48 hours is that, fittingly, is named to theen long list of nominees for the National Book award. [applause] this is National Book award night because we are so proud that joining dr. Thompson in conversation will be the distinguished and beloved writer Thomas Massie coats. His book was not only a number one bestseller but a winner of the 2015 National Book award. Coates serves colonel serves currently as a Senior Correspondent for the atlantic and we are in it to have him here at roosevelt house. [applause] before we start, a bit of housekeeping. Our guests will engage in a conversation of about 45 minutes, following which they will take questions from the audience. S. Ere are cards on your seat sorry if you have a question after the proceedings get underway, please write it down and pass it to the far ill send pass itave aids down to the far aisles and we es collect them. At the and you are invited to the four freedoms room where we will celebrate Heather Thompson at a reception and book signing. The history, the bookkeeping and everything. Please join the president and me coates in tamahasi conversation with Heather Thompson. [applause] coates im try to find something that would actually keep it from ringing, which is very annoying. Nobodys going to call in and ask me if i will pick up aluminum foil or dog food. [laughter] today. D my dad i have a great reason why i was in heathers book. This was an agonizing book to read. I was at the cafe at 1 10 and broadway, the hungarian bakery and i was reading it. Think ixted heather, i actually have the text here, because heather didnt understand what the hell i was actually saying. But i texted her and i said, this is brutal, my god. And i got back a question mark. [applause] deeply painfuly, and hard book to read and this is personal to me in a way, heather, i cant even explain to you. Attica is in many ways responsible from a presence here today. When i was a child my dad had awfulas i saw it, tradition of fasting on thanksgiving. And i couldnt, like who would do that, right . Not just fasting, but fasting on the day everybody else talks about how much they are going to eat and how much food they are going to inhale and loosening a belt notch and all this. Fasting on thanksgiving, frankly it was the worst holiday. Im leaving the country this year for thanksgiving. A conversations we always had, that my dad would say on this day the country is gorging itself and we need to remember the true history of thanksgiving and what happened to the native americans. That was part of it. Ago aple of years couple of years after attica, with dick gregory, the you know this story . Of course because you wrote this book. With fast onory thanksgiving in memory of what happened at attica. Many peopleknow stuck with a but my dad stuck with it to this very day, and i called him today and i said, pops, you have got to read this. My dad used to be a Research Research librarian, and i said pops, there is 100 pages of footnotes. Youre going to love this. I gave him a book once before and there were no book and there were no footnotes and he got on me over that. And i told him this and he wanted me to tell you that you are a hero. He really really wanted me to tell you that. And he said i dont know if i can get through this because of the pain of it. My dad was in the black panthers, this was a huge deal. Im just telling you what this means to me. Panther party,he he was a prisoner of white activists, it was the story of attica, he left the Panther Party but stayed involved. People my earliest memories are of black men in jail, my dad taking me into the prison to see folks. And he always, in his radical politics of the day, identified it as the headquarters, the enemy. And he wanted me to see that, very much up close. And attica was such a huge influence and what he said to me today, and at the time he was radicals always thought something horrible went wrong and he always believed it. Why yould him, thats shout, thats what you scream, even if you are outside the the mainstream. Because you never know when history will come around 45 years later. They were out of the mainstream at the time but it turns out they were exactly right. And even though emily halfway through it, its incredible. I have a ton of questions. But the few here who are not familiar with attica, can we just get a very quick summary of what happened and why it to place . Heather sure. , like so many prisons in new york and really the nation, was bursting at the seams. There was an intensification of policing and inner cities across the nation but particularly in new york city. Buffalo, rochester, and attica was filled with 2400 men. Black and puerto rican but also white men, and the conditions were horrendous. Role of toilet paper to last a month, two quarts of water to do everything in, wash, clean yourselves, drink. Medical care so bad that prisoners were not only dying at attica but were permanently disfigured from lack of care. That theis the context men in the yard Start Talking in thecivil rights present, human rights in the prison. And of course many of these guys had also come from the street that had been very active, particularly rebellions in philadelphia in 1964, harlem in 1950 four, rochester in 1964, and they began to ask for help, initially through the system, writing letters to state senators and begging the commissioner of corrections to do something. But nothing was really done. And in fact what was done was a great deal more repression. Anyone who was caught having a letter asking for help, would be driven to keep lock which meant you were thrown in yourself or indefinite amounts of time and you couldnt get out. In yourself orhe indefinite amounts of time and you couldnt get out. And it was in the context that people Start Talking across political lines, Start Talking across racial lines, and there were a lot of spanishspeaking prisoners at attica and there was usually somebody in the are the was trying to translate between the groups so that everybody could understand what everybody else was saying. And to make a long story short, they eventually erupt. Initial moment was probably caused by a management decision. It wasnt particularly caused it was a particularly planned on the part of the prisoners. It becomes an important human rights rebellion. 1300 men gather in one part of the present, they elect representatives from each of the cellblocks to speak for them, they ask for observers to come in and oversee negotiations with the state so that they feel they can be heard. One of them is harmon video, hermann badillo, and insisted that Television Cameras come in. Because the problem with prisons is, nobody sees whats going on inside in these guys were committed to shining the light from inside the walls. And of course they had been inspired themselves by other uprisings that had just happened, auburn, the new york city jail system, and for four they negotiated really intensely with the state for these basic human rights. And mr. Coates and . And then, one of the most brutal events, i would argue, of the 20th century. And i think thats what you are alluding to that is most difficult to read. There were four days that these guys were negotiating with the state, and as the Television Cameras are rolling, meanwhile, outside atticas walls, virtually every battalion of the new York State Police were coming to attica and assembling outside, as well as Corrections Officers from all the prisons in the surrounding area. And for four days they didnt butp, didnt even much, were really fed on a diet of and rumor of inmate atrocities on the inside, which incidentally my Research Indicated was not coincidently coming from the fbi. One of the rumors was that these the were standing up hostages at attention, and should they falter or fall they would shoot them in the head. Of course, these guys didnt even have guns, which is going to become the story. And itsare amassing becoming clear to the observers that at any moment the state is going to come in. Now understand it were determined to come in from the very beginning. This idea that negotiations might have no something, i think there were certainly goodhearted people that hope so and work to make it happen. It at the highest levels they were biding their time, and i would argue they would have come in sooner had it not been for those observers in there, that kind of stalled things, i think. And then suddenly on the fifth day, they decide theyre going to come in with the new York State Police and all those armed Corrections Officers. ,r. Coates when you say armed you mean not like armed with clubs. These guys, for those four days, were passing out weapons indiscriminately, nobody was writing down serial numbers. I have photographs of them passing out these guns from the back of trucks, and later i discovered paperwork indicating that some troopers did write down the serial numbers and they were told to rip it up, basically. We dont want to know who has which gun. Also personal weapons, personal weapons, shotguns, deer hunting rifles, mr. Coates and literally, ammunition that is banned by the geneva accords, right . Thats right. And in that moment as it was clear they were going to come in in, the longtime story was that they were warned if you dont release the hostages, we are going to come in. Paperwork revealed to me that the actually, deliberately did not give an ultimatum. In other words, the language used that morning was no different than it had been on any other morning before this attack began, and everybody told people her, including put on the observers committee, who were republicans and were very supportive of rockefeller, who said if you come in like this its going to be a massacre. And we now know that he was told, if we come in here like this we are going to kill some of the hostages. And he said, we are going to do it anyway. And so they came in, and right before they came in and i think this is another big piece of it, they first sent over helicopters, one helicopter that was dumping gas over the art over the yard. And i share this with people because when we think of gas, you think of a gas that you could cover your mouth, but it was actually a powder and it was cleaning it was clinging to their skin and their naval passage and their nasal passages. And you see this cloud of smoke, and then everybody gets mode down. Thats when they came in down. Ody gets mowed thats when they came in with the guns. I asked you disqualified as a lynching, and you immediately said yes, it qualifies as a militarized lynching. Why would you think of it that way . Book, a lotding the of details you mentioned, for instance the paranoia of a was actually happening inside turned out not to be true. All of that, the insistence of hiding the identities of people, all of it, taking dentures for people, taking souvenirs, all of it has the hallmarks of a lynching. Why dont you think about it that way . Me remind everybody that the taking was just the beginning of the brutality. It was actually when everybody was subdued, within 15 minutes, i would argue they were subdued when the gas came through, but now everybody is shot six or seven times, and as one prisoner said, all i could see was blood in the water, it is at that. Oment the real reality begins and it is extremely reminiscent of a lynching for a number of reasons. Number one, its deeply racialized. Even prisoners with white skin, because they stood with the. Black prisoners, racial appetites are coming out all of them in punctuating the torture that goes on throughout the days, weeks, months. But also, like a lynching, they stood out in front of the world, because remember the media is here from everywhere at this point, and say, after their officers have just killed the hostages, no, the prisoners slit the throats of the hostages. And not only that, the castrated one of the guards and stuffed his testicles in his mouth and we saw it happen. One actually said we have film of it. And of course this goes on the front page of the new york the los angeles times, and what it does is touches off a fury. When we think of the race riots of the 1900s in the 1890s, where it is just unstoppable. Frank big black smith, was laid on a table, and a football was put under his neck and he was told after six hours of torture if you drop the football we are going to kill you. And of course, he believes it. He has just seen so many compatriots killed. And another prisoner that i talk o, was shot so many times and when one of his friends was trying to carry him to safety, they shot him. Why dont we think about it that way . Because it goes to the core of our conscience as a nation that we dont think about what happens to people when we go by bars. So the assumption is that if we were to retake a prison in this fashion, those folks were less than human and what happens to them, it couldnt be a lynching, because they couldnt be real victims. Mr. Coates right. To get to this . To get to this question, watching events in chicago and watching events across the nation over the past three years, we have new technology that allows people to see them but they are not actually new events, that we are witnessing a moment in which there is a real assault on police legitimacy. Aboutwant to be clear what im saying. Its not the evidence that is making that, its the evidence that is revealing it. Its been going on for a long time. I look at chicago, for instance, and when you have cops literally executing somebody and coming together to create a story that, we didnt execute him at all. You see thi