Blood in the Water

Tom Wicker was a journalist writing for the New York Times, interested in social justice. He was called to Attica to act as a witness to negotiations between the rebel prisoners and the state of New York, at the formers’ request. Thompson suggests that he approached the prison with trepidation.

At this stage, on the second day of the rebellion, the prisoners had no intention of giving up, and Oswald and Dunbar, his deputy, had no intention of going back into the yard. As such, Tom Wicker and other members of the observers committee, who now numbered 33 men in total, would enter D Yard to continue the negotiations. As Thompson says, they “took it for granted that no one wanted ‘the irrationality of bloodshed and death’” (105). The key sticking point, though, remained the question of prisoner immunity, and the Wyoming County district attorney, Louis James, made it clear that he did not have the authority, or desire, to grant this.

Before the observers committee went into D Yard again, they visited C Block, which had been recaptured by the state. There they saw anxious state troopers and abused and injured prisoners crying for help. Thompson describes how William Kunstler, a charismatic and well-connected lawyer, had joined the observers.