Knut Ståhlberg: Self
Quotes
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Knut Ståhlberg : On the highest point in El Biar in Algiers, and among the finest villas, we find Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Headquarters. The villa is put at their disposal by the Algerian government. Cleaver, his wife Kathleen, and maybe twenty other Panthers, including nannies; are in the care of the Algerian government. But Cleaver is in exile. The goal seems so remote, and you get the feeling that the spring within him is a bit broken.
Eldridge Cleaver : According to my observations, and depending on how the struggle develops, the next stage is to achieve what the South Vietnamese have achieved. That is, a provisional government, a government that's not in full control of it's territory. That does not enjoy it's full sovereignty but which is recognized on a full diplomatic level by sympathetic governments and people around the world. Of course, we realize we are a far stage away from that, but the status we have achieved enables us to function.
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William Kunstler - Lawyer : It's murder under any doctrine of civilized standards that any country ever had.
Knut Ståhlberg : William Kunstler is a radical lawyer. He was in the prison during the revolt as a member of the observer committee and tried to negotiate between the prisoners and the authorities. He says now that the Governor is guilty of the murders.
William Kunstler - Lawyer : The prisoners had two nonnegotiable demands: the removal of the warden and general amnesty, and they had already given up on the removal of the warden. And on the general amnesty we had worked out several formulas that we were discussing with the commissioner hours before the attack; and if we had been allowed to continue everyone would be alive and the matter would be settled today.
Knut Ståhlberg : But you yourself said at one point that you feared for your life in there.
William Kunstler - Lawyer : Well, I guess I'm a white middle-class citizen of this country and I had all the stereotypes about prisoners that any person in my capacity has. I had to learn the hard way that they were decent, honorable men; much more decent and much more honorable than the people who went in there to shoot them.
John Forte : I can't look at the Attica uprising without imagining myself there, or without taking into account my own experience with prison. And I know that, from the inside out - I never lost my humanity, my decency, no matter how many times I felt encaged and felt like I was treated as an animal over the course of my own incarceration. So, I can't look at Attica and not sympathize with those prisoners and those inmates who wanted to be treated more decently; for whatever reason. It's a question of dignity and decency. If we look at it from a purely historical standpoint, leading up to the civil rights movement in... in Attica; there was nothing that ever happened up until that point where there was such a pivotal change in what was allowed to take place. The violence that erupted and demanded the world pay attention, because from a human rights perspective, the question comes down to something that's very fundamental: do prisoners have human rights?
