UB will present memorial symposium
and concert, 'Attica: 25 Years Later'

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The name "Attica" -representing the place and the terrible events that took place there-since has reverberated as an example to many citizens of mayhem produced by deliberate political deceit.

Lawsuits, commissions, prison projects, documentary films, scholarly publications, books and investigative series in magazines and newspapers have considered Attica from many perspectives. The horrifying events that occurred there have spurred prison and sentencing reform.

On Thursday, Sept. 12, a commemorative symposium, "Attica: 25 Years Later" will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. in the Student Union Theater on the UB North Campus. It will be free of charge and open to the public.

The symposium will feature panels discussing two issues-sentencing policy and drug policy-that spawned the Attica riots and continue to influence strongly the criminal justice system today.

Panel I, Sentencing Policy, will be led by New York State Senator Catherine Abate, former head of the New York City Department of Corrections. Panel II, Drug Policy, will be led by Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center in Washington, D.C. and one of the nation's most articulate advocates of drug policy reform. A third panel, to examine sentencing and women, will be led by Marc Mauer.

Guests will be noted prison-reform activists and members of the judi ciary, including U.S. Federal Court Judge John Curtin, "Attica brothers" Frank "Big Black" Smith and Herbert X. Blyden, former U.S. Attorney and Attica defense attorney Ramsey Clark, and Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve and attorney and former state senator John Dunne, both of whom were Attica "observers" during the 1971 standoff.

The symposium will be followed by a dinner from 6-7:30 p.m. in Pistachio's Restaurant in the Student Union and a concert at 7:30 p.m. in Slee Concert Hall featuring Pete Seeger, Rande Harris and other performers. Tickets for the dinner are $5 for students and senior citizens and $10 for all others. Concert tickets are $10 for students and senior citizens and $15 for all others.

For further information, registration and tickets, call the UB American Studies Department at 645-2548 during business hours or fax requests to 645-5977.

This symposium is being sponsored by the UB Graduate Group on Justice in Democracy and the Department of American Studies, The NYS Coalition on Criminal Justice, the National Lawyers' Guild, WNY Peace Center, the Judicial Process Commission and others.

The symposium is dedicated to the memory of Haywood Burns and Shanara Gilbert, Attica attorneys killed in an accident this spring in South Africa while on a National Lawyers Guild tour, and the nationally-regarded civil rights attorney William Kunstler, who, along with Burns, represented Attica prisoners in the post-1971 legal proceedings associated with the riot.

Burns was head of The Nation Institute and former dean of the CUNY Law School, general counsel to Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign and founder of the national counselor of black lawyers. Gilbert was a professor of law at CUNY. n