On September 13, 2024, I sat on a steel cylinder stool and placed a plastic tray of food on a steel table in front of me in the mess hall of New York’s Green Haven Correctional Facility. I had arrived there the evening before, transferred from Sullivan Correctional Facility, about seventy miles west of Green Haven. JH, a man I had known from other facilities over the past nineteen years of my incarceration, sat across from me giving me the skinny on the joint. His taller-than-average frame shifted as he surveilled the area, giving an occasional nod.

“It’s bad here, bro, you’ll see,” he said, tapping out the syllables with his middle finger. “Nothing works here. Nothing.”

When his housing unit was called to leave, J double-tapped his plastic spork on the table, a greeting left over from when incarcerated people were not allowed to speak. He walked out. His tray remained next to mine. The food had been left untouched in commemoration of the Attica massacre on September 13, 1971. JH’s fasting honored those who had fallen during the Attica uprising so that people incarcerated in New York could have privileges like commissary, recreation, programming, and the ability to speak out loud to one another. For decades we have observed this day as a reminder of how bad things could be and that solidarity had created change.

Today, most incarcerated people do not recognize this date and seem to be in danger of forgetting that the privileges we enjoy daily came out of what happened on that day fifty-three years ago.