Episode 17: Now They Do What They Told Ya

Episode 17: Now They Do What They Told Ya

From The Persistence by Angélica Cordero

May 9, 2026 · 52 min

About this episode

This episode explores the shift from public unrest to bureaucratic management in America during the 1970s, focusing on prison organizing and the events surrounding Attica and George Jackson.

What do you do when the system publicly breaks in front of everyone… and then just keeps going? In the early 1970s, America looked like it was restoring order. The protests of the 1960s had fractured public trust, televised violence had exposed deep cracks in American institutions, and “law and order” politics promised stability in return. But the conflict never disappeared. It just changed location. This episode of The Persistence traces the shift from public unrest to bureaucratic management, as social problems became increasingly reframed as crime, punishment, and individual failure. As the Controlled Substances Act expanded policing and incarceration, prisons became the place the state moved the people and pressures it no longer wanted to confront publicly. Inside those walls, incarcerated people organized against overcrowding, racialized labor exploitation, brutality, and systemic neglect. After the killing of George Jackson at San Quentin in 1971, unrest spread across the country and culminated at Attica, where prisoners negotiated publicly, issued demands, and forced the nation to look directly at what had been hidden behind prison walls. The state answered with…

People in this episode

Host: Angélica Cordero

Topics covered

  • prison organizing
  • mass incarceration
  • law and order politics
  • Attica
  • George Jackson
  • bureaucratic management
  • systemic neglect

Keywords

  • prison
  • incarceration
  • social problems
  • public unrest
  • racialized labor
  • systemic neglect
  • Attica
  • George Jackson

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Attica, San Quentin, Controlled Substances Act

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