WHEN Nelson A. Rockefeller steps down today as governor of New York, that state will lose as its leader the man responsible for one of the bloodiest incidents of U.S. domestic repression in this century. Rockefeller, whose Commission on Critical Choices for America is the latest step in his endless quest for the presidency, broke off negotiations two years ago between the state and the prisoners who had revolted to protest conditions at Attica State Prison. His command to state troopers to surround and retake the fortress led to the unnecessary deaths of 37 prisoners and guards.

The aftermath of the Attica rebellion has only reaffirmed the justice of the prisoners' protest. Roger Champen, an Attica inmate during the revolt, told a Harvard audience last week that New York has done nothing to relieve the conditions which led to the outbreak: slave wages for prison labor, inedible food, guard brutality, restricted political and religious expression, censorship of mail, poor health care and inadequate educational facilities. Only the number of guards has been increased.

Despite a state commission report which maintained that the Attica deaths were all the results of police fire, no indictment has been returned against any state trooper or the people who commanded them--the governor and prison officials. Instead, 60 prisoners involved in the revolt stand charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with the protest and police massacre.

The Attica Defense Fund needs contributions desperately, and the National Prisoners' Reform Association, a national union of prison inmates, needs people to help community groups organize on behalf of prisoners' rights. Interested students can contact the Massachusetts Lawyers' Guild in Cambridge, or Joseph Sandler '75, chairman of the Massachusetts Student Coalition on Correctional Change, through Phillips Brooks House.

A contribution of time, effort, and money against the forces of social control which Attica and Rockefeller represent is the only proper response to a new drive for power by a man who has valued power more heavily than human life.