To commemorate 100 years since the birth of former political prisoner Martin Sostre, the Black Agenda Report Book Forum interviews Garrett Felber, A Visiting Fellow at Yale University who is currently writing a book about Sostre. The book is called, We Are All Political Prisoners (under contract with the University of North Carolina Press).
Roberto Sirvent: Youâre currently writing a book about Martin Sostre. What led you to pursue this project?
Garrett Felber: A decade ago I was beginning research for my dissertation on the Nation of Islamâs organizing in prisons and I came across a letter to Malcolm X from a Muslim at Attica Prison. He was requesting Malcolm X testify as an expert witness in an upcoming trial concerning the religious rights of imprisoned Muslims. In the letter, he mentioned others being tortured in solitary confinement, one of whom was Martin Sostre. I looked up his name and found a barebones Wikipedia page documenting his frame-up and political imprisonment years later in Buffalo for running a revolutionary bookstore. But there was nothing about this earlier period or his life after getting out of prison in 1976.
I wrote him a letter asking to interview him. What I got back blew me away. He sent an envelope full of documents, including a revolutionary Black newspaper he wrote from solitary confinement in 1971. Also enclosed was a newspaper article from twenty years later, with a photograph of Sostre and co-organizer Sandy Shevack seated with children at a daycare graduation in Paterson, New Jersey. âThe enclosed documents contain more information than I could possibly convey to you via email or phone,â he wrote.
We exchanged letters briefly, but he had a stroke shortly thereafter and was no longer able to write. I stayed in touch with his family after he passed away in 2015 at the age of 92, and continued to learn more about his life and the impact he had on prisoner organizing and Black anarchism. I began to appreciate what a unique political thinker and revolutionary strategist he was, one still little known even within many anarchist and abolitionist spaces.
In the article about the daycare center he co-founded, Sostre is quoted: âPeople dream. Sandy and I objectified our dream.â Part of what struck me was his reluctance to narrate his life and his preference to let his actions speak for him. The more I learned about him, the more I understood the significance of what he sent me, and the act itself. It felt as if he had entreated me to do the labor of understanding his life through his work rather than simply his words about it. I hope this biography does justice to that life, which is no small task.
RS: What influence did Martin Sostre have on the Black anarchism movement?
GF: It would be difficult to overstate Martin Sostreâs influence on the development of Black anarchism. Virtually any genealogy of contemporary Black anarchism leads back to him. Sostre is the first self-identified anarchist that I know of who defined his anarchism principally through its meaning to Black liberation. He came to this political framework through his specific life experiences: as a Black Puerto Rican growing up in Depression-era Harlem; as a prisoner who was politicized by Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalist Julio Pinto GandĂa and helped launch the first organized prison litigation movement as a Muslim in the Nation of Islam; as the owner of a revolutionary bookstore that was targeted following the 1967 rebellion in Buffalo; as a plaintiff in landmark lawsuits against the state; and as prisoner of war organizing for revolution from solitary confinement.
Although he did not identify as such until 1973, he traced his anarchism to the streets of Buffalo during the 1967 revolt. In fact, he later wrote that he saw himself as âan anarchist by nature all my life.â His Afro-Asian Bookshop on Jefferson Ave. was at the heart of the rebellion. It was a site of politicization and refuge for people in the streets during the uprising, and according to Sostre, a small group of anarchists met there each night to discuss what was happening outside. âThe full impact of . . . how beautifully fulfilling anarchism is didnât hit my consciousness till the long hot summer of 1967,â he reflected.
Sostre understood anarchism as a natural human tendency towards spontaneous organizing that was crushed and coopted under hierarchal, dogmatic, party-line Marxist and Black nationalist formations. He regularly read, recommended, and gifted books by Berkman, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Voline, but he was still reluctant to identify himself with anarchism because he worried it would not resonate with poor young Black people, who he saw as the âdetonatorsâ of the revolution. He was also troubled by the apparent tension between anarchism and Black national liberation: âI am reluctant to categorize myself as an anarchist because although my philosophy of action and direct violence (along with other acts) against the State to seize and âliberateâ areas in various parts of the country and to use these âliberated areas (fortified communes?) as bases from which to âwage our war of liberation,â the objective of this struggle is to establish a âblack nationââwhich negates anarchism.â Nevertheless, a year after writing this, he began calling himself a ârevolutionary anarchist.â He seems to have settled on ârevolutionary anarchistâ (my emphasis) not because he thought there was some form of anarchism that was not revolutionary, but because he understood âthe word ârevolutionaryâ is inâ and wanted something that Black and Latinx youth could identify with.
The foundation of Sostreâs anarchism was his experiences within the Black radical tradition, particularly in prison. It should not surprise us, then, that the two most important bridges between Sostre and contemporary Black anarchism are Lorenzo Komâboa Ervin and Ashanti Alston, both of whom Sostre impacted both directly and indirectly from inside. Sostre mentored Ervin directly over a two-week period in 1969 when the two overlapped in federal detention in Manhattan, after which Ervin became an anarchist, a jailhouse lawyer, and even modeled his defense committees after Sostreâs. Alston read Sostreâs writings, seeking them out at the Tamiment Library after he was released in the 1980s; he later organized on behalf of political prisoners with Sostre in the 1990s. Both emphasize how important it was for them to come across an anarchism rooted in Black liberation. âI did not need the traditional canon on anarchism,â Alston said. âI needed to hear it from some Black folks who I had a lot of respect for.â
All threeâalong with Kuwasi Balagoonâbecame important forebears for contemporary Black anarchism. It was no coincidence that all of these revolutionariesâSostre, Ervin, Alston, and Balagoonâ were political prisoners who moved through the Black Panther Party and/or the Black Liberation Army (BLA) at some point. I think persuasive arguments can be made for the influence of both organizations in this lineage as well, as well as the centrality of the prison as a crucial site of Black anarchic formations.
RS: How did Sostre connect everyday forms of individual resistance to larger collective struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and anti-Blackness?
GF: This question immediately brought to mind a passage from a letter Sostre wrote a year before he got out of prison: âThe line is drawn: either you are a cooperator with the oppressor in your own oppression and dehumanization, or you are a resister. If you wonât stand up for your own personal liberty, human dignity, and self-respect, all that rhetoric about liberating other people is just bullshit rhetoric. The struggle for liberation begins with the individual whenever and where she or he is oppressed.â
Sostre believed everywhere was a site of struggle. He organized wherever he was. When imprisoned, he sued the state, formed prisonersâ unions, helped people with their legal paperwork, and organized study circles. When outside, he opened a revolutionary bookstore, transformed abandoned buildings into affordable housing and community spaces, and organized tenants against landlords.
For liberation to begin with the individual, as he suggested, individual resistance must be connected to the liberation of all oppressed people. Here is one example from Sostreâs life: For six years at least, Sostre refused rectal âexaminationsâ when leaving or entering solitary confinement. Prison officials claimed these âcavity searchesâ protected against contraband. Sostre understood they were meant to dehumanize and degrade, and he resisted to maintain his dignity and personhood. But his defiance was also linked to collective liberation. He organized strikes against these sexual assaults, raised consciousness about them through lawsuits and in courtroom testimony, and linked his individual resistance to global national liberation struggles.
Drawing a parallel to North Vietnam, Sostre described his refusals as a one-person version of the National Liberation Front (NLF): âMine is on a personal level, whereas the Vietnamese were fighting on a national level. They were fighting against the strongest and most developed and richest country in the whole world. Thatâs equivalent to me fighting against the whole goon squad in the solitary confinement unit at Clinton prison. I want to show the forces and powers that I useâphysical, mental, political, and legalâin order to eventually subdue the enemy and register victories, and at the same time keep from getting killed.â
He considered his resistance to sexual assault and assertions of bodily autonomy and identity as simultaneously necessary to his own personal freedom as well as symbolic of the worldwide struggle.
RS: Can you please share a little about the upcoming âMartin Sostre at 100â event taking place in March?
GF: Thank you for highlighting this. The event is a celebration of Martin Sostreâs life and legacy on what would have been his hundredth birthday, hosted by the New York Public Library on March 22-23, 2023.
The first evening will be held at the Harry Belafonte 115th Street Library, which was Sostreâs neighborhood branch growing up. Weâll be screening the short documentary film Frame-Up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre (Pacific Street Films, 1974) and hosting a discussion with some of Sostreâs comrades and defense committee organizersâJerry Ross, Antonio and Sylvia RodrĂguez, Sandy Shevack, and moreâmoderated by William C. Anderson.
The second night, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will feature a keynote conversation between abolitionist educator and organizer Mariame Kaba and imprisoned intellectual and prison (dis)organizer Stevie Wilson. Weâll also hear a panel on the Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition with Laura Whitehorn, Jose SaldaĂąa, and Masia Mugmuk, moderated by Orisanmi Burton.
Finally, weâre organizing an exhibition on Sostreâs commitment to radical political education which will include a life-size replica of the Afro-Asian Bookstore-in-Exile (AABE). The AABE was a continuation of Sostreâs revolutionary bookstore in Buffalo during his incarceration and lasted for nearly three years at the University of Buffalo student union and in various iterations on college campuses across the country.
Keep an eye out all Marchâwhich we at the Martin Sostre Institute (MSI) will be commemorating as âMartin Sostre Monthââfor other ways to learn about his life and work.
RS: As you were conducting research for the book, what were some ways that people described the influence Sostre has had on them?
GF: I love this question! Before I answer, I want to acknowledge what an incredible experience it has been to learn from so many people about Martin Sostreâs life and its lasting impact on them. Iâve conducted around 70 interviews over the last three years, and it has profoundly changed my thinking and organizing. I am grateful to them in so many ways.
One striking continuity across Sostreâs many decades of organizing on both sides of prison walls was his emphasis on young peopleâs revolutionary capacities. Part of the reason I was able to interview so many of his comrades is that many of the people he impacted were half his age when he knew them. From their stories, a portrait emerges of someone dignified, uncompromising, and magnetic with a disarming smile, sense of humor, and gentle humility.
The impact he had varies depending on the stage of life and context in which people knew him. But one of the things that stood out is how much influence he had despite sometimes brief interactions. Ervin is one example. Through just two weeks together in prison, Sostre changed the trajectory of his life. Many young defense committee members also remember learning from his example despite only meeting in the courtroom or corresponding sporadically due to censorship.
While many referred to him as a symbol, they did so in an embodied way. He was a living example to them of what it meant to lead a life of continuous struggle. Sandy Shevack said Sostre taught him the difficult, daily work of revolution. It is not just showing up to a protest or engaging in an action; it means being there day after day to do the unglamorous labor necessary to build the world we want within the shell of the old. Sostre believed that only through demonstrating material structures and tangible results could people be won over to struggle. He often summed this up through a phrase I love for its simplicity: âIf we do it right, it will end up right.â There are no shortcuts to liberation.
Garrett Felber is a Visiting Fellow in American Studies and the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration at Yale.
Roberto Sirvent is Editor of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum.
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