Martin Sostre’s Life Teaches Us Revolutionary Moments Are Always Upon Us

Outdoors of prisons and the actions that work to abolish them, the life and legacy of Martin Sostre is little recognized. A Black Puerto Rican anarchist born in East Harlem, Sostre turned a politicized prisoner within the early Sixties who, as a famend jailhouse lawyer, used the legal authorized system to learn himself and people incarcerated alongside him. He gained worldwide recognition in his finally profitable freedom marketing campaign and continued to battle authorities repression and the violence of structural racism for the remainder of his life. But he died in relative obscurity on the age of 92.

A brand new guide by historian Garrett Felber, A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre, goals to make Sostre’s fascinating life and abolitionist legacy accessible and related to at the moment’s liberation struggles. The guide will probably be launched by AK Press on Could 6, 2025. For every copy pre-ordered from AK Press or Burning Books, a free copy of the paperback jail version will probably be despatched to an incarcerated reader.

“Alongside protection campaigns for Angela Davis and Huey Newton, the motion to free Martin Sostre represented some of the unbelievable, if since forgotten, victories of the Black Energy period,” Felber writes within the guide.

Abolitionist Josh Davidson spoke with Felber about Martin Sostre, his lifetime of “steady wrestle,” and why this guide is so vital and wanted at the moment.

The next interview has been evenly edited for readability and size.

Josh Davidson: What initially led to your correspondence with Martin Sostre earlier than his passing in 2015? How did you first hear about him, and why is the story of Sostre and his “authentic Black political ideology” vital at the moment?

Garrett Felber: I initially got here throughout Sostre’s identify in a letter written to Malcolm X within the early Sixties by a Muslim incarcerated on the Attica jail in New York. He was a comrade of Sostre, and so they had been being held in solitary confinement together with dozens of others punished for his or her identification with the Nation of Islam and lawsuits in opposition to the state over the appropriate to apply Islam inside. They had been asking Malcolm X to testify as a key witness of their upcoming trial. I learn the letter within the early 2010s, and had simply begun a dissertation on the politics of the Nation of Islam throughout the civil rights period (which ultimately turned my first guide, Those Who Know Don’t Say). On the time, there was a barebones Wikipedia web page for Sostre, which I later discovered was maintained by his son Vinny. I discovered Sostre’s deal with and wrote him a letter. To my shock, he wrote again!

Regardless of being 90 years outdated on the time, he politely advised me he was too busy for an interview. We corresponded briefly, and in his final letter to me, he mailed a packet of main paperwork which included a revolutionary publication he revealed from solitary confinement and an article a few daycare heart he cofounded with activist Sandy Shevack in Paterson, New Jersey. “The enclosed paperwork include extra info than I might probably convey to you through e-mail or cellphone,” he wrote to me. I later got here to know this as a key precept of Sostre’s political apply: He believed actions spoke louder than phrases.

Finally, Malcolm X did testify within the case in Buffalo, New York, alongside Sostre, who had helped write the lawsuit. The case resulted in an vital authorized precedent in what would quickly emerge because the prisoners’ rights motion. As historian and educational Robin D. G. Kelley factors out in his stunning foreword to the biography, the politics of this era are too usually delimited to debates about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Moreover the plain sexism of that paradigm, it additionally forecloses different sorts of revolutionary politics.

Sostre presents a vital window into one other pressure of Black revolutionary politics which got here from the streets and bookstores of Harlem throughout the Nice Despair: the armed wrestle of the Puerto Rican nationalist motion and the motion for spiritual rights led by imprisoned Muslims within the Nation of Islam. Sostre moved from Black nationalism, to revolutionary Black nationalism, to Maoism and Marxism-Leninism earlier than ultimately figuring out as an anarchist. What made Sostre such an authentic political thinker was how he discovered from his life experiences and continued to develop his concepts by means of the contradictions that emerged with every section of wrestle. By way of this, he helped lay the muse for modern Black anarchism and prison-industrial advanced abolition.

Sostre oftentimes referred to life outdoors of jail as “minimal safety” and life behind the bars as “most safety.” He acknowledged the presence and violence of presidency repression each inside and out of doors of jail partitions, and he constantly combated this utilizing quite a lot of methods. From his institution of quite a few radical bookstores to his prolific jail litigation, his creation of autonomous protection committees that outlived his personal incarceration to his work on housing justice in New Jersey, Sostre by no means stopped working in no matter means was wanted “constructing tangible counter-institutions that served the group.” What can Sostre’s dedication to a lifetime of steady wrestle educate us at the moment as we face fascism at dwelling, genocide in Gaza and impending local weather disaster?

Sostre acknowledged that the wrestle shouldn’t be solely steady, but additionally contiguous. Borders and jail partitions bodily disconnect us from each other, and in doing so, they impede our talents to arrange collectively and horizontally in opposition to a standard oppressor. By utilizing the phrase “minimum-” and “most safety” to delineate either side of the jail partitions, Sostre importantly interrogated the commonsense notion that the opposite facet of coerced captivity is freedom. As a substitute, he emphasised the continuum of “repressive forces [that] exist outdoors in addition to in.” The jail shouldn’t be an establishment other than society; it’s a concentrated expression of its most oppressive kinds.

This straightforward level is so vital to the best way we arrange, so we don’t delude ourselves into considering we’re waging “single-issue” struggles. I inform a narrative within the guide about Sostre’s contemporaries, the revolutionary organizers James and Grace Lee Boggs, who took exception to Sostre’s resistance to pressured rectal searches and necessities to shave. “Does he actually assume it’s attainable to construct a revolutionary motion from contained in the prisons?” the Boggses requested. I owe a great deal of my political growth to the Boggses and share mentors who do as properly, so I used to be surprised and upset after I first got here throughout their critique. However by means of conversations with Stephen Ward, who wrote an exquisite dual biography of them, I discovered that their criticism was based mostly on what I consider is a elementary misunderstanding in regards to the which means of the Attica rebellion and the capability of incarcerated individuals to wage revolutionary wrestle from inside. They noticed the revolt narrowly by means of what Sostre termed the “Attica reform calls for.” As a substitute, as anthropology professor Orisanmi Burton makes so clear in his groundbreaking guide, Tip of the Spear, Attica was an act of revolutionary counter-warfare and what he calls “abolitionist worldmaking.”

So as an alternative of reproducing that mistake and making a hierarchy of separate struggles, we should embrace their interconnectedness and seek for factors of solidarity. As Sostre reminded certainly one of his protection committees: “revolutionary wrestle is a multi-dimensional wrestle; we should ultimately broaden our wrestle horizontally in addition to deepen it vertically.” The jail was a website of wrestle — just like the courtroom or the streets — and Sostre waged that wrestle by means of quite a lot of techniques, together with letter-writing, self-defense and assertions of bodily autonomy, jail litigation, print publications, artwork and cultural manufacturing, labor organizing, sit-ins and different occupations, and rather more.

Till now, with A Steady Battle, the legacy of Sostre has been missed and understudied. Why are books by and about Sostre not on our cabinets alongside these by and about Angela Davis, Malcolm X, George Jackson or Eldridge Cleaver?

It is a nice query that I’ve requested myself many instances. I don’t assume there’s a single reply. However actually one motive is that Sostre by no means authored a guide, in contrast to the others you talked about. The one guide about him — The Crime of Martin Sostre — was written by Vincent Copeland of the Employees World Social gathering (WWP) with little or no enter from Sostre, who was being held in full isolation throughout the yr it was composed. He briefly glanced over the manuscript at trial, then, simply earlier than its publication, Sostre broke with the WWP and 1000’s of copies languished in a warehouse for years. Sostre talked at varied factors in his life about writing a memoir. He even met with movie producers in Los Angeles at one level a few attainable biopic the place he can be performed by James Earl Jones, however he was skeptical of its political integrity and it by no means materialized.

As a substitute, a lot of Sostre’s political thought lives on by means of his organizing and deeds — in courtroom transcripts, authorized filings, letters from jail, articles in underground newspapers, and thru his relationships with individuals. I’m grateful to all of Sostre’s comrades and their households who shared their supplies and recollections with me. The archive of wrestle resides with those that wage it, and a lot of Sostre’s legacy is now higher documented and preserved due to their generosity.

For these desirous to study extra past the biography, I counsel beginning with the Martin Sostre Institute, which was conceived by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. Sostre’s private papers are additionally now archived within the Labadie Collection on the College of Michigan, and I’m within the technique of donating lots of the oral historical past interviews and different supplies I compiled to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, the place they are going to be accessible to the general public. There are different efforts to hold on Sostre’s legacy such because the Martin Sostre Solidarity Home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the work of R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative in Chicago; and the Justice for Geraldine and Martin campaign in Buffalo. I hope that is all just the start of a renewed curiosity in Sostre’s legacy in addition to the broader histories of Black anarchism and jail radicalism.

Generally we memorialize the useless however fall wanting honoring the dwelling. A lot of what’s taking place with Sostre’s legacy now, I want would’ve occurred a long time earlier. Who’re the elders that we must be supporting, studying from and lifting up at the moment? The campaign to exonerate Sostre’s co-defendant Geraldine Pointer is a superb instance of this.

You increase the concept of prefiguration quite a few instances all through the guide — the concept of establishing at the moment the lives and societies we wish sooner or later. “He noticed what could possibly be, slightly than what was,” as you write, and he acted to make it a actuality. What’s the significance of prefiguration within the story of Sostre — to ourselves, our actions and the fabric world?

Sure, there are two anarchist concepts centered round deeds that appealed particularly to Sostre. One was propaganda of the deed, and the opposite was prefiguration. Prefiguration can take many kinds, however I really like how merely Sostre conveyed it: “If we do it proper, it’ll find yourself proper.” What he meant was that if we spend our power destroying the state or different oppressive techniques whereas failing to handle the methods they form our lives and the way we relate to one another and ourselves, we’ll simply wind up operating in place, changing one oppressive system with one other. One among his critiques of Marxism-Leninism was the concept that there are specific revolutionary circumstances and the way this notion left individuals inactive and ready. Sostre believed the second was all the time upon us. This revolutionary optimism is palpable in his writings and actions, and at the moment it serves as an pressing name to motion.

The very best instance of prefiguration in Sostre’s life was the decentralization of his protection committees, which he thought of his first experiment in anarchist organizing. After counting on a centralized committee in Buffalo for greater than 5 years, Sostre started creating autonomous collectives throughout the nation, and particularly upstate New York. These committees got here collectively across the wrestle to emancipate Sostre from jail however had been conceived extra broadly as “revolutionary bases” for future-oriented wrestle. I give the instance of the Potsdam-Canton committee within the guide, which went on to arrange round environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty after Sostre’s launch. Inside this committee, there have been debates about horizontalism — how the conferences must be run, who ought to form the agenda, and many others. Sostre even envisioned shopping for land and creating a cooperative grocery, dry cleaners and residences. Many of those concepts had been actualized in a distinct type with the work he did for 20 years in New Jersey with Shevack, changing deserted buildings right into a group heart, daycare and inexpensive housing.

His fundamental perception was that solely by means of tangible counter-structures might individuals start to think about the world in another way and see themselves as a part of that course of. A lot of the facility of prefiguration is in demonstrating step-by-step {that a} new world shouldn’t be solely attainable however exists inside and round us day-after-day. It’s all the time within the technique of turning into, simply as we’re.

As you write within the guide, Sostre believed “particular person resistance might transfer individuals towards revolutionary motion.” You additionally spotlight Sostre’s advocacy of the anarchist idea of “propaganda of the deed.” What can we study from this and the way does this apply at the moment?

I feel he actually broadened its which means by displaying the way it could possibly be creatively utilized to his personal circumstances experiencing the hidden violence of the jail. His refusal to shave his quarter-inch beard and undergo rectal assaults in jail had been examples of “propaganda of the deed.” He used this resistance not solely to defend what he thought of the “ultimate citadels of [his] persona, human dignity and self-respect,” but additionally to alert these outdoors the jail to those dehumanizing practices and encourage these inside to withstand alongside him.

Much like prefiguration, propaganda of the deed has the potential to construct solidarity and present individuals their very own energy. It additionally raises the vital query of political violence and spotlights the true purveyors of violence: the navy, landlords, firms, police and so forth.

Very similar to Sostre’s lifetime dedication to a “steady wrestle,” you all the time impress me together with your means to battle oppression utilizing varied techniques and methods. Since leaving the lifetime of academia, you’ve got began the Free Society Mobile Library, which presents accessible revolutionary literature in Portland, Oregon; you co-founded Study and Struggle, an inside-outside jail abolition research group; and you’re employed diligently to boost the voices of and convey consciousness to the Mississippi Five, ladies who “have collectively been imprisoned for over 175 years and denied parole 47 instances.” Are you able to discuss these completely different campaigns you’re employed on and why a variety of techniques is critical in our actions and organizing areas?

Loads of my work facilities round political training, and one factor I’ve discovered from Sostre and others is that we have to create as many on-ramps as attainable. Being “politicized” shouldn’t be the identical as having concrete alternatives to contribute to radical organizing. I really like that line from professor, writer and activist Toni Cade Bambara: “The function of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” I feel the function of the educator is to make revolutionary concepts accessible. Some individuals will probably be drawn to artwork and cultural manufacturing, others to books and the written phrase, and nonetheless others to care work and creating relationships. In a world that must be reimagined and rebuilt on each degree, we are able to’t afford to wrestle narrowly.

As Sostre identified: “Since oppression is multidimensional doesn’t common sense dictate that resistance to it’s multidimensional; with every degree of oppression challenged by a commensurate degree of revolutionary resistance?”