[BwayDems] Martin Sostre, 1923-2015

Sun Aug 16 13:58:17 EDT 2015

Please share my condolences with Liz and the family.  Martin will be sorely missed...an inspiration to so many as he fought against injustice and for civil rights.  Please let me know of plans for the funeral or memorial service.

Cynthia Doty
cldoty at aol.com
212-749-4085

-----Original Message-----
From: Paula Diamond Roman <valleygirl109 at rocketmail.com>
To: Listserv <bwdupdates at broadwaydemocrats.org>
Sent: Thu, Aug 13, 2015 11:18 pm
Subject: [BwayDems] Martin Sostre, 1923-2015

   Martin Sostre  

   (March 20, 1923 - August 12, 2015)  

   Today we lost a special person, my neighbor,    civil-rights and community activist, Martin Sostre.  

   Martin was born in Harlem to parents who had migrated from Puerto Rico.  A high school dropout, he spent four years in the Army, before returning to New York.  From 1952 to 1964, he served a 12-year sentence on a drug conviction at the infamous Attica State Prison; he spent five of those years in solitary confinement as punishment for practicing law without a license, as well as having contraband books and religious materials.  During this original incarceration, he was introduced to and embraced radical political thought, including the teachings of Malcolm X.  

   When Martin was released, he opened a bookstore selling radical literature “to help [his] people by increasing the political awareness of the youth” by learning about their history and themselves.  He also became an outspoken about the injustices of racial and class oppression and about independence for Puerto Rico.  In 1967, he was arrested as part of one of many illegal COunter INTELligence PROgram (COINTELPRO) actions and sentenced to 31 to 41 years for "narcotics, riot, arson, and assault".  Martin was convicted almost entirely on the testimony of an acquaintance facing drug charges of his own; despite this witness recanting six years later, Martin was repeatedly denied a new trial.  During this illegitimate incarceration, Martin continued as a “jailhouse lawyer,” providing legal counsel to other inmates and winning two landmark legal cases, Sostre v.    Rockefeller    and Sostre v. Otis, establishing inmates' rights to practice religion, receive uncensored mail and obtain certain minimum conditions in solitary confinement.  

   As a result of the actions of The Committee to Free Martin Sostre, made up of prominent citizens, including Russian Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist and dissident; Jean-Paul Sartre, and a number of figures in the civil rights movement; and Amnesty International, Martin was freed in 1975.  Once he was out, he fought against landlords who tried to deny services to their poor and seemingly powerless tenants.  He married fellow activist Lizabeth Roberts Sostre and raised two sons, Mark and Vincent.  He never stopped hoping and working for change.  

   Martin’s second incarceration was the subject of a book, ''The Crime of Martin Sostre,'' (1970) by Vincent Copeland, and a film documentary, ''Frame-Up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre'' (1974) by    Pacific Street Films   .  His prison letters were collected in Letters from Prison: A compilation of Martin Sostre's correspondence (1968).  

   When I first moved into my current building, next to Martin’s building, it was clear that a number of our neighbors were scared of him.  I thought that was silly.  Martin was simply authentic.  Experience taught him not to be concerned with the extraneous and to remain focused on the essential.  Martin reminded me a little of my father and a little of a hero out of a movie or a comic book about a social justice league.  Martin was a force of nature and I’ll miss him.  

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