THE NEW PRISONER

MARTIN SOSTRE
THE NEW PRISONER

MARTIN SOSTRE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

‘The following article was written by a Brother who refers to himself as
an “Afro-American revolutionary.” Many have come to respect him as a “jal-
house lawyer” nonpareil. Notwithstanding the efforts of Messrs. Gideon and
Johnson (Gideon v. Waimwright, 372 .5. 335 (1963); Johnson v. Avery, 393
US. 483 (1069)), Brother Sostre has undoubtedly had the most far reaching
effect on the extension of the limited rights of prison inmates throughout
the country.

Like many other “jailhouse lawyers;” Brother Sostre has had no formal
training in law. Unlike many other “jailhouse lawyers,” Brother Sostre is
articulate, diligent and efféctive. It i this latter quality that has rendered him
s who, as he points out, have violated the
rights of inmates in spite of, and in total disregard of, the Constitution and
specific court orders.

Among the many liberties advocated by Brother Sostre have been: rights
to the free excrcisc of religion (Sostre 7 McGinnis, 334 F.2d 906 (1964);
indigent prisoner’s right to appeal in forma pauperis (Applic. of Sustre, 189 .
SUPP. 111 (1960); rights of prisoners to du process, right to political expres-
sion, right to unfettered access to public officials and a rather limited frec-
dom from cruel and unusual punishment (Sostre ». Rockefeller, 312 ¥. supe.
863 (1969), affirmed in part and reversed in part (Susre r. McGinmis, 442
£2d 178 (1970); right to duc process in relation to censorship of literature
(Sostre v Oris, 330 ¥. SUPP. 941 (1971).

He has also been the moving force behind the formation of a prisoners”
union in New York State and an advocate of minimum wages for inmate
workers.

Brother Sostre s presently serving a 30 to 40 year sentence in Clinton
Prison, Dannemora, N.¥. (He has been the recipient of extensive “bus ther-
apy” having been transferred from five prisons in the New York State system
to this “maxi-maxi” faciity.) His conviction was based on the most spuri-
ous of evidence: the testimony of a convicted drug dealer, who subscquently.
submitted an affidavit indicating that he had perjured himself at the request

anathema to corrections of

3 THE NEW PRISONER

of the District Attorney and a conveniently “missing” motion picture film
that was allegedly taken through a window that turned out to be boarded
up at the time. He is presently secking a new trialin order to introduce the
A full account of Brother Sostre’s trial and con-
viction can be found in The Crime of Martin Sostre by Copeland (McGraw-
Hill Co., 1970). The latest information and literature on the on-going strug-
le of Martin Sostre can be obtained from The Martin Sostre Defense Com-
mittee, 1.0. Box 839, Ellicott Station, Buffalo, New York, 14205

newly discovered evidenc

HW.

THE NEW PRISONER

MARTIN SOSTRE

“Listen, pig, are you really that naive to believe you can fool and paci
us with nightly bribes of ten-cent candy bars and cookie snacks while caging

us like animals in your inhuman stcel cages; by removing the wire screen
from the visiting room but replacing it with the three foot wide table thrust
between our mothers, wives, children and loved ones to maintain your inhu-
man separation; by changing the color of our uniforms from gray o green
(and those of our jailers), while exploiting our slave labor for pennics a day;
by establishing a phony furlough program which is programmed to exclude
from cligibility 1690 prisoncrs out of 1700;" by passing a token cqualization
bill: Aficr Attica’! Well dream on, pig, until the next rude awakening over-
takes you

“Your widely-publicized prison reform programs—a smoke screen not
only to cover up the greatest domestic massacre in a century, but to con-
ceal your current repressive pacification program consisting of the post-At-
tica multi-million dollar appropriation for guns, gas, chemical sprays, for

training killers on their effective use, construction of additional gun towers
and assault tunnels within your prison camps from which to shoot us down,
building and reinforcing special treatment housing or maxi-maxi units ( eu-
phemisms for solitary confinement torture chambers), ete—will have the
same success as your Vietnamization Progeam in Victnam upon which they.

See Sections 851854, New York State Correction Law, McKinney's Con
Solidated Laws.
MARTIN SOSTRE 7

are patterned. Indeed, as in Vietam, your repressive prison pacification pro-
‘gram, sub o prison reform, has already proven counter-productive in that
it has set in motion dynamic revolutionary forces that will effect the over-
throw of your racist-capitalit system.

“Are you so spiritually dead and blind that you fail to perceive the cause,
effect and consequences of your repressive acts? Are you so hung up on the
repressive-genocidal aspect of your racist-oriented technology that, despite
your resounding defeat by the heroic Vietnamese people who, bare-footed
and bamboo-housed, neutralized your advanced technology with resolute.
human spirit and revolutionary warfare, you still r
perverse technology cannot prevail over human spirit?

“If Attica fell 0 us in a matter of hours despite it being your most secure
maximun sccurity prison-fortress cquipped with your latest repressive tech-
nology, so shall fall all your fortresses, inside and out. Revolutionary spirit
conquers all obstacles.

“Every one of your prison camps has now become a revolutionary train-
ing camp feeding trained revolutionary cadres to cach revolutionary foco in
the ghetto. The recruits are the thousands of Black militants and revolution-
aries framed and kidnapped from the ghettos in your desperate effort to put
down the spreading Black Rebellion. While on the surface it appears you've.
cooled the ghettos, all you've done was remove the dynamic clements,
dumped us in your prison camps where our diverse ideologies and expe-
riences cross-fertilized, hardened and embittered us in your dehumanizing
cages by abuse, breaking up our families, etc., to then return us to the ghet-
tos as fully-hardened revolutionary cadres. Your oppressive mentality blinds
you to these clear facts.

s to believe that your

“Do you not sce that we've converted your prison camps into revolu-
tionary training camps for cadres of the Black liberation struggle? More im-
portant, your prisons have become ideological crucibles and battle grounds.
Soon you shall reap the harvest.”

The above capsulizes the ideology of thousands of Black revolutionarics
being repressed in your prison camps. Although expressed in many ways—
rhetorically and organizationally through the many militant and revolu-
tionary prisoners’ groups formed in every prison in the U.s —the basic ide-
ology is the same: using our time in prison to get it together for our return
to the ghetto.

While 1 speak only for prison camps in New York State—and I've
been tortured in the major ones: Sing Sing, Clinton, Attica, Green Haven,
Wallkill, and Auburn—I have compared notes with many out-of-statc.

8 THE NEW PRISONER

prisoners serving time in New York prison camps and found that the identical
idcological situation exists in out-of state prisons.

We are all political prisoners regardless of the crimes invoked by white
racist oppressors to legitimize their kidnapping us from the ghettos and
torturing us in their cages. You don't believe it? Well, what crimes did our
forcbears commit when they were kidnapped from Affica, imprisoncd aboard
slave ships and brought to America where their labor was exploited for 350
years? Didn't you legalize these crimes against Black people and codify them
in your slave codest Didn't you legitimize your genocidal slaughter of the
American Indians and theft of their land by legislating Indian laws and the
Homestead Act? Were not these crimes politically motivated and formed
the very foundation of United States capitalism? And are you not now the
benefactor of this loot and enjoying a standard of living many times higher
than your kin in Europe, South Affica and Australia?

Yet, after our forebears were forced to build for you the richest country

in the world with their blood and slave labor, the descendents of the white
racist kidnappers, murderers and robbers who inherited the bloodstained
loot have deluded themselves in the belicf that they are the guardians of “law
and order” that their victims must recognize them as such, acquiesce in their
oppression, and relinquish all claims to their stolen heritage!

The consequences of this sclfdelusion shall soon bear bitter fruit, as
surely as the invasion of Vietnam effected the present ignoble defeat at the
hands of the heroic Vietnamese people. The delusion of the oppressor will
be submerged by the realiy of the struggle waged by the oppressed.

So continue pursuing your Eichmann-like repressive policies which your
sadistic racit pig torturers are secking to enforce. Never will they succeed in
breaking our spirit to resist injustices; or convince us that they are the lawful
authority-nay, their very outlaw acts remove all doubr (if it ever existed) that
they are the outlaws, since they violate not only the laws of humanity but the
constitutional and statutory laws they are duty-bound to uphold.

Indeed, they are much more than outlaws, they are mass murder
prisoner in the history of New York State— possibly of the United States—
has ever borne the stigma of being the mass-murderer of 43 persons. Yet the
mass murderers of 43 persons will not be indicted. They continue in office
enjoying political largess and passing themselves off as upholders of law and
order.

The “people” who put them in office uphold and praise them for their
savagery at Attica. They defend the deliberate premeditated murder at Attica,
just as Eichmann defended his mass murders at his ial by pleading that

r5. No

MARTIN SOSTRE 9

he was an innocent concentration camp administrator caught in the middle
and “following orders” But the Isracli Court, following precedents of the
Nuremberg Tribunal, rejected this defense on grounds that each individual
is a free agent bearing responsibility for his or her individual acts.

‘The people support and acquiesce in the continuance in office of these

mass murderers. They raise no outraged cry against them. They make no
demand for their impeachment; no demand that the mass murderers be ar-
rested, charged with murder and indicted. The message thercfore is very
clear: the white racist people of this oppressive racist society are our enemics
who go along with every injustice perpetrated against us by their clected
representatives. Their support of bestial, genocidal acts against us reflects
their consciousness.

The McKay Report whitewashing the Attica Massacre is a case in point.*
Its statement, in regard to the taking of hostages, that “the holding of
human lives for ransom is wrong and only leads to more violence and to
a backlash that makes change more difficult,” evokes sardonic smiles when
read by us, the real hostages whose human lives are being held for exploit-
ative ransom—as were the human lives of our forcbears—solely because we
are Black. Or does the dictum that holding hostages leads to more violence,
apply only when Blacks hold white hostages and not when Black hostages
are held by Whites?

But if your dictum has universal validity, does it not then follow that the
rising tide of Black rebellion in America by your 25 million Black hostag
the natural legacy of the “wrong” which you state “only leads to more
lence™ Keep on tripping, pig, for reality will rip you up.

Despite your self delusion that you can pervert reality with lis, the fact
is that “when everything has failed” (as it already has, since we cannot get
justice from our oppressors)—*when a person is pressed to the wall” (as

we already are)—“the taking of hostages may be the only way of reaching
the outside world"—as Bill Kunstler correctly observed. The realiy is that
into believing the
lic that you murderous outlaws are the guardians and dispensers of law and
s from

we politically aware prisoners, whom you cannot decei

justice, shall continue to employ all means necessary to fice oursch
your genocidal white racist oppression.

* Robert McKay, Dean of The Law School t New York University, was appoint
ed by Governor Rackefellr to prepare report on the rebellion at Attica. The report
was published September, 1972 as the OFFICIAL REFORT OF THE Niw Youx STATE
CoMmssion ox Arrica, Bantam Press (1972).

10 THE NEW PRISONER

Hostage-taking is to us s legitimate a means of struggle as was your
seizure of agents of the Crown during the American Revolutionary War, and
the scizure of British tea during the Boston Tea Party. We, and not our op-
pressors, are the sole deciders of what means to employ in our liberation
struggle.

The Attica Rebellion not only was the dircct consequence of your sys-
tematic denial of our basic human rights, but of your adamant refusal to
accord us the civilized treatment ordered by Federal Courts in Sostre .
McGinnis, Sostre v. Rockefeler, Sostre v. Otis, and in many other decisions.

Despite this fact being common knowledge to thousands of lawyers,
judges, legislators, administrators and ordinary “people” familiar with the
sweeping prison reforms ordered by Federal Courts in the Sostre ». Rockefeller
and Sostre v. Oris decisions, and the millions of words written on the causes

of Attica, why hasni't this fact—the obdurate refssal of outlaw State officials

to obey Federal Court orders—been exposed? It is duc to the white racist
conspiracy of silence inherent in oppress
of white atrocities are Black.

When the 28 Attica Reform Demands presented to and accepted by
Commissioner Russell Oswald on September 12, 1971, are viewed against the
background of Sostre 1. Rackefeler, Sustre ». Otis and other directives, it be-
comes clear that your refusal to comply with the directives of the Courts and
implement the reforms resulted in the Attica Rebellion ffteen months later.
The following facts represent irrefutable evidence that, had the provisions of
the Federal Court mandates been complied with, and had other legitimate
rievances brought to your attention by us prior to September 1971 been
redressed, not one person would have died or been injured on September
913, 1971

The first three of the 28 Attica Reform Demands dealt solely with
procedures to be adopted afier the anticipated agreement between the State
offcials and rebelling prisoners, and the return of prisoners to their cells
These three demands seck the provision of food, water and shelter (neces-
sities of life which even animals in the z00 receive as a matter of coursc),
an Observers Committec to monitor this operation, complete administrative
and legal amnesty for the rebels

Reform Demand x0. 4 sought “the application of the New York State

racist America when the victims

Sostre v. McGinnis, 34 F.2D 996 (2D CIk., 1964); Sostre v. Rockefeller, 312 &
SUPE. 863 (5.0X.¥, 1969), AFF. in part and KEV. in part, Sostre v. McGinnis, 442
E2D 178 (2D CIR., 1970); Sostre v. Ofs, 330 F. SUPP. 941 (5.D.5.5., 1971).

MARTIN SOSTRE I

Minimum Wage Law Standards to all work done by inmates. Every cffort
will be made to make the records of payment available to inmates.” This
grievance (and many others) was brought to the attention of your prison
offcials on at least four occasions. Each time it was rebuffed and repressed-
usually with force.

“The frst time it was presented was in July 1970 when slaves in the Attica
Metal Shop presented their demand for a minimum wage. You responded
out of your usual “gorilla” bag by throwing into solitary confinement the
representatives presenting the grievance. Having no outlet for this legitimate
grievance, and having it compounded by your additional injustice of
punishing our representatives, we responded with a work strike in the Metal
Shop. Warden Mancusi and Commissioner Oswald reacted by confining
to solitary confinement all the leaders. In July and August 1970 the strike
leaders were transferred to Auburn and other prison camps throughout the
state

Secking to pacify with crumbs the spreading prisoner discontent with
the five to thirty cents per day slave wage of New York State prisons, you
then raised prison wages to twenty-five cents for the lowest job category,
and up to one dollar per day for the highest. But you immediately raised the
already outrageously high commissary prices—e.g., we are forced to pay 40¢
for a two-pound box of sugar while outside you pay 59 for a five-pound
bag—and cancelled out the few pennies raise in our slave wages.

The second time this grievance was brought to your attention was on
November 4, 1970, during the Black Solidarity Day rebellion in Auburn
Prison. In fact, it was the same militant leaders of the Attica Metal Shop
strike that were transferred to Aubum Prison who led the Solidarity Day.

rebellion at Auburn

‘The third time the unredressed slave labor grievance was presented to
you was in July 1971 when the Attica Liberation Faction sent Oswald a list
of grievances including the demand for higher wages. As usual, they v
rebuffed.

‘The fourth time this labor grievance was brought to Oswald's attention
was in July 1971 when prisoners in Green Haven presented to Warden Zelker
and Oswald their list of gricvances in the form of 13 Prisoners’ Demands,
headed by the demand for a Prisoners Labor Union. The following is a copy
of the Prisoners’ Demands:

2

THE NEW PRISONER

PRISONERS® DEMANDS
ArteNTION:
We the inmates of Green Haven Prison demand

That there be set up an Inmate Labor Union free from the creation of, and the
control, by the State o any correctionl agency thereof, that administers t0 the

prisoners. But instead however, a private organization whose main concern is

the welfare of the prisoners. To be headed by dedicated lawyers, whom we will
choose, to act as President, Vice President, Treasurer, and people from organi
Zations in our communities to serve on the Board of Directors of such a Usion.
We demand that when 3 person s released on Conditional Release, all nstit
tional holds be resolved. Conditional Release is time earned by inmates, there

fore, he should not be held as if on parole. The present guidelines of Condition
al Release are illegal and a form of chattel or indenture servitude.

We demand that there be a review board set up to bring sbout the relesse of
those adulis who have served ten (10) and more years for a crime that has been
long atoned for.

We demand a complete revision of the New York State senten

cryone sentenced under the old Penal Law (pre-1967) be recalled before court
for re-sentes

g under the new law
We demand that there be an “Inmate Law Office” where we can set up inmate
awyers 10 study, prepare and review each inmate’s ase, who so wishes, and per.
fect appeats, legal briefs and allforms of writs and peritions i order to present
our grievances and other important issues befor the courts and other municipal
bodis.

We demand that al inmates be allowed to correspond with whomever wishes to
wite him. The correspondant should be left up to the corresponding parties
ot the institutional administrators. We further demand that we be allowed to
order and receive any periodicals, books, newspspers, magazines or literature
that we would normally be able to read if we were free men.

We demand that all inmates have religious and politcal freedom . that any rel
‘gious and political books published in the ... be allowed to enter the prisons,
So that prisoners can learn and get about to up-lft their wretched souls.

We den
inspect al penal institutions to enforce cleanliness and diets.

We demand proper medical attention both by the prison hospital and dental de.
partn

ind 2 well balanced, wholesome and nutritious diet. That the £.0..

. We demand that the dental depsstment use and adinister novacain
for all illing of tecth
MARTIN SOSTRE 5

10, We demand an immediate end to cruel and inhuman treatment and brutality by
prison offiial

15 We demand that we be able 10 obain personal typewrites, 1 be kept in our

12 We demand that Deputy Superintendent H. Sawner and his Gestapo agents be
removed from their positions and jobs because of the use of eruel and inhuman

13, Last, we demand to be treated like wrx ™

On August 18, 1971, Earl Smoake, one of the militant representatives of
Green Haven, wrote to Zelker and Oswald asking to discuss with them the
Prisoners’ Labor Union and the other twelve grievances set forth above. He
received no reply.

However, when on August 23, 1971, Earl Smoake discussed the or-
ganization of the Labor Union in a mecting with his fellow prisoners in the
prison yard, he was thrown into solitary confinement.

Thus Oswald was presented with the labor grievance on at least four
occasions prior to the Attica Rebellion. He ignored them and used force to.
repress our legitimate desire to receive some of the fruits of our labor and
end the inhuman and unconsitutional treatment of prisoners in the pris-
on-fortress of New York State.

Reform demand X0. 6 of the Attica rebels demanded that the State
“allow all New York State prisoners to be politically active without in-
timidation or reprisal.” Why should it have been necessary to demand the
right to exercise constitutionally protected political rights without intimida-
tion or reprisal when the Federal Court thirteen months carlier in Sostre
. Rockefeller, had already enjoined the Commissioner of Correction and
Warden Mancusi of Attica “from punishing Sostre for having in his pos-
ion_political literature and for setting forth his political views or in
writing?™* The answer is clear: your outlaw prison officials disregarded the
Court’s mandate and continucd to punish us for exercising our political be-
licf

‘The same applics to Reform Demand x0. 7 which secks the allowance
of “true religious freedom.” Were not prison officials ordered by the Federal
Courts in Sostre n. McGinnis! to permit the exe

¢ of the First Amendment

125 SUPP. 863, 0 885, AFE. 442 £2D 178,
334 £.2D 906 (2 CIR., 1964).
4 THE NEW PRISONER

right to worship? Why then should prisoners sill have to demand the exercise
of this “preferred-right” seven years later? Is it not obvious that your State.
prison offcials are nothing but outlaws and eriminals who use the US. Con-
itution and Court orders for toilet paper? Is it not obvious also that your
State and Federal Courts, members of the same oppressive political structure.
to which your prison officials belong, are co-conspirators in the conspiracy.
against prisoners to deny us our Constitutional and human rights?

‘The pleadings of the case prove that Sostre 7. McGinnis was the result
of a six-year spiritual, physical and legal struggle led by three determined
prisoners. The struggle commenced in Clinton Prison during 198 when we
first sued in Plattsburgh Supreme Court via writ of mandamus secking the
exercise of religious freedom ¢

‘The spiritual and physical aspect of the struggle involved years of torture.
in solitary confinement, beatings, tear gassings while locked in cages, bread
and water dicts, and many other barbarities inflicted by the State to break.
our spirit, health and resoluteness, and coerce other prisoners from joining
our ranks. But far from breaking our spirit in the solitary confinement dun-
gcons of Clinton and Attica Prisons, these dungeons became the “foco” of
rebellion which spread to every prison in the State and involved hundreds of
prisoners. The story of the spread of the struggle, how the problem became
S0 serious that the State Attorney General was forced to set up a special
bureau to handle the scores of Muslim complaints flooding the courts, and
how the Muslim struggle evolved into the revolutionary struggle which led
to the Attica Rebellion, is detailed in my forthcoming book.

It took six years of suffering and litigation to get the Sostre 7. Me-
Ginnis ruling in 1964. T personally spent five years in solitary confinement
struggling, and had my sentence not expired in September 1964, while in
Attica solitary confinement, T probably would have spent many more years
under torture. The 196 ruling of the 2 Circuit Court (Sostre r. McGinmis)”
remanded the case to State Court where it was stalled through Bryant »
Wilkins" SaMarion ». McGinnis? to demand N0. 7 of the Attica Rebellion
to “allow truc religious frecdom™seven more years! Thus the struggle to
exercise a First Amendment “preferred” right took from 1958 ill 1971,
thirteen years of torture, suffering and death at the hands of racist outlaw
savages who recognize no law except that of force, violence and murder.

©See Pierce, Sostre, SaMarion v. LaVallee, 203 .20 233 (2D €IR., 1961)
7334 2D 906 (21 CIn, 1964)

1258 NX5.20 455 (1963).

¥284 X.v.5.20 504 (1967).
MARTIN SOSTRE 15

Demands 7. 8, 9,17 and 25 of the Attica rebels secking the end of arbi-
trary censorship of lterature and correspondence, the employment of Black
and Spanish-speaking officers, and the end of unlimited punishment in sol-
itary confinement were already ordered by the US. District Court (Con-
stance Baker Motley, ].) sixteen months carlir in Sostre ». Rockefeller®

‘The depraved savagery of your outlaw prison officals and your judicial
co-conspirators is reflected in the rest of the reform demands. The very fact
we have to demand “rehabilitation” from those whose primary function is
the rehabiliation of prisoncrs, and food and medical treatment—basic ne-

cessitis of i

recognized by all civilized beings—makes manifest the type
of individuals into whose care the “People of the State of New York” have.
thrown us

Our claim that your prison officials are the real outalws and we prisoners
the victims, is supported by the holding of the U.S. District Court in Sustre
. Rockefeller, supra, where the Court stated at page 863 thar

Itis not the function of our prison system to make prisonrs conform
i their poliical thought and belief o ideas acceptable to their jilers. On
the other hand, one function is o try t0 rehabiltate the lawbreaker by con-
vining him of the validity of our legal system. There i little chance that
such an objective will be achieved if prisoners are entrusted to those who,
likewise break the law by denying prisoners their basic constitutional rights.
This Court holds that Sostre’s confinement to punitive segregation for the
letters he wrote and for refusal to answer questions bout a politial organi-
zation, and his subsequent punishment for mere possession of politica lit
erature, were unreasonable punishments and violated his First Amend

tight to freedom of political expression.

The Attica Rebellion was the result of recognition, after decades of pain-
ful exhaustion of all peaceful means of obtaining redress, of the impossibility
of obtaining justice within the “legal” framework of an oppressive racist so-
ciety which was founded on the most heinous injustices: murder, robbery,
slavery. The ghetto rebellions were the result of a reaching of the same con-
clusion by the oppressed masses after centuries of civil rights struggle and
court liigations, such as the 1954 Brown school integration decision, which
afier a twenty-year struggle for implementation was nullified by anti-busing
legislation. The rising tide of revolutionary guerrill struggle throughout the
world is likewise due to the

lure of all other means to redress injustices

3126 SUPP. 863 (5.0.X.¥.,1969).
16 THE NEW PRISONER

heaped on the oppressed.

Attica defrocked the vicious outlaw murderers who were passing them-
selves off as lawful authorities. It is now a historical fact that the upholders
of “law and order” are the mass murderers of 43 persons in the Attica Mas-

sacre. These are the murderers and torturers who ar in charge of New York.
State and its prison camps.

‘The reality of what must be done has been made manifest through the
process of climination of “legal” remedies. No longer shall we waste time
and suffer prolonged neediess punishment and injustices litigating civil
rights cases in your oppressive courts as we did in the 1950's and 60s. Gone

forever is our naivete of the 1960 which deceived us into regarding as mil
itant the “we want” programs we followed, which in reality were the prod-
the foolish slaves begged their
master to grant them frecdom, justice, equality, fertile land, etc. We've been

uct of 400 years of slave mentality, in whi

saying “we want” this and “we want” that for 400 years, but the truth of
the matter s that those who have been robbed of their freedom and heritage
‘obrain justice only by using all means necessary in the struggle against their
oppressor.

Little did you imagine that the very dungeons used to torture us, whe
you forced us to sleep naked on the cold conerete floor with windows opened
to give us pncumonia, on bread and water dict, and with a five-gallon paint
bucket for a toilet, would become the crucibles from which evolved the new
hardened prisoner and the Vanguard revolutionary ideology which has now
spread throughout New York State prison and into the ghettos

The Vanguard revolutionary ideology formulated by the survivors of

your torture dungeons i reflected in the following program:

PROGRAM OF BLAC!
VANGUARD FOR LIBERATION
WHY WE FIGHT, OUR
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1. Since our heritage of 350 years of Black slave lsbor was stolen and invested in the
development of this continent of North America by our oppressors, our aim is
o recover this stolen heritage by liberating, through revolutionary armed strug:
gle and all means necessary, a portion of this developed land fr

our oppres
Sor's control. We shall establish our Black independent nation on this liberated
territory which is ours by right of our lsbor invested in its development, our
blood shed in its behalf, and by sight of birth and history
MARTIN SOSTRE 7

2 Our armed struggle for liberation, ike that in Afrca, Asia and South America,
isa just struggle. We seck not 10 steal someone else’s lind and property, but to
recover our stolen heritage: the product of 350 years of Black slave lsbor stolen
from our ancestors and employed by our oppressors to make the U, the richest

3. We fight for the iberation of Black people held captive in ghetto colonies inside
the United States by the white racist oppressor. By liberation we mean complete
freedom from the physical, politial, social and econo
racit v.5. government, and the establishment of our own independent Black

control of the white

4. Since our struggle for iberation in America is 3 past of the world revolutionary
struggle for liberation against the common U.S. enemy and its alies, we will
use the same means employed by all oppressed peoples to liberate ourselves:
uerilla warfare, first and for

5. Asa fint step towards nationhood, we must obtain revolutionary bases from
which to operate. We must seize areas in urban and rursl Black communities
from the control of the oppressor. From these liberated and expanding areas we
will wage our war of iberation,

6. Our independent Black nation will be 1 Socialist nation based on the principle
that people, and ot property, are the most precious of all possessions. Having,
freed ourselves from 400 years of ¢ capitalism, we are
about to imitate our white oppressors by establishing a Black capitalist nation.

nocidal white ra

Does the Vanguard program differ from the “we want” programs like
day does from night? Don't you wish we had remained mentally dead and
in the *we want” trick bag while believing all the while we had the “key” to
the problem of our oppression? Its too late now, for once mental chains are
broken there is no return to the status quo ante.

We, the new politically aware prisoner, will soon galvanize the revolu-
tionary struggle in America t0 its new phase that will hasten the overthrow
of your exploitative racist socicty, recover the product of our stolen slave
labor which you now enjoy, and obtain revolutionary justice for all oppressed
people.

Martix SostrE,

Auburn Prison Fortress
(in keep-lock for refusing to
shave beard)
Cover art by Lawrence Jenkins

Translation by Julio Ramos and
Jusn Carlos Quinones

Design by Zachary Norman

Originally published as Martin Sostee,
“The New Prisoner;” North

“srolina
Central Law Journal 4, x0. 2 (Spring
1973): 242254 and distibuted by the
Martn Sostre Defense

Republished in 2021 by the Martin
Sostre Institute
MARTIN SOSTRE (1923-2015)
was revolutionary anarchist and.
antiimperialist political prisoner and
ilhouse lawyer. He advocated for
prisoners rights o religious freedom,
political expression, and due process
regarding prison censorship and solitary
ment. He was also a te

and mentor, as owner of the radical
Pan-Afrcanist Afro Asian Book Shop
in Bufflo, New York and 3 community
organizer with the Juvenile Education
and Awareness Project in Passac, New

Jersey.