Jailhouse lawyer, revolutionary bookseller, yogi, mentor and teacher, anti-rape organizer, housing justice activist...

Historian Garrett Felber's A Continuous Struggle chronicles the life of Martin Sostre, an under appreciated legend in the history of anti-prison and Black freedom movements. In this virtual event, Felber will be joined by writers Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and William C. Anderson to discuss Sostre's life and legacy.

The radical, indeed revolutionary life of Martin Sostre, a Black Puerto Rican political prisoner, is a remarkable one. He entered prison thinking himself nonpolitical, but learned, through hard-fought struggles and experience, that every time we wrestle with the State (Leviathan) we are engaged with politics... His bio tells the tale of a man who transformed when faced with new challenges, becoming more radical with each transformation.

Garrett Felber is an educator, writer, and organizer. They are the author of Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, and coauthor of The Portable Malcolm X Reader, with Manning Marable. Felber is a cofounder of the abolitionist collective Study and Struggle and is currently building a radical mobile library, the Free Society People's Library, in Portland, Oregon.

Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin is a writer, activist and Black anarchist. He is a former member of SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and Concerned Citizens for Justice. Following an attempt to frame him on weapons charges and for threatening the life of a Ku Klux Klan leader, Ervin hijacked a plane to Cuba in February 1969. While in Cuba, and later Czechoslovakia, Ervin grew disillusioned with the authoritarianism of state socialism. Captured by the CIA in Eastern Europe, he was extradited to the US, put on trial and sentenced to life in prison in 1970. He was introduced to anarchism while in prison, inspiring him to write Anarchism and the Black Revolution in 1979. Released after 15 years, Ervin remains politically active.

William C. Anderson is a writer and activist from Birmingham, Alabama. His work has appeared in The Guardian, MTV, British Journal of Photography, Logic(s) Magazine, and Prism, where he’s a monthly columnist. He is the author of The Nation on No Map and co-author of As Black as Resistance. He’s also the co-founder of Offshoot Journal and provides creative direction as a producer of the Black Autonomy Podcast. His writings have been included in the anthologies, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? and No Selves to Defend.