MARC MOSCATO WRITES A BLOG

Have a short piece coming out in Squeaky Wheel’s new issue of the media arts journal The Squealer. Thought I’d post it!

We can learn a great deal about the culture and politics that we live under by looking at our public spaces. While Celino and Barnes billboards and corporate logos dominate Buffalo, NY’s landscape, we can infer an equal amount from our shared histories by recognizing what is not memorialized and given prominence. Lost in this telling of history is the story of people’s movements, including the campaign to end child labor, the right to collective bargaining and the right to the forty-hour work week.

For instance, little is left to remember the Buffalo Street Car Strike of 1913, in which 2300 national guardsmen quelled protesters being forced to work 18 hour days. Or Thomas Low Nichols, editor of The Buffalonian, Buffalo’s first underground newspaper, who was jailed in 1837 for printing back-room deals by the city’s elite businessmen. Or, for that matter, the numerous suffragist and abolitionist leaders from upstate New York, who were instrumental in winning equality and the right for all to vote.

One story I thought should be given greater prominence in our urban memory is that of Martin Sostre, who in 1966 opened the Afro-Asian Bookstore on Jefferson Avenue, near Utica. The store sold radical literature and soul records and provided a community meeting and organizing space.

Sostre wrote, “I taught continually - giving out pamphlets free to those who had no money. I let them sit and read for hours in the store. Some would come back every day and read the same book until they finished it. This was the opportunity I had dreamed about - to be able to help my people by increasing the political awareness of the youth.”

In July of 1967, after Buffalo’s East Side erupted in race riots, Sostre’s activities came under increased scrutiny from Buffalo police and the FBI. On July 14, 1967, the Afro-Asian bookstore was raided and Sostre was charged for “narcotics, riot, arson, and assault” (charges later proven to be false). Despite representing himself in court, he was convicted and sentenced to 41 years in prison by an all-white jury.

Realizing that the City of Buffalo would likely never officially memorialize something like the raid Martin’s store, I assembled this tribute across the street from the former site of his shop (the actual building is now a vacant lot). I checked out several pamphlets at the downtown library, blew images up on a photocopy machine and affixed them to the boarded up storefront with wallpaper paste and a paintbrush.

Working in plain daylight, I wondered how people would react. Not a single person stopped to talk or ask questions. I suppose I looked like I knew what I was doing, and that was good enough. Due to Buffalo’s extreme racial segregation, and seeing I was likely the only Caucasian within many blocks, many may have purposefully not engaged in conversation. Still, I wonder what people think when they pass the assemblage. So is the the inherent power and weakness of impromptu art projects.

As for Martin? While in prison, he became an advocate for prisoner’s rights and won several landmark legal cases, including Sostre v. Rockefeller and Sostre v. Otis. He was pardoned by Governor Hugh Carey in 1975, after the only witness to his “crime” admitted he was set up by Buffalo police. Sostre is still alive and lives in New York City.

Buffalo is rich in its history of people’s movements. And as one of the first victims of free trade globalization, the city has no shortage of empty spaces. Buffalo, its buildings and our shared histories are waiting now for your reclamation…waiting for you to breathe life back into them.

Bibliography:
Copeland, Vincent, The Crime of Martin Sostre. New York: McGraw Hill Co, 1970.

Frame Up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre. Dir. Joel Sucher. Pacific Street Films, New York, 1974.

McCubbin, Bob, ed. Martin Sostre in Court. Buffalo, NY: Martin Sostre Defense Committee, 1969.

Sostre, Martin, Letters from Prison. Buffalo, NY: Philosophical Society State University of New York, Buffalo, 1968.