Young Lords
Encyclopedia
The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization and in New York (notably Spanish Harlem
), Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican
nationalist
group in several United States
cities, notably New York City
and Chicago
.
in the 1960s in the Lincoln Park
neighborhood. When they realized that urban renewal was evicting their families and saw police abuses, some became involved in June 1966 in the Division Street Riots
. They then reorganized themselves as a human rights movement officially, on September 23,1968.Puerto Rican self determination and Gentrification
became the primary focus early on in Chicago due also to Mayor Daley's ruthless patronage machine, which eventually evicted the entire Puerto Rican community of that city from prime real estate, near downtown and near lakefront areas.
On July 26, 1969, the New York east coast regional chapter was founded. The New York Chapter rapidly grew to become a regional center of the Young Lords, after the entire Young Lords Organization gained national prominence leading protests against conditions faced by Puerto Ricans and leading in New York to the takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem on December 28, 1969. Earlier in September 1969, the United Methodist pastor, Rev. Bruce Johnson, and his wife Eugenia of the Chicago People's Church, where the Young Lords established national headquarters in an earlier church occupation, were both discovered, stabbed repeatedly in their parsonage home. There was much resentment toward them because of their strong support for the Young Lords. A major service was led by Bishop Pryor, the Northside Cooperative Ministry, Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition and the Young Lords. According to a reporter, William C. Henzlik, Young Lords founder, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
was in Cook County Jail at the time of the murders. A bail bond drive among churchmen enabled him to leave the jail in time to tell worshipers: "Rev. Bruce Johnson came down from the mountaintops of the rich to be with the poor people... most people are like boats in a harbor, always tied up to the dock. Bruce and Eugenia Johnson left the safe harbor and tried to cross the ocean."
The organization drew front page headlines in new left tabloids and the national and local media.This was due primarily to the Young Lords ability to organize and to bring thousands of people to their actions; and also because of the existence of chapters in various cities. The growth of the New York chapter,where most Puerto Ricans then lived and the Chicago national office, where they originated and was another Puerto Rican hub,led to the opening of more new branches in Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Newark, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Hayward
and other Puerto Rican hub cities.
By March 1970, the Young Lords also opened up a South Bronx Information Center, establishing its first operational headquarters for Pa'lante, a newspaper later printed and distributed by the New York Young Lords. Geraldo Rivera
a lawyer and later a journalist who while never an official member was committed to supporting the Young Lords Party.
By May 1970, the New York section under the leadership of its Chairman Felipe Luciano
; David Perez, Minister of Defense; Juan González
, Minister of Education; Pablo Guzmán
, Minister of Information; Juan Fi Ortiz, Minister of Finance; and Denise Oliver, Field Marshall, decided to separate from the Chicago Young Lords. This had begun as a personal difference between individuals and was then explained as an ideological difference. In fact, to this day there are no differences in politics or actions, except regional. The New York entity was called the Young Lords Party. While the separation was not a hostile one, New York was also the eastern regional chapter and it collected several east coast groups. All the other groups remained with Chicago. A similar situation was taking place at the same time within the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society
and many other new left movements. Most were believed to be growing pains, shaped also in part by the ongoing undercover work of the FBI's COINTELPRO
. Repression became rampant in all these organizations.Frame-ups, beatings, killings, jailings, infiltrations and negative rumour campaigns were launched against the leadership,along with high bonds and these creation of divisions.
The Young Lords as a movement continued to focus its activity around Independence for Puerto Rico and the struggle for democratic rights for all Puerto Ricans and Latinos and poor, along with the empowerment of all barrios within the United States. The local aspect of mission was significant because the Young Lords saw themselves as a People's Struggle. Therefore the original issue that turned the Young Lords street gang in Chicago into a bonafide human rights movement was the complete displacement of the Puerto Rican community in Lincoln Park, Chicago
. This was also the neighborhood of the first Puerto Rican immigrants to Chicago. In New York the "Garbage Offensive" was utilized as their local city service issue. Other key local organizing issues brought forward by the Young Lords, included: police injustice, health care, tenant's rights and accurate Latino education. The Young Lords grew in numbers and influence from 1968 to 1983.
Their influence extended beyond politics, as the Young Lords inspired political leaders, professionals and artists, forming part of a Puerto Rican cultural renaissance in the 1970s known as the Nuyorican Movement
that included poetry
and music. Felipe Luciano
, already a well known poet within black liberation circles in Harlem
, recited many of his well-known poems he wrote while a member of The Last Poets
: Jibaro, Un Rifle Oración, Hey Now. Pedro Pietri
wrote and publicly recited his best known poems, "Puerto Rican Obituary" and "Suicide Note of a Cockroach in a Low Income Project", at Young Lord events. The song "Qué Bonita Bandera" ("What a Beautiful Flag") was written by Pepe y Flora in Puerto Rico and was adopted by Chicago's national office as the Young Lords anthem. It was sung live many times during the take-over of the People's Church in Chicago's Lincoln Park Neighborhood and New York's Spanish Harlem. The impact on music was even more significant as groups such as Eddie Palmieri
, Ray Barreto, Willie Colón
, and others began to write and perform songs that addressed the Puerto Rican experience.
, New Jersey
, Boston
, Milwaukee, Hayward, California
, San Diego, Los Angeles
, and Puerto Rico
. The Young Lords set up many community projects similar to those of the Black Panthers but with a Latino flavor, such as the free breakfast program for children, Emeterio Betances free health clinic, community testing for tuberculosis, lead poisoning testing, free clothing drives, cultural events and Puerto Rican history classes. In Chicago,they also set up a free dental clinic and a free community day care center. There was also work on prison
solidarity for incarcerated Puerto Ricans and for the rights of Vietnam War
veterans. The female leadership in New York pushed the Young Lords to fight for women's rights. In Chicago, it was a sub-group within the Young Lords led by Hilda Ignatin, Judy Cordero and Angela Adorno called (M.A.O.) Mothers And Others, that organized around women's rights and helped to educate the male members and the community at large.
Their newspapers, The Young Lord, Pitirre, and Palante (a contraction of "Para adelante", "Forward"), reported on their increasingly militant activities. The Young Lords carried out many direct action occupations of vacant land, hospitals, churches and other institutions to demand that they operate programs for the poor. This included a campaign to force the City of New York to increase garbage pick-up in Spanish Harlem
. In Chicago, the seven day McCormick Theological Seminary
take-over, won the Lincoln Park residents $650,000 to be used for low-income housing. The four-month People's Park camp out/take over, at Halsted and Armitage Avenue by 350 community residents, prevented the construction of a for-profit tennis court where low-income persons once lived. In New York, much of their local health care activism was carried out by a mass organization they formed with the Black Panthers known as the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement (HRUM). In Chicago, the Young Lords health program was coordinated by Dr. Jack Johns, Quentin Young
, Ana Lucas, and Alberto and Marta Chavarria who also worked with a Black Panther-led coalition to recruit medical student organizations like the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) which advocated for health care for the poor.
Besides the Black Panthers,of whom they were organized into the Rainbow Coalition
by Fred Hampton
of Chicago, the Young Lords were also influenced by groups such as the Chicano
Brown Berets
, Crusade for Justice, Black Berets, Rising Up Angry, SDS, M.P.I., Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
, P.I.P., the Communist Party USA
, the East Asian-American Red Guards
, Damas y Caballeros de San Juan, as well as many local community activists. As for the Puerto Rican island, the Young Lords began organizing conferences and marches calling for Puerto Rican independence, which was always related back to their natural operating bases and the gentrification
that they were fighting within it, in the streets of Lincoln Park, Chicago
, Manhattan
and other cities.
The Young Lords grew into a national movement, through the leadership of activists like Angela Adorno who met with Vietnamese women, Omar Lopez (currently involved nationally with immigrant rights), and Richie Perez who established the Puerto Rican Student Union (PRSU) in a number of college campuses and high schools. They also became one of the leading targets of the FBI's COINTELPRO
, which had long harassed Puerto Rican groups. The founder and Chairman, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
was indicted 18 times in a six-week period ranging from assaults and battery on police to mob actions. He was kept in the county jail, or in court rooms fighting the charges,and lived with constant death threats. While the Young Lords advocated similar armed strategies to those advocated by the Black Panthers, it was as a right of self-defense that rarely arose, as it did after the shooting of Manuel Ramos
,the supposed suicide of Julio Roldan in the custody of the NYPD and the fatal stabbings in Chicago of the Methodist Rev.Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia, who pastored the Lincoln Park Community at the Young Lord's first People's Church.
tactics of COINTELPRO and other government investigative agencies. Still, many members continued to pursue their vision for self-determination for Puerto Rico and other nations, as well as for neighborhood empowerment. In Chicago, the Young Lords resurfaced after two and a half years of being forced underground by repression from groups like the Gang Intelligence Unit, the Red Squad
and COINTELPRO
. At that time Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
turned himself in to the police on December 4, 1972, exactly three years to the date, after the infamous police raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He immediately began serving a one-year sentence in Cook County Jail. This was right after helping to run an underground training school for new Young Lords leadership. After his release from the year in jail, the Young Lords ran the 1975 aldermanic campaign for Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
. It garnered 39% of the vote against Mayor Richard J. Daley
's political machine
candidate, Chris Cohen. The campaign followed the example of Bobby Seale
of the Black Panthers who was then running for mayor of Oakland,California; and was viewed only as "an organizing vehicle for change," to bring out the urban renewal displacement concerns of the community. After the aldermanic campaign, Cha-Cha Jimenez was incarcerated for another nine months, awaiting trial on an alleged hostage charge to show support for the FALN
.The case was thrown out of court due to no evidence and the Speedy Trial law.
The Young Lords in 1982 in Chicago, became the first Latino group to join with and to organize a major event for the successful campaign of the first African American mayor, Harold Washington
. Soon after Mayor Harold Washington won, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
introduced him before a June, 1983 crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans that the Young Lords helped organize in Humboldt Park
. That day the Young Lords gave out 30,000 buttons with "Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon" inscribed on them. In the fall of 1995, Chicago Young Lords' Tony Baez, Carlos Flores, Angel Del Rivero, Omar Lopez and Angie Adorno were brought together again by Cha-Cha Jimenez, to form the Lincoln Park Project. They began to archive Young Lords history and to document the displaced Latinos and the poor of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. To also show support for the Puerto Rican Vieques campers and to continue the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and against the internal displacement of Puerto Ricans and other poor within the Diaspora, the Young Lords organized Lincoln Park Camp on September 23, 2002 near Grand Rapids,MI.
Many Young Lords showed support for the freed Puerto Rican nationalist leaders and urban guerrilla groups like the Macheteros; others moved on to more explicitly Maoist formations, like the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Party, and others went on to provide the leadership of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR). Some worked within the media,such as Juan González
of the New York Daily News
and Democracy Now!
, Pablo "Yoruba" Guzman
at WCBS-TV New York, Felipe Luciano
and Miguel "Mickey" Melendez of WBAI
-FM New York. The documentary Palente, Siempre Palente! The Young Lords, produced by Young Lord, Iris Morales, aired on PBS in 1996.
Spanish Harlem
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem and El Barrio, is a section of Harlem in the northeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. East Harlem is one of the largest predominantly Latino communities in New York City. It includes the area formerly known as Italian Harlem, in which...
), Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
group in several United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cities, notably New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
.
Founding
The Young Lords began as a Chicago turf gangGang
A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...
in the 1960s in the Lincoln Park
Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park, is one of the 77 community areas on Chicago, Illinois North Side, USA. Named after Lincoln Park, a vast park bordering Lake Michigan, the community area is anchored by the Lincoln Park Zoo and DePaul University...
neighborhood. When they realized that urban renewal was evicting their families and saw police abuses, some became involved in June 1966 in the Division Street Riots
Division Street Riots
The Division Street Riots were episodes of rioting and civil unrest, which occurred between June 12 and June 14, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois in the United States.-History and cause:...
. They then reorganized themselves as a human rights movement officially, on September 23,1968.Puerto Rican self determination and Gentrification
Gentrification
Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
became the primary focus early on in Chicago due also to Mayor Daley's ruthless patronage machine, which eventually evicted the entire Puerto Rican community of that city from prime real estate, near downtown and near lakefront areas.
On July 26, 1969, the New York east coast regional chapter was founded. The New York Chapter rapidly grew to become a regional center of the Young Lords, after the entire Young Lords Organization gained national prominence leading protests against conditions faced by Puerto Ricans and leading in New York to the takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem on December 28, 1969. Earlier in September 1969, the United Methodist pastor, Rev. Bruce Johnson, and his wife Eugenia of the Chicago People's Church, where the Young Lords established national headquarters in an earlier church occupation, were both discovered, stabbed repeatedly in their parsonage home. There was much resentment toward them because of their strong support for the Young Lords. A major service was led by Bishop Pryor, the Northside Cooperative Ministry, Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition and the Young Lords. According to a reporter, William C. Henzlik, Young Lords founder, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
José Jiménez is one of the seven founders of the Young Lords street gang in Chicago, and the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement in 1968...
was in Cook County Jail at the time of the murders. A bail bond drive among churchmen enabled him to leave the jail in time to tell worshipers: "Rev. Bruce Johnson came down from the mountaintops of the rich to be with the poor people... most people are like boats in a harbor, always tied up to the dock. Bruce and Eugenia Johnson left the safe harbor and tried to cross the ocean."
The organization drew front page headlines in new left tabloids and the national and local media.This was due primarily to the Young Lords ability to organize and to bring thousands of people to their actions; and also because of the existence of chapters in various cities. The growth of the New York chapter,where most Puerto Ricans then lived and the Chicago national office, where they originated and was another Puerto Rican hub,led to the opening of more new branches in Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Newark, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Hayward
Hayward, California
Hayward is a city located in the East Bay in Alameda County, California. With a population of 144,186, Hayward is the sixth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area and the third largest in Alameda County. Hayward was ranked as the 37th most populous municipality in California. It is included in...
and other Puerto Rican hub cities.
By March 1970, the Young Lords also opened up a South Bronx Information Center, establishing its first operational headquarters for Pa'lante, a newspaper later printed and distributed by the New York Young Lords. Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo Rivera is an American attorney, journalist, author, reporter, and former talk show host...
a lawyer and later a journalist who while never an official member was committed to supporting the Young Lords Party.
By May 1970, the New York section under the leadership of its Chairman Felipe Luciano
Felipe Luciano
Felipe Luciano is an American poet, community activist, journalist, media personality, and politician. He is of Puerto Rican heritage....
; David Perez, Minister of Defense; Juan González
Juan Gonzalez (journalist)
Juan González is an American progressive broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. He has also been a columnist for the New York Daily News since 1987...
, Minister of Education; Pablo Guzmán
Pablo Guzmán
Pablo Guzmán is an Emmy Award-winning reporter for WCBS-TV in New York. He joined CBS 2 News in 1995 and is currently a senior correspondent for the station. Before WCBS-TV, he was a reporter for Metromedia Channel 5 WNEW-TV from 1984–1992 and from 1992–1995, he was a reporter for WNBC-TV...
, Minister of Information; Juan Fi Ortiz, Minister of Finance; and Denise Oliver, Field Marshall, decided to separate from the Chicago Young Lords. This had begun as a personal difference between individuals and was then explained as an ideological difference. In fact, to this day there are no differences in politics or actions, except regional. The New York entity was called the Young Lords Party. While the separation was not a hostile one, New York was also the eastern regional chapter and it collected several east coast groups. All the other groups remained with Chicago. A similar situation was taking place at the same time within the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
and many other new left movements. Most were believed to be growing pains, shaped also in part by the ongoing undercover work of the FBI's COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
. Repression became rampant in all these organizations.Frame-ups, beatings, killings, jailings, infiltrations and negative rumour campaigns were launched against the leadership,along with high bonds and these creation of divisions.
The Young Lords as a movement continued to focus its activity around Independence for Puerto Rico and the struggle for democratic rights for all Puerto Ricans and Latinos and poor, along with the empowerment of all barrios within the United States. The local aspect of mission was significant because the Young Lords saw themselves as a People's Struggle. Therefore the original issue that turned the Young Lords street gang in Chicago into a bonafide human rights movement was the complete displacement of the Puerto Rican community in Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park, is one of the 77 community areas on Chicago, Illinois North Side, USA. Named after Lincoln Park, a vast park bordering Lake Michigan, the community area is anchored by the Lincoln Park Zoo and DePaul University...
. This was also the neighborhood of the first Puerto Rican immigrants to Chicago. In New York the "Garbage Offensive" was utilized as their local city service issue. Other key local organizing issues brought forward by the Young Lords, included: police injustice, health care, tenant's rights and accurate Latino education. The Young Lords grew in numbers and influence from 1968 to 1983.
Their influence extended beyond politics, as the Young Lords inspired political leaders, professionals and artists, forming part of a Puerto Rican cultural renaissance in the 1970s known as the Nuyorican Movement
Nuyorican Movement
The Nuyorican Movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans...
that included poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and music. Felipe Luciano
Felipe Luciano
Felipe Luciano is an American poet, community activist, journalist, media personality, and politician. He is of Puerto Rican heritage....
, already a well known poet within black liberation circles in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, recited many of his well-known poems he wrote while a member of The Last Poets
The Last Poets
The Last Poets is a group of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African American civil rights movement's black nationalist thread...
: Jibaro, Un Rifle Oración, Hey Now. Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri , was a Nuyorican poet and playwright who co-founded the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement.-Early years :...
wrote and publicly recited his best known poems, "Puerto Rican Obituary" and "Suicide Note of a Cockroach in a Low Income Project", at Young Lord events. The song "Qué Bonita Bandera" ("What a Beautiful Flag") was written by Pepe y Flora in Puerto Rico and was adopted by Chicago's national office as the Young Lords anthem. It was sung live many times during the take-over of the People's Church in Chicago's Lincoln Park Neighborhood and New York's Spanish Harlem. The impact on music was even more significant as groups such as Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri , is a Grammy Award winning Puerto Rican pianist, bandleader and musician, best known for combining jazz piano and instrumental solos with Latin rhythms.-Early years:...
, Ray Barreto, Willie Colón
Willie Colón
William Anthony Colón is a Nuyorican salsa musician. Primarily a trombonist, Colón also sings, writes, produces and acts. He is also involved in municipal politics in New York City.-Early years:...
, and others began to write and perform songs that addressed the Puerto Rican experience.
Expansion
Subsequent branches were also organized in Philadelphia, ConnecticutConnecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Milwaukee, Hayward, California
Hayward, California
Hayward is a city located in the East Bay in Alameda County, California. With a population of 144,186, Hayward is the sixth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area and the third largest in Alameda County. Hayward was ranked as the 37th most populous municipality in California. It is included in...
, San Diego, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
. The Young Lords set up many community projects similar to those of the Black Panthers but with a Latino flavor, such as the free breakfast program for children, Emeterio Betances free health clinic, community testing for tuberculosis, lead poisoning testing, free clothing drives, cultural events and Puerto Rican history classes. In Chicago,they also set up a free dental clinic and a free community day care center. There was also work on prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
solidarity for incarcerated Puerto Ricans and for the rights of Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veterans. The female leadership in New York pushed the Young Lords to fight for women's rights. In Chicago, it was a sub-group within the Young Lords led by Hilda Ignatin, Judy Cordero and Angela Adorno called (M.A.O.) Mothers And Others, that organized around women's rights and helped to educate the male members and the community at large.
Their newspapers, The Young Lord, Pitirre, and Palante (a contraction of "Para adelante", "Forward"), reported on their increasingly militant activities. The Young Lords carried out many direct action occupations of vacant land, hospitals, churches and other institutions to demand that they operate programs for the poor. This included a campaign to force the City of New York to increase garbage pick-up in Spanish Harlem
Spanish Harlem
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem and El Barrio, is a section of Harlem in the northeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. East Harlem is one of the largest predominantly Latino communities in New York City. It includes the area formerly known as Italian Harlem, in which...
. In Chicago, the seven day McCormick Theological Seminary
McCormick Theological Seminary
McCormick Theological Seminary is one of eleven schools of theology of the Presbyterian Church . It shares a campus with the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, bordering the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois...
take-over, won the Lincoln Park residents $650,000 to be used for low-income housing. The four-month People's Park camp out/take over, at Halsted and Armitage Avenue by 350 community residents, prevented the construction of a for-profit tennis court where low-income persons once lived. In New York, much of their local health care activism was carried out by a mass organization they formed with the Black Panthers known as the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement (HRUM). In Chicago, the Young Lords health program was coordinated by Dr. Jack Johns, Quentin Young
Quentin Young
Quentin Young is Chicago-based physician who is recognized for his efforts in advocating for single-payer health care in the United States...
, Ana Lucas, and Alberto and Marta Chavarria who also worked with a Black Panther-led coalition to recruit medical student organizations like the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) which advocated for health care for the poor.
Besides the Black Panthers,of whom they were organized into the Rainbow Coalition
Rainbow Coalition
Rainbow Coalition may refer to any of the following groups:* National Rainbow Coalition, a former Kenyan political party* The 24th Government of Ireland, formed after the previous coalition fell apart...
by Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party...
of Chicago, the Young Lords were also influenced by groups such as the Chicano
Chicano
The terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
Brown Berets
Brown Berets
The Brown Berets is a Chicano nationalist activist group of young Mexican Americans that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s and remains active to the present day. The group was seen as part of the Third Movement for Liberation. The Brown Berets focus on community organizing...
, Crusade for Justice, Black Berets, Rising Up Angry, SDS, M.P.I., Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was founded on September 17, 1922. Its main objective is to work for Puerto Rican Independence.In 1919, José Coll y Cuchí, a member of the Union Party of Puerto Rico, felt that the Union Party was not doing enough for the cause of Puerto Rican independence and he...
, P.I.P., the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, the East Asian-American Red Guards
Red Guard Party (United States)
The Red Guards were a Chinese American civil rights group active from 1967 to 1971. The movement drew inspiration from a variety of sources including the Boxer Rebellion, the Red Guards in China, and the Black Panthers. The I Wor Kuen were a similar group originally based in New York City named...
, Damas y Caballeros de San Juan, as well as many local community activists. As for the Puerto Rican island, the Young Lords began organizing conferences and marches calling for Puerto Rican independence, which was always related back to their natural operating bases and the gentrification
Gentrification
Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
that they were fighting within it, in the streets of Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park, is one of the 77 community areas on Chicago, Illinois North Side, USA. Named after Lincoln Park, a vast park bordering Lake Michigan, the community area is anchored by the Lincoln Park Zoo and DePaul University...
, Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and other cities.
The Young Lords grew into a national movement, through the leadership of activists like Angela Adorno who met with Vietnamese women, Omar Lopez (currently involved nationally with immigrant rights), and Richie Perez who established the Puerto Rican Student Union (PRSU) in a number of college campuses and high schools. They also became one of the leading targets of the FBI's COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
, which had long harassed Puerto Rican groups. The founder and Chairman, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
José Jiménez is one of the seven founders of the Young Lords street gang in Chicago, and the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement in 1968...
was indicted 18 times in a six-week period ranging from assaults and battery on police to mob actions. He was kept in the county jail, or in court rooms fighting the charges,and lived with constant death threats. While the Young Lords advocated similar armed strategies to those advocated by the Black Panthers, it was as a right of self-defense that rarely arose, as it did after the shooting of Manuel Ramos
Manuel Ramos
Manuel Ramos, an attorney who also has taught Chicano literature courses at Metropolitan State College of Denver, is the author of several crime fiction novels...
,the supposed suicide of Julio Roldan in the custody of the NYPD and the fatal stabbings in Chicago of the Methodist Rev.Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia, who pastored the Lincoln Park Community at the Young Lord's first People's Church.
Decline and aftermath
By 1973, the Young Lords had been crippled and had all but been destroyed by the FBI's discreditations and divide-and-conquerDivide and rule
In politics and sociology, divide and rule is a combination of political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy...
tactics of COINTELPRO and other government investigative agencies. Still, many members continued to pursue their vision for self-determination for Puerto Rico and other nations, as well as for neighborhood empowerment. In Chicago, the Young Lords resurfaced after two and a half years of being forced underground by repression from groups like the Gang Intelligence Unit, the Red Squad
Red squad
In the United States, Red Squads were police intelligence units that specialized in infiltrating, conducting counter-measures and gathering intelligence on political and social groups during the twentieth century. Dating as far back as the Haymarket Riot in 1886, Red Squads became common in larger...
and COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
. At that time Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
José Jiménez is one of the seven founders of the Young Lords street gang in Chicago, and the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement in 1968...
turned himself in to the police on December 4, 1972, exactly three years to the date, after the infamous police raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He immediately began serving a one-year sentence in Cook County Jail. This was right after helping to run an underground training school for new Young Lords leadership. After his release from the year in jail, the Young Lords ran the 1975 aldermanic campaign for Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
José Jiménez is one of the seven founders of the Young Lords street gang in Chicago, and the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement in 1968...
. It garnered 39% of the vote against Mayor Richard J. Daley
Richard J. Daley
Richard Joseph Daley served for 21 years as the mayor and undisputed Democratic boss of Chicago and is considered by historians to be the "last of the big city bosses." He played a major role in the history of the Democratic Party, especially with his support of John F...
's political machine
Political machine
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...
candidate, Chris Cohen. The campaign followed the example of Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale
Robert George "Bobby" Seale , is an activist. He is known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with Huey Newton.-Early life:...
of the Black Panthers who was then running for mayor of Oakland,California; and was viewed only as "an organizing vehicle for change," to bring out the urban renewal displacement concerns of the community. After the aldermanic campaign, Cha-Cha Jimenez was incarcerated for another nine months, awaiting trial on an alleged hostage charge to show support for the FALN
FALN
FALN is an acronym for Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional .It can refer to:*Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña*Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional...
.The case was thrown out of court due to no evidence and the Speedy Trial law.
The Young Lords in 1982 in Chicago, became the first Latino group to join with and to organize a major event for the successful campaign of the first African American mayor, Harold Washington
Harold Washington
Harold Lee Washington was an American lawyer and politician who became the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987.- Early years and military service :...
. Soon after Mayor Harold Washington won, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
José Jiménez is one of the seven founders of the Young Lords street gang in Chicago, and the founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement in 1968...
introduced him before a June, 1983 crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans that the Young Lords helped organize in Humboldt Park
Humboldt Park, Chicago
Humboldt Park is one of 77 officially designated community areas located on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois. The Humboldt Park neighborhood is widely known for its large Puerto Rican presence...
. That day the Young Lords gave out 30,000 buttons with "Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon" inscribed on them. In the fall of 1995, Chicago Young Lords' Tony Baez, Carlos Flores, Angel Del Rivero, Omar Lopez and Angie Adorno were brought together again by Cha-Cha Jimenez, to form the Lincoln Park Project. They began to archive Young Lords history and to document the displaced Latinos and the poor of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. To also show support for the Puerto Rican Vieques campers and to continue the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and against the internal displacement of Puerto Ricans and other poor within the Diaspora, the Young Lords organized Lincoln Park Camp on September 23, 2002 near Grand Rapids,MI.
Many Young Lords showed support for the freed Puerto Rican nationalist leaders and urban guerrilla groups like the Macheteros; others moved on to more explicitly Maoist formations, like the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Party, and others went on to provide the leadership of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR). Some worked within the media,such as Juan González
Juan Gonzalez (journalist)
Juan González is an American progressive broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. He has also been a columnist for the New York Daily News since 1987...
of the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
and Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
, Pablo "Yoruba" Guzman
Pablo Guzmán
Pablo Guzmán is an Emmy Award-winning reporter for WCBS-TV in New York. He joined CBS 2 News in 1995 and is currently a senior correspondent for the station. Before WCBS-TV, he was a reporter for Metromedia Channel 5 WNEW-TV from 1984–1992 and from 1992–1995, he was a reporter for WNBC-TV...
at WCBS-TV New York, Felipe Luciano
Felipe Luciano
Felipe Luciano is an American poet, community activist, journalist, media personality, and politician. He is of Puerto Rican heritage....
and Miguel "Mickey" Melendez of WBAI
WBAI
WBAI, a part of the Pacifica Radio Network, is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station, broadcasting at 99.5 FM in New York City.Its programming is leftist/progressive, and a mixture of political news and opinion from a leftist perspective, tinged with aspects of its complex and varied...
-FM New York. The documentary Palente, Siempre Palente! The Young Lords, produced by Young Lord, Iris Morales, aired on PBS in 1996.
Further reading
- Abramson, Michael et al. Palante: Young Lords Party McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971. (out of print) ISBN 978-0070001572.
- González, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, Penguin, 2001. ISBN 978-0140255393.
- Melendez, Miguel "Mickey," We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords, St. Martin's Press, 2003. ISBN 0-312-26701-0.