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Young Lords
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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.
Founding
The Young Lords began as a Chicago turf gang in the 1960s in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. When they realized that urban renewal was evicting their families and saw police abuses, they also became involved in the Division Street Riots in June 1966.
While incarcerated, the President and one of 7 founding gang members, Jose ("Cha-Cha") Jimenez began to read everything from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X to Lenin and Mao.
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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.
Founding
The Young Lords began as a Chicago turf gang in the 1960s in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. When they realized that urban renewal was evicting their families and saw police abuses, they also became involved in the Division Street Riots in June 1966.
While incarcerated, the President and one of 7 founding gang members, Jose ("Cha-Cha") Jimenez began to read everything from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X to Lenin and Mao. In September 1968, Jimenez reorganized the now defunct gang into a political human rights movement. Jimenez was then approached by Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who was still officially underground organizing and founding the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. The meeting took place in January 1969, right after the Young Lords took over the Chicago Avenue Police Station's Workshop Meeting.
Soon after, the Young Lords were restructured into ministries in an attempt to build better organization and a Puerto Rican equivalent of the Black Panthers. It became known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO). In July 1969, the New York regional chapter was founded. It became independent from the national headquarters in Chicago after a few months and became known as the Young Lords Party. A few months later, under the leadership of Gloria Gonzalez, the New York group changed its name to the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Party.
On June 7, 1969, the Black Panther newspaper announced an alliance in Chicago called the Rainbow Coalition (no relation to the later organization of that name associated with Jesse Jackson).
Besides the Black Panthers, and what was then the Young Lords Organization, the alliance also included the Young Patriots Organization, an organization of poor white youths that had turned political. The Coalition sent representatives to the annual convention of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which was then splitting apart as a national student organization. After asking for permission from national headquarters in Chicago, the New York chapter of the Young Lords Organization was officially founded on July 26, 1969. Founding members included Juan Gonzalez (as of 2006, a New York Daily News columnist), Felipe Luciano (now a TV news reporter, poet, and radio personality), Denise Oliver-Velez, "Fi" Ortiz, David Perez, Pablo (Yoruba) Guzman and Iris Morales. Felipe Luciano served as the organization's first chair.
The Young Lords movement focused most of their activity around self-determination for Puerto Rico and local community issues such as gentrification, health, and police injustice. Gentrification became a primary focus early in Chicago, due to Mayor Daley's ruthless patronage machine evicting the entire Puerto Rican community of that city from the downtown and lakefront areas. The Young Lords People's movement also used direct action, political education, and "survival programs" to bring their concerns to mainstream public attention.
Expansion
After the founding of the second chapter in New York, subsequent branches were also organized in Philadelphia, Connecticut, 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 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 dayMcCormick 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 Ave. 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 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, Dr. Quentin Young, Ana Lucas, and Alberto and Marta Chavarria whom also worked with a Black Panther led coalition to recruit medical student organizations, and to advocate for health care for the poor.
Besides the Black Panthers, 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.
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 conquer tactics. Still, many Young Lords continued to pursue their vision for self-determination for Puerto Rico and other nations, as well as 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 Intelligiance Unit, the Red Squad and Cointelpro. Jimenez also turned himself in to police on December 4th 1972, exactly three years after the infamous police raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He then began serving a one-year sentence, but not before helping to run an underground training school for Young Lords leadership. Immediately after his release from jail, the Young Lords ran the 1975 aldermanic campaign for Cha-Cha Jimenez which garnered 39% of the vote against Mayor Richard J. Daley's machine candidate. The campaign followed the Bobby Seale Panther example and was viewed only as an organizing vehicle, to bring out the urban renewal displacement concerns of the community. After the aldermanic campaign, Cha-Cha Jimenez was incarcerated again for another nine months awaiting trial, on an alleged hostage charge, to show support for the F.A.L.N. The Young Lords, then in 1982, became the first Latino group to join and organize a major event for the successful mayoral campaign of Harold Washington. Soon after Harold Washington won, Cha-Cha Jimenez introduced the new mayor before a June, 1983 crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans 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,1995, 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 poor of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. To show support for the Puerto Rican Vieques campers and to continue the struggle for Puerto Rican Independence and the fight against internal displacement of Puerto Ricans and other poor within the Diaspora, the Young Lords organized Lincoln Park Camp on September 23, 2002.
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 Gonzalez of the New York Daily News and Democracy Now!, Pablo "Yoruba" Guzman at WCBS-TV New York, Felipe Luciano, Miguel "Mickey" Melendez of WBAI-FM New York and Geraldo Rivera. The documentary PALANTE, SIEMPRE PALANTE! The Young Lords, was produced by Young Lord, Iris Morales, aired on PBS in 1996. A play, El Bloque (The Block) by Jacqueline Lazu, about the initial transformation of the Young Lords gang in Lincoln Park, Chicago into a national human rights movement, premiered in Chicago at De Paul University on April 20, 2007. It depicts times of joy and sadness as a Ma and Pa grocery store owner chased fruit thefting Young Lords and the Methodist supporter, Rev. Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia were being murdered in their home. The next venue for the play is hoped to be in New York City.
It is important to note that Geraldo Rivera was a lawyer and later a journalist who was committed to supporting the Young Lords Party. He was never a Young Lords member.
See also
Further reading
- Abramson, Michael et al. Palante: Young Lords Party McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971. (out of print) ISBN 978-0070001572.
- Gonzalez, 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.
External links
- , brief notes on origins of the Young Lords
- , comprehensive collection of links for further research and documents for download
- , excellent history and explanation of the Young Lords with lots of links and access to a book and documentary about the Young Lords
- , an extensive site about the Young Lords
- has numerous articles related to the Young Lords
- attempts to place the Young Lords in the context of ethnic Puerto Rican history and youth-gang history.
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