The Young Lords

Picture this.

You reside in a country where racial oppression, if not sanctioned and protected by law, is tolerated and encouraged by attitude. You not only look different than the majority, but speak a different language. Public services and institutions ignore you, police harass, beat and kill you, employers refuse to hire you and society as a whole views and overtly treats you as a second class citizen. This is the atmosphere in which the Young Lords came into existence.

The Young Lords were a Puerto Rican radical group active in numerous cities in the late 60’s to early 70’s. The point of my speech is to briefly inform you of their formation, actions and decline. I am focusing on the New York and Chicago chapters, because that is where, arguably, they made their largest impact. That said, they also made important contributions in Philadelphia, Hartford and in Puerto Rico itself.

After the 1966 Division Street riots in Chicago, political organizations began to form to express the concerns of the Puerto Rican community. The influence of these groups, in addition to contact with Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, led a turf gang called the Young Lords to become radicalized.

Inspired by the Chicago group, the Young Lords Party in New York formed, comprised mostly of college educated individuals and students, in 1969. They adopted much of the Chicago group’s outlook, but with more intellectual Marxist-Maoist analysis of capitalism, and the Puerto Rican situation.

The Young Lords established breakfast programs for children, dental clinics, community daycare, health clinics, testing for TB and lead poisoning, clothing drives, and cultural history events and education. They used whatever space and money they could get their hands on to provide these services without cost to the people in the neighborhoods.

The city governments, police, and some churches were quite hostile to the Young Lords and would refuse them space for their community programs. When and if that happened, they simply took the matter into their own hands. A TB testing vehicle that had been avoiding the Puerto Rican and black neighborhoods was simply hijacked, brought to those areas and put to use. Churches that refused to allow their empty basements to be utilized as free breakfast centers for poor children were occupied until they agreed. Another one of their many direct actions was to gather all the garbage the city neglected to pick up and pile it into a busy street, where it was burned in broad daylight. Trash collection problems soon became a thing of the past. They were willing to do whatever it took to establish their rights and protect their self dignity.

It was precisely because of this do it yourself attitude of direct action, that the Young Lords came under heavy FBI and police infiltration and repression. Add youth and standard left wing factionalism to the mix, and disintegration and implosion were unavoidable. By the mid-70’s, they were basically nonexistent.

But even though they dissolved, their commitment for equal rights, services for the poor and willingness to lay their bodies on the line for a worthy cause hold lessons for us today, a time when we’re supposed to funnel out hopes and beliefs through almost indistinguishable wealthy candidates and politicians who care little about what happens to the average person. The Young Lords demonstrated that important, vital and beneficial programs could and can be implemented outside the sanctioned system by the people themselves. Many of the original members are still politically active today, from stopping the U.S. Navy’s bombardment of Vieques to struggling for Puerto Rican independence, they have shown they are in for the long haul.