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.
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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, 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.[1] 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.[1] 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 May,1969 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 Central Committee: Felipe Luciano, Chairman; 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.
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 (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 stood. 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.[2] 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.
By 1973, the Young Lords had been crippled and had all but been destroyed by the FBI's discreditations and divide-and-conquer 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 who had been living underground for two and a half years,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 who was the only one on stage with him,introduced him before a June, 1983 crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans that the Young Lords helped to 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 Palante, Siempre Palante! The Young Lords, produced by Young Lord, Iris Morales, aired on PBS in 1996.