Hello, and welcome to Inside Podcasting, the podcast where we give you all the tips and tricks you need to run a successful podcast. Our first tip, I'm gonna give it to you for free, is don't try and come up with a clever podcast introduction for every single episode, because it gets old and boring and then you find yourself doing introductions like this instead of saying, is this cool? People did cool stuff? I'm your host, Mariya Kiljoy, which is much nicer and easier to say.
You see.
That's that's the first tip on this. Okay, so with me today is a Linda Segata Allow.
I'm good, I'm happy to be here.
Yay.
Usually I'm like, on this day, that's totally a different day than last time. But this time it is a different day than last It is.
We're older, wiser, yeah, and last week.
And I'm on more antibiotics than I was last week. But I have less tooth pain, so that.
Is an advantage.
Yeah. I think I did the last recording with like wisdom tooth infection.
Oh wow, Psycho Alec.
Yeah, our producer is back. We're no longer running Rudderless. We have Sophie Lichtman with us. Sophie, how are you doing?
Is that what happens when I'm not here?
We were lost? It was my first time, but I was lost about you.
Oh thank you, Alnda, Magpie. That was not your first rodeo. Oh I'm glad to be back and excited excited to hear parts three and four.
Yeah okay. Also, our audio engineers, Ian, thanks Ian for doing the thankless work. Our theme music was written for us by un Woman. This week we are picking up where we left off last week for our second ever four parter. Go back and listen to parts one and two. What's wrong with you? Why do you start on episode three of a four part You're probably the kind of person who can read comic books. I can't read common books because I don't know where to start.
Wow, really you start wherever?
I know?
That's the word for me, to be fair, Magpie.
We just made We just made an off Mike argument for why you would start at the end of something instead of at the beginning, Because you might find out somebody that you think is a hero is actually a really, really bad person in their personal life.
Oh that's true. I actually, for research purposes, should probably start all biographies about three quarters of the way through the book and read through the ends. Yeah yeah, all right, fair enough, Well that's not what's happening in this particular episode. They you know, no one's perfect, no group is perfect. But we're focusing on the stuff that the Young Lords did, and there was way too much good shit to just
do in two episodes. So here we are. We are talking about the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican street gang turned activist organization who where we left off, is just rocking shit in New York City. They're setting trash on fire, but in a good way. I feel like there's like good and bad ways to set trash on and they're all set to come into their own so let's watch
them do it. So they've just burned a whole bunch of garbage and gotten the city to be like, maybe we need to do something about this garbage because these radicals keep setting it all on fire and blocking the roads. So they open up a storefront because now they're way more popular than they were, and they turned to organization. They started operating more like having autonomous working groups that work on different issues. And one of the autonomous working
groups they set up is really interesting to me. They set up police watch organizations to go watch the police, right, uh huh. And these were community led rather than just led by the young Lords.
Which no one else.
Yeah, like I haven't because I haven't done a Panther's episode yet. I'm not trying to contrast to the Panthers' ideas of police watch and stuff. But if you're going to have a membership organization with a hierarchy, please do shit like this. It was an autonomous affiliate network of neighbor neighbors circles, and most of the volunteers were men and women in their forties, not directly affiliated with the Lords.
I think this was to basically have like cooler heads, like people were a bit calmer and more trustworthy in this way or whatever, you know, and they focused on conflict de escalation. They also helped resist unlawful arrests WHOA. And their goal was to eventually make the police obsolete. I really like this.
Yeah, I also really like that.
I know, I'm like, why doesn't this just happen? Why don't people just make the police. I mean, probably a lot of people who try to make the police obsolete by either going to jail or becoming worse than the cops, but like the partner, Shure tried to make comps obsolete, but he sucks. Anyway. They were unarmed, or at least they were not armed with firearms, which wasn't a moral decision but instead a strategic one within the context they
were in. Actually, most of what the Young Lords are doing is unarmed compared to a lot of other organizations. We're going to talk about what weapons they did use. Have you Have you heard what weapon their like signature weapon was. No, I'm not going to tell you yet. It's going to come up later in the script.
Okay, so good.
I want you to think about what would be the coolest, like non gun weapon that they could have.
I know, right now I'm picturing like chain with the ball with the spikes on it.
That's pretty good.
Is it a battle axe?
Nope, it's not a flail. It's not a battle axe.
Okay.
When I do my spinoff episode Great Medieval Weapons of History to explain the difference in morning stars and flails, and they like argument about whether or not the flail was actually historically used medieval Okay. Anyway, so they waited until they had buy in from the community before they even started this organization. They didn't just be like, oh, we're the new cops in town. We're going to start
roaming the streets. They ended up with two hundred volunteers that patrolled a five block area around their storefront.
Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, hundred people is a lot of people I know.
And like, I want to know more about its organizational models. I mean, yeah, it's like my nerd shit as I want to figure out where they were hierarchical, where they weren't hierarchical, where they like moved into different realms. But you know, they also launched a children's breakfast program working
together with the Black Panthers. I think that, and this is an inference from several sources, but I think that this is because the Panthers they're on the downswing because the Panther twenty one trial, right, So the young Lords are stepping up and the Panthers are helping them do it. And the cops work really hard to discourage parents from letting their kids participate, saying basically like, oh, they're a gang, don't let your kids fall into that gang. Keep your
kids away from you know, the evil young Lords or whatever. Yeah, it didn't lots of people went working out of this storefront. The community just pours and support from all corners. There's local thieves who are like, hey, do you want some chairs? We stole out of this VW. And that's where all the chairs in the office came from. Healthcare professionals donated medicine and volunteered, and there was an informal clinic run out of there, probably hanging out on the VW chairs
that were stolen out of. I mean, whoever's VW was was maybe mad, but you know, maybe they wanted to a richer neighborhood to do it. And who knows.
Bread sourcing ye.
From each according to ability to steal, to each according to need of stolen goods. They kept the whole block clean because that was like kind of their initial thing anyway, Right that there's a like physically clean the streets, not metaphorically cleaned the streets, although we'll talk about some of their how they handled drug dealers in a little bit later. Because people loved them. Yeah, they set them out in the trash on fire. Everyone liked them. Fire makes friends, apparently, I.
Know I would I would think there'd be more of a backlash. I'm pretty excited that people were like, way to go, guys, someone had to do it.
Yeah, Like I struggle to imagine that right now, in most places you could go burn a bunch of trash in the street and make do more than polarize people.
Yeah, but I guess. I mean the need was so great that they, you know, that the community was just like something had to happen. We needed our trash to get picked up.
Yeah, yeah, totally. And I bet you it's like, I bet you. The first half was like half the people were like, fuck yeah, burning trash, this rules, fuck the man, and the other half was like I don't know about that. But then when it like worked and people started picking up the trash regularly, they were like, oh all right, and so there are this much larger organization. Now. Some
of them are still in high school. So the Young Lords managed to continue their name, but a lot of them dropped out of college and high school to work on this. There's a lot of ex college kids. This is a pattern we see across the late sixties early seventies movements, is that people go full time to work on this stuff. And the people who can go full time are people who are like, why would I want a degree when instead I can change the world.
Yeah.
As someone who made that decision myself, I have a particular affinity for this.
Yeah.
No, no, everyone who finished their degrees, that's great. Fuck. Yeah. Anyway, they start working alongside the welfare rights movement. They're just involved in everything. Because a fourteen year old young lord
got arrested at a welfare rights demonstration. As far as I didn't put this in the script, but basically, I think he was like walking home from somewhere and he saw a bunch of women like doing a sit in and were like He was like, oh, I'm with them, and then sat down and got arrested or something like that.
And he ends up in friend of the pod the Tombs, which has been which is locked up everyone in the show who's lived in New York over the course of one hundred and fifty years, Like we do episodes about the nineteenth century, and all of the anarchists are getting sent to the tombs.
Oh wow, and here.
We are in the nineteen sixties. People are getting sent to the tombs. Have you ever been to the Tombs? I have no idea if you got.
Arrest in New York, I have not actually.
Okay, I never got to have it sent, but.
The name since a chill down my spine. Yeah, definitely.
I feel like most guests wou'd be very nervous to be like, hey, you ever got to arrest anyway, So the welfare movement of the late of the nineteen sixties deserves its own episode. At some point they shut down New York City a bunch of times. They were fierce as fuck. They were women of color lead, and the New York Young Lords weren't exclusively men, and some of
the founders were women. But this alliance STILP helps bring gender equity equality into the movement, Like more and more women are joining because they're focusing also on this this particular thing. And this is something that they keep doing over and over again, is that they keep moving and working on issues that bring more and more women into
the movement. And I think that's really cool. By October nineteen sixty nine, they put together a thirteen point program modeled on the Black Panthers but growing from it as well. They use the word Latino in this, which is one of the first public uses of the word in this context. And as far as I can tell, Yeah, as a white person who just read this stuff. Basically, later in the nineteen seventies, Hispanic was added to the census, and so Latino became more of a word to be like
fuck Spain, Like what the fuck, we're not from Spain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is before that, Yeah, yeah, exactly, So I think that they're still already on the like fuck Spain, we're not from Spain totally.
Yeah, they were very much on that tip.
Yeah. And it also it talks about this this thirteen point program. It talks about cross racial solidarity between all oppressed people. It talks about internationalism, it talks about women's liberation. It doesn't always succeed at doing more than talking about these things, but we'll.
Get to that.
Yeah. And I believe that at first it was like a ten point demand, right, and then I think I from what I remember reading, like the parts about battling machismo and women's liberation were added because of pressure from women within the Young Lords.
I believe you're right. I wrote a bunch of the script a little bit ago. Yeah, it got at the very least, it got rewritten to further emphasize these things. I think the women's liberation thing was I could be wrong. I think it was in there in the beginning, but it wasn't as strongly worded, and it was like near the end it was like the last point or the second less time totally, and so it got like bumped up to number three or four or something after after this.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, because I do remember it being thing about like much cheesebo needs to be used in a revolutionary way and the women were like, Yo, that's not what we're talking about. Actually, that's not possible.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They did so much. Yeah, no, I mean I'm really excited about that part of it that they they did so much discussion about what is and isn't useful in terms of like they're basically having the conversation about masculinity versus toxic masculinity totally.
And there are definite like conversations about gender and about how gender is a social construct like that was happening within the Young Lords, and a lot of conversation learning from gay liberation movements. Like when I read about that, that's what really blew my mind and maybe be like, oh my god, I'm so proud that these people are Puerto Rican.
Yeah, you know, yeah, because we get presented this like because the image of like well, actually, I mean mainstream society literally doesn't have an image of the young lads. Mainstream society ignores them, right or doesn't know about them. And but when we see like the mainstream image of radicals in the nineteen sixties, you might see a black man with a rifle right and it and there's nothing
wrong with that image. But it's like, yeah, it's like I didn't know that the Black Panthers specifically teamed up with a Queer Liberation Front until.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, they They've made explicit statements around this time, being like we're with the queers, you know, and it's this like, yeah, I mean there's still all kinds of like sexism in the chismo, but people are so interested in like looking back and pretending like everything are these divorced movements. I remember this, No, I'm just
completely upscripted. I remember this conversation I had with this old union miner in West Virginia years ago who was like working against mountaintop removal.
Oh, and.
I was talking to him and he was like, you know, a coal mining hippie in the sixties and he's white and he's like, yeah, in the sixties, we were out there protesting the war, and then on the other corners people protesting for gay rights, and then the other corners people protesting for black power. And we were like, why are we all on different corners? This is dumb. Let's stand on the same corner and then we're stronger. And I'm like, oh wow, yeah, yeah, makes me happy.
It could be that simple, you know.
You know, and like, as you talked about, and we're going to talk about more about it, and I'll be curious because I think you know more about this part of it than me. The women within this movement had to fight for this inclusion, you know. But yeah, so they put together a thirteen point program and it ends with we want a socialist society. So there's no like, you can't really pretend like they're reformists, right. Yeah, they were really good at getting reforms, but that wasn't their goal.
Yeah.
They set up a bilingual newspaper which they mimiographed themselves before eventually getting it produced off proper. It was one of the country's first bilingual newspapers.
Oh wow.
At its peak, it had print runs of twenty four thousand copies rely fit every week, I believe. And it was called Polente, which I'll read. I'll read what is in a script really quick. Palente is slang that means onward, basically from PoTA Olente. There's a sick hooray for the riff rap song called Palente. Maybe you've heard of it, Alinda.
I have.
It took me two years to write. Oh really it did. Yeah. Yeah, Like, I don't know if anyone out there is hard on themselves, but you can probably relate to tasking yourself with I need to write a song that honors this movement and this like you know of my ancestors. So I better write a really good song within like four to five minutes that encapsulates this, like how much it means to me. So it took me about two years to do that.
That makes a lot of sense. They like, like there's episodes I haven't done of cool people who did cool stuff yet because I'm like, I'm not ready. Yeah, I'm not ready to like cover. I mean, I've done some that I kind of felt that way about Stonewall in the Spanish Civil War and some other things. Right, But there's some that I'm just like, Oh, how the hell am I gonna tell this? So that makes a lot
of sense to me. It's a great song. Anyone who's listening should go and listen to this song and great video.
Also, yeah, my friends Chris Mark, Yeah.
I actually originally wrote this script for someone else, and then I use this part of the script to talk about how cool the song is, how people should check it out, and then I dragged you on as a guest. Nice, so they start putting out, uh, polente, Actually do you wanna do you have more of a I'm like, it's slang that means onward? Yeah, is there more that you could say about.
What it means? It is true, it's just slang, you know, and it's funny within like, at least the experience of my family, you know, my dad, who was like a total like veteran turned hippie, would be like, oh, yeah, why aren't they like the young lords? You know, And then other people in my family would be like, that just means to literally go forward. There's like dance songs about that. Why are you getting all wrapped up in this word?
You know?
So it's it's like a thing that I feel like For me, I was specifically drawn into that word because of the Young Lords. And maybe if you don't come from like a super like a nerdy background of researching them, you might just be like that means like keep a pushing, you know. But because of my mind being like totally blown by learning about them, I was like, this is the word, this is what I need to do.
Yeah, yeah, no, fuck yeah. Speaking of what we need to do, we need to be sponsored the things that we hate in order to eat food and feed it, feed the food to the people that we like and ourselves. So it's been a particular week of like learning about a bunch of ads that have managed to slip in past our filters. So if you're listening to this in Ireland and you get an ad for becoming a cop in Ireland, I'm I'm just gonna go ahead and say I do not support this particular sponsor.
Wow, that is just trolling. I know, that really trolling, you know, especially.
If it was like I don't know if as Northern Ireland or whatever, like especially feels like a Britan become a British cop in Ireland.
I love to know what category they've slipped in under because we have like government blocked and like all those categories blocked.
Yeah, it's like all social club.
A few years back, we had the Washington State Patrol running ads on one of our shows, or a couple of our shows, and we were like, what the fuck, Like we have all these categories blocked.
They were under business.
Oh wow, it's more honest.
You're like, yes, but yeah, yep, So don't enjoy these ads.
Yeah, welcome to our life. Here you go, and we're back. And it'll be particularly funny because these ads change over time. Right, they're not set when we record the episode. They're set, I think when you listen to the episode. So what if in the future I start doing host red ads and I've gone on this long rant and then I come in and I'm like, do you like sandwich cookies? Well, do I have a sandwich cookie for you? The following brand of sandwich cookie is all natural. That's exactly what
I need when I need sugar. I don't know, I'm not really doing a good job.
I'm saying, is this really happening? I didn't want to drapped.
Famous vegan snack the Oreo.
I know it's vegan.
Oh yeah, that's why the new Minos thing is like not actually a rip off, because I mean, the more organic version is fine. But it's like people are like new Minos. There are the vegan Oreos, and you're like, as are Oreos.
I haven't thought of at new Mino in a long time, and I got some.
You taught me all about the gloriousness that is the Oreo magpie. You literally could do a sponsorship for Oreo if they were by an evil corporation.
I know this is the problem, like anyway, the incredible tension of everyone needing jobs in order to continue to live.
And I like this.
I have the best job of anyone I know. I feel like Olinda, you might also identify it with having a pretty decent job.
It's true.
But yeah, but what most jobs. I'm going to turn this into a proper segue. Wow, what most jobs? But my job actually doesn't offer me not because it's healthcare. Okay, we're gonna talk about healthcare. Now, that's that's my segue. I'm really good at my job. The medical situation for people of color in the nineteen sixties New York was
not good. Yeah, devastating that that's a better word. Yeah, for sure, white medical students used black and Puerto Rican hospitals for training before they moved to work on You know people that society actually cared about. Lincoln Hospital, the only hospital at the time in the South Bronx was called the butcher Shop. People would go in there to get a leg amputated and come out with the wrong leg amputated.
Holy.
Yeah, there was no triage in the waiting room of the er. The paint in the children's ward was lead. We'll talk more about lead pain. Here's a nice euphemism. People got enrolled into medical studies without their consent. That is the nicest way of phrasing that I can possibly imagine. Seriously, is a it's bad. It's like a really bad thing.
So the Young Lords single handedly, No wait, they show up as one player in a larger coalition of groups fighting for health rights, the East Harlem Health Council, the e h HC. This is actually before they moved to the South Bronx. We're going to come back and talk about Lincoln Hospital a little bit later, Okay, But so this is the when they're still more in East Harlem.
They're protesting inside and outside of hospitals about the abuses happening there, and a ton of the medical providers at these hospitals were involved in organizing with the EHHC, just usually not the administration, but the actual doctors and the other you know, nursing staff and administrative staff and stuff. Administrative staff, I don't know what you call the people who aren't the bosses but are still administering things.
Yeah, I've got nothing, yeah, administrative staff, yeah, middle management yeah yeah.
And I think it's like again, like you have these like people who are like, we're crazy socialists who wear crazy outfits and uniforms and patrol like to keep the cops off of our block. And the doctors are like, wait, but are you trying to help people? And they're like yeah, and they're all right, great, we're trying to help people too. How do we help people?
You know?
Yeah? Yeah.
The Young Lords they sat down with some doctors at Metropolitan Hospital in Harlem and they drafted a ten point health program because of course it had to be a ten point health program because they only have two naming conventions in the Young Lord, which is one is the ten point or whatever number point program and the other one is the the something offensive like the garbage offensive. Okay, that's now. I love a good naming convention, and there
have been great one starughout history. I'm just so. I'm not trying to drag them. They just they have two of them in it. In the ten Point Program, they advocate for direct democratic control of the hospital by a combination of its medical staff, its workers, and the residents of the neighborhood.
No fucking notes like, seriously, that sounds great, let's do it.
Yeah, I'm in how do we do it? Also in the ten point Program was like healthcare should be free? What the fuck? Then they form yet another organization, the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement or RUM HRUM. I think HRUM. And it might seem sort of odd that they may and join a million organizations, but it's actually kind of an effective decentralization technique that I think this is my own bias coming into it. When they are more effectively
decentralized is when they are accomplishing more. From my point of view, that's my reading of this history. They're avoiding putting themselves directly into power. They're keeping power with the people, which is the stated goal. And I'm under the impression that they were also learning a lot about what wasn't working with the black panthers who also were looking at their own weaknesses.
And try to show them up.
Don't get me wrong. It's also important because while this is a story about how how the Young Lord's one sanitation detox facilities a patient's bill of rights, it's also a story about how the young Lords, in conjunction with a huge intersecting swath of revolutionaries and like medical professionals and stuff.
Do so.
An awful lot of this healthcare activism was inspired by the Cuban Revolution. A bunch of doctors and young lords has secreted themselves to Cuba at one point or another to see how to create a functioning health care system.
Wow.
Yeah, I'm a I'm not like a big state socialism girl, but I'm also not a big capitalism girl, and socialist. Cuba produced a better healthcare system than the United States has ever managed to do.
Yeah.
So, on December fifth, nineteen sixty nine, they joined to sit in at the hospital. They're protesting the construction of an emergency room that I could not figure out what was wrong in the emergency room was being done in a bad way. Okay, I don't know there's so many different times they all take over churches and hospitals and shit that it was like, wow, yeah, it's a good problem for your movement to have. Being like, I can't
keep track of everything they did because they did everything constantly. Yeah, I believe them that the er was being done in a bad way and that it was worth protesting. I have no everything else they've been right on about. So they didn't win a dramatic change in the construction of the er, but they want a sort of a side demand, okay, in that the hospital would now pay for one of their doctors to come volunteer at their storefront clinic and
offer immunizations. Yeah, and then there was something else that they wanted to work on. They just like literally worked on everything. They were focused on lead poisoning. I don't know if you knew this, but lead is really.
Bad for you, yes, especially for children.
Yeah, yeah, which is why you shouldn't paint the children's wing of the hospital in lead. Apparently it's like sweet if you eat it, and that's why kids eat it. Sophie is looking distressed by this.
It's trachac.
So lead poisoning, it's lead poisoning.
The original like fruit flavored vape things.
I don't maybe there's lead in the current vape. Well, we get sued if I make this claim.
Allegedly.
Yeah, you're saying you don't know, but you might know, but it might be, but it might not be.
And that's hine.
Yeah, we're not in the UK. We can't get sued for libel. There's probably not.
Like this podcaster is in the UK bagpot, but I'm not in the oh.
I see interesting, the delicate balance we all walk, Okay, I genuinely have no All I know is that vapes are unregular, right are they still unregulated?
I don't know about this.
I don't get pretty unregulated. But lead paint tastes sweet, and that's why kids.
That is all right. I'm looking it up.
Really with my day.
It's Monday, and I'm already like what the fuck?
Yeah, lead paint has a sweet taste, which encourages children to put paint chips in their mouths and chee on surfaces like windowsills, says University of Rochester. The top Google result when I google lead paint.
I bet animals are drawn to it as well.
M that's why animals attack. I'mank you violent.
Thanks, thanks for bombing me out, magpie.
You're welcome.
That's the point of this ship. Wait this, well, let me talk about how they've stopped it. Oh, that's a great thing. They stopped this shit. Tell me all right, So fucks you up. It fucks up your brain, it fucks up your kidneys, it can kill you. Children in poor urban areas were chok full of lead. The paint had been discontinued in the nineteen forties, but no one was checking poor houses housing areas to make sure that, like landlords were getting rid of the lead paint and shit.
In New York City late nineteen sixties, twenty five to thirty five, thousand kids were getting fucked up by lead poisoning every year. Wow, And that's just the ones who were like it was bad enough or got noticed in that way.
Right.
Of course, one kid, he was two years old, his name was Gregory Franklin. He was killed by lead paint and basically since he had been born, his parents had been fighting with their landlord to deal with the lead paint in their house to no success, and then they lost their child. So the young lords spring into action. They what they needed was a lead offensive.
Yeah, I love that. I know.
It's so good, especially lead offensive because it sounds like it's going to be about machine guns, but they're still unarmed except for with that particular tool that we're going to get to you later.
Oh.
The city had access to a ton of free lead poisoning kits, but they weren't distributing them, or at least they weren't distributed them in these areas. So during the nineteen sixty nine mayor all election, the Young Lords announced they were going to do free door to door testing with these kits, which the city hadn't promised them. They didn't call up the city and be like, hey, can we get some kits and then say hey, we're going
to do testing. They just announced the city is going to give us kits, call and we are going to do testing, and the government was like no. So then medical personnel and the Young Lords did a sit in at the Department of Health and they walked out that particular day with two hundred kits and I believe started just getting kids from the city.
Wow.
Yeah, direct action gets the fucking goods. And they went door to door doing testing for lead and it was two groups. It was the Young Lords and then h rum the health movement and they the larger coalition.
That they're part of, uh huh.
And so they tracked who they who needed treatment, and the doctors with them made referrals. So they go around and be like young lords and doctors working together. Over thirty percent of the kids that they tested tested positive for lead exposure. And so then they would sit down and talk with people about their rights and about how to go about and try and get justice and try and get health health needs taken care of. And they did this once a week. One source says they did
every Saturday. One source they says they did it every Tuesday. Because why would history agree with itself. I mean the answer is because it was a bunch of humans, and humans don't remember shit from forty years ago very clearly.
Yeah yeah yeah at the time, way, yeah, they were doing it once a week.
And yeah, yeah, get me to cut you off. I'm sorry saying, oh no, that's all.
That's all I was saying. It's a great, it's like an incredible thing to do with your time.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
It's like even it's like it's like volunteerism or whatever, right, but it's like fucking direct action. You're going around and helping people and like you're getting to know your neighbors and like they're just like not a downside, yeah, you know. And so they publicized what they found and it became a scandal for the city who had refused to take
had refused to give them the tests, you know. So within within months, the city changed its housing codes, stepped up testing, founded the Bureau of Lead Poisoning Control, I think basically because they were like, if you tell the city, like, if you don't take care of people, the socialists will the city's like, maybe we should take care of the people. Yeah, much like you will be taken care of by Uh, let's go with a positive sponsor again, old stand by turtles.
Turtles are really cute. You want to be sponsored by the cute.
Little turtles that live free, that live free like in the wild.
Yeah, why not, Like we just were thinking about good sponsors to do little ads for.
I'm a fan of turtles. I love how they live for a very long time. Yeah, you should probably listen to them more.
Yeah, respect your elder turtles. Yeah that is this is an ad for respecting your elder turtlesh you should listen to the Methuselah turtles in your life, and then whatever else these other ads are. We didn't approve of their an accident. I hope it's all turtle ads. Okay, we're back. My favorite turtle fact I learned is that box turtles stay within a mile or so of where they were born their whole life.
Oh wow, that was wanted from that ad.
Just now about turtles that we are heard.
Oh yeah, I didn't. I didn't hear. It is local, little guys.
Yeah, keep it local, like a yeah, yeah, all right. So let's talk about and they take over church. I mean around that time, they keep working on survival programs too, which is what they call the like you know, breakfast program and stuff like that. Right, but they wanted to
do more and they need another base of operations. And also their friend and the black panther, Fred Hampton, had just been murdered in Chicago by the police, so they were looking for a place that they could operate that the police probably wouldn't storm in a hail of gunfire.
Okay, So they wanted a church real lyeant by the way, I know, and I feel like I always wondered why the Church, and that's like a very great point. Yeah, practical point.
Yeah.
It also is that like, Okay, so they're Marxist Leninist organization right ostensibly and practically, but they're clearly doing their own thing. They're things their own way and in their own context. So they're not an atheist organization like Marxist Lenism is like supposed to be right. Some of them
are atheists, some of them are not. The Christian Church was criticized regularly by the Young Lords for being an instrument of colonization, completely accurate, but at the same time, they used Christ as a man of the people a lot in their propaganda.
Oh I like it, I like it.
Yeah.
They had posters.
I really want one. They had posters of Jesus with an AK forty seven slung around his shoulder.
Wait, what do we get that?
I'm like, immediately on the day, I know, anybod who's listening, if you have access to these posters, please send them to me and Alinda seriously. And I think that some of the Radical Catholics are rolling with them at this point.
You can hear more about the passifist Radical Catholics in our episode The Passifist Radical the ones who are rolling with the Young Lords probably ant passist, but I'm not sure you can hear more about them in our episode about the Burglars versus the FBI that came out recently. So the Young Lords they are looking for this new base and they go to a Spanish church in Harlem and they're like, hey, can we use your space? But the priest at East Harlem's first Spanish United Methodist church
didn't want to let them feed kids there. He was a refugee from Castor's Cuba and he was not super lefty, it's a way that one could say that. So they went four more times to Sunday Mass and they would participate in mass, I believe, respectfully, but then they would also like speak up and be like let us feed kids here. Each time the priest it's like, no, you
can't do that. So then they go. I think it's time number five, but I'm not entirely sure, and a Young Lord tries to speak at the service and an undercover copp to arrest him because the priest had set up a sting to arrest the Young Lord's during mass. So yeah, I know. So a brawl broke out because a brawl broke out between cops and lords in the house of the Lord. Thirteen Young Lords, eight men and five women were arrested and five more were hospitalized.
Oh wow.
Religious civil rights leaders came out against the church for having set up a sting to arrest the lords at mass. So the Young Lords gave up, went home, disbanded their organization. No, it stiffened the resolve to use the church, and it also turned more of the congregation into supporters of the
Young Lord's request to use the space. The congregation of the church was fairly split, and more of the younger congregants were like, fuck yeah, the Young Lord's rule, and more of the older congregants were like the Young Lord's drool totally how they phrased it. And so the next Sunday, five hundred supporters for the Young Lords waited outside. The Young Lords met with the church board, who started off
the conversation by saying racist shit against Puerto Ricans. That's the other like background context to a lot of this, Right, It's not just like people being like I have slightly more conservative economic values than you, and I don't think it's a good way to help people grow up. No, they're like, you, I'm not gonna say it how they would say it. You lazy Puerto Ricans have no work ethic and that's why you're all poor and you blow
all your welfare money on beer. These are some of the my paraphrasing of what they've said, you know, yeah, yeah, Also that it was disrespectful for the Afro Puerto Ricans to have to wear their hair, and Afros was another thing. The priests were like, we don't like your haircut.
Wow, we did go out of your like you're laying by the way. Literally, no on asking you about people's hair. But cool, you're supposed to be darking about Jesus and stuff.
Yeah, Famous, if no one asked you. Famous hates people for their haircut. Jesus maybe he doesn't like frosted tips. I'm not sure. I've never asked him about ast tins. But so for two more weeks they keep going to
Sunday mass. So this is like two months now, right then the third week after they've been beaten by cops, it's December twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, they go to a Sunday service and then they nail the doors shut, lock themselves inside, and they basically take the university takeover
strategy to the community. And if you remember, this isn't the first time the Young Lads, the Young Lords in Chicago took over a church as well, right, but it certainly gets presented that they're drawing more from their experiences during the Columbia University takeover, which is when Columbia University students led by led by black students took over much of the university, which if you want to hear more about, listen to our episode about up against the Wall Motherfuckers,
the which I think we just called up against the Wall in the title because we're not allowed to cuss on the title.
Oh.
I like that this entire podcast has turned into an ad for other episodes of our podcast.
I like to see it as weaving the web of history, but it's also yeah, it's also just yeah, you know, if you want more context, they didn't take hostages. They let anyone out who wanted to leave. They held a press conference and they said that their demand was the ability to run a food program out of the church, and they couched it all in religious language, but without lying. They were like, they weren't like, oh, Christianity's perfect in
every way and they're doing it wrong. They're like, look, Christianity became a religion of colonization, but Jesus himself was a man of the people, because that's their line, right, and they echo liberation theology stuff, which you can hear more about in our episodes about Chico Mendez in the Fight for the Rainforest. Now I'm just gonna do to make Sophie shake her head. The mayor. This is like one of my favorite details of this whole thing. So the mayor has a Puerto Rican aid, like a guy
who's this point of contact with the Puerto Rican community. Okay, his name is Arnie Segata.
Okay, yeah, wait, like my I end up utilizing that's my uncle.
Wait is it your uncle?
No? I have no idea who Ernie is, but Arnie related, Arnie, Arnie, We're related though.
Yeah, Arnie Segata. It's spelled the same way. I had to just double check. I had to look up your own I had to look up your last name. I remember, I was spelling it right in my head because I'm like not very good at the double rolled ours thing, and so I was like, oh, maybe I anyway, So your uncle Arnie.
Oh god, does he suck. I'm worried about No, he's great. Oh good, you come from Arnie. Let's go, Yeah, let's go.
Uh.
So he started off not great because he's the mayor's guy. He gets sent he's the token guy. He gets He used to quell unrest in Puerto Rican neighborhoods. He was probably on the ground during the trash burning, being like, everyone calm down. So the Mayor's like, here, go in, and he has this like backpack telephone, this like radio, like military fucking telephone, you know.
Wow.
Forty minutes later, the mayor's office is like radio is and it's like and what the fuck?
Where are you?
What's happening? And Arnie is like I think they're right and I'm staying with them. Oh god, And he gets fired and he stays.
Arnie, Yeah, my man, I gotta I'm kind of like, look this guy up on the internet right now.
So they renamed the place the People's Church, and the community pours in to discuss what to do about all kinds of shit like evictions to lack of interpretation services. It'school meetings, and it was called the Church Offensive Wow. I really hope that at some point a young lord became a youth pastor, sat down backwards on a folding chair and said, you know who else had a ten point program and then talked about the Ten Commandments.
That's what I hope that.
So they ran a medical clinic there because of course they did, staffed by all their doctor comrades, and they ran their breakfast program, plus free community meals every evening for everyone. And so it's like all of these different people from the community coming and bringing in food and sharing it with everyone. It's fucking utopian, Like just frankly, yeah, yeah.
They taught classes on Puerto Rican and black history. They set up a loud speaker facing the street that played speeches from Malcolm X and shit alongside Puerto Rican music.
Wow.
The Young Lords generally didn't carry weapons, and when they needed security they okay, I want you you both get a guess again. So if you can't look at the script, I'm not I'm not guess what their weapon was. The flail wasn't correct, the battle axe was incorrect. I'll give you a hint. Turtles, what do you a shell?
Like?
Wait?
How there's there's They're just out here throwing shells.
No, they have nun chucks.
Oh oh the turtle.
The turtle thing was I'm so sorry.
Sorry. So they carry none chucks as theirs their weapons of choice, which is I mean, like frankly, like it's a scary weapon to carry, but it's like not a you know, it's not a like kill you weapon.
Yeah.
But if someone walks up to me and they're like kind of scary anyway and they have a breton and they're carrying nunchucks, like I don't want to fuck with them.
Absolutely not. This is like also the most New York thing ever, by the way, Oh yeah, because you know it's just like, i mean, it just isn't the way that it's this like cross cultural.
Like oh my god, you're right.
Moment, you know. I mean, I'm sure this was coming out of like at the time kung fu movies were huge. Yeah, you know, like this is just oh really yeah, it's just the most New York image in my mind.
Yeah.
Totally Also very warriors energy.
Yeah, totally totally. Which is I mean that's their roots, right, It's like they're a crazy gang that wants to yeah, realize that there's more of them than there are cops in this town, so white supporters use their whiteness to pass through police lines and deliver supplies.
Oh wow.
And the young Lawyrd's made sure that no one did any desecrating of the church, and they kept the altar and everything intact. They actually even kept Sunday services and like the regular congregation was able to come in and use the church on Sunday even during their occupation, although only the younger congregants came right because the people don't like them aren't going to show up. And they held festivals of the oppressed with Puerto Rican music, with poets
and musicians and writers and artists. I read something that claimed this is the kind of thing that I feel like a lot of places might claim origin to that the spoken word poetry jam, Like the whole concept of the spoken word poetry jam was developed here. I believe it, and if so, this is one of the foundations of hip hop.
Yeah.
It's also where the poet Pedro Pietry gave his first public reading of his poem Puerto Rican Obituary.
Which is featured in my song Ballante. Yeah, and there's incredible footage of him reading it. I think for the first time on YouTube that you guys should check out because it's very moving.
Yeah, it is. Even if you're like not a poetry girl, you should go and listen to this.
Yeah, yeah, very much street poetry. You're not going to cringe. It's not like particularly slam yet, you know, it's very I remember reading that that poem for the first time when I was in high school in an anthology of called like the Outlaws Anthology of Poetry or something, and reading that poem really was the first time I ever saw Puerto Ricanness be like so talked about in such a real way, in a way that wasn't like a Mickey Mouse way.
You know, I believe you, But tell me more, what's the Mickey Mouse way?
Like the way that we were portrayed in media when I was growing up, which was very like docile and fun and like it was very j lo, very Ricky Martin. That was like what I grew up with. And also like literally West Side Story being something that's like, oh, well, you can see us featured in such recent movie as this West Side Story and it's like nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, why is this the last reference that I have? Yeah?
So it was just very much. You know, I was hanging out in the Lower east Side and Tomkin Square Park and stuff, and for the first time being like, oh my god, the problems that I'm seeing in society now were happening then, and people like me, we're talking about it and we're experiencing it, and this is like a poem that's expressing that angst, you know. Yeah, So it was a very powerful moment for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The first time I heard it was in your song. And then when I like was reading about this, I was like, oh, because I was just all, yeah, in all the connections. So I want to quote about this takeover just to keep talking about how cool it is. From the best book on this history that I found was called The Young Low is called the Young Lords
by U. Johanna Fernandez. Quote. Immediately, local grandmothers began delivering pots of food to the Puerto Rican radicals through church windows, while a FEELANX of National Lawyer's Guild attorneys on site and in the church's periphery filed court injunctions and reminded judges and police of the barricaded radicals constitutionally protected right
to protest. Teetering between sacrilege and righteousness. The Young Lord's unfolding drama was captured by TV cameras parked in the out parked in and outside of the House of Warship. And yeah, because of the National Lawyer's Guild. Shout out to the National Lawyer's Guild who are also still around
and doing amazing things. The fight to evict them was held in the courts rather than just like storming the place, like because you like, hear about this and you're kind of like, well, why didn't they just like storm it, right, And the answer is that, Okay, they took it to court. And their strategy, which is probably never gonna win or whatever. Yeah, their strategy was basically, a Methodist church is mandated to help people, and that's what we're doing. And this stalled
their eviction, but not for all that long. I think it's thirteen days maybe in the end. On January seventh, nineteen seventy, the occupants gave themselves up into police custody walking out of the church. Some of them were singing, some of them had their fists raised in silence. When presented before a judge, each one corrected the judge's pronunciation of their name, saying their own names in Spanish instead of English, which is such a good fuck you totally.
They didn't win the use of the church. The church promised to run a day care center and a drug detoc center, but it never did. But they won yet again. The government's shamed into action. Just as importantly, their power is growing, and we're going to talk about what they did with their growing power on Wednesday in the final part of this four part epic.
I don't want it to end.
Well, when we come back, we're going to see them overthrow capitalism and no, I'm just kidding it co intel, repression and internal conflicts fuel by authoritarian instructure and going to fuck them up, but their legacy will live on. And when we come back, they're going to take over a fucking hospital.
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I Linded. Do you know what else is based? You're pluggables? My what you're pluggables? Anything that you.
Well, you can find me on all of the social medias. Some of them terrify me more than others. But I'm on Instagram as hooray for the riff raff that spelled with a U h u r r a y for the riff Raff on Twitter and all the other ones, and I'll be on tour this summer on the West Coast and also through the Midwest in July.
Oh yeah, Magpie anything you want to plug?
My other podcast, Like the World's Dying, has gone weekly, So if you're like, how am I going to make it till Monday? You can listen to me or one of my other co hosts on Friday by listening to live like the World Is Dying? And I'm on social media even though I hate it, as are, so if you want to participate in either everyone feeling bad about themselves been trying to perform coolness, you can see me
on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. Or if you want to have bad faith arguments with people making bad faith arguments about you and watch the Left of Hour itself, you can find me on Twitter at Magpie Killjoy.
Sophie.
What do you got?
What do you want to plug?
Ah? My beautiful friend Jimmy Loftus has a book coming out and it is available for pre order right now. It is called Raw Dog. If you go to any of Jamie's social media's you can find a link to pre order or requested at your local library.
It's probably worth pointing out that it's about hot dogs.
Oh, fair enough, fair enough, it up.
Yep, we'll see you Wednesday.
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