Part Two: The Young Lords: How Some Puerto Rican Socialists Changed Everything

this is cool. People did cool stuff which you probably knew because this is a part two of a series for which I'll be host Margaret Sophie Killjoy and with me today is my guest, a Linda Sophie Sagata, the one and only. Yeah, are you doing a Linda on this day? That's totally a different day than last day. Oh, I'm doing good. I had a snack a sleek bar, so I'm feeling great. I'm here in New Orleans. You know New Orleans also known as Sophie Town, right and yeah, yeah,

doing good? Yeah, excited to talk about one of my favorite topics. Hell, yeah, Sophie, I mean the young Lord. Yea. Our producer is Ian Sophie Or. Theme music was written for us by young woman, and I'm going to drop that bit now. This is part two of our extra cool four part on the Young Lords, only the second topic to end up four part and where we last

left our heroes. You've got this guy named Cha Cha who's just been politicized in jail and then he gets out and he's the leader of a gang called the Young Lords. So he puts two to two together and decides to get some shit done. First, he tries to get shit done the normal way. He doesn't. He doesn't immediately be like, hey, the Young Lords, now we're radical socialists. He forms an activist group. He forms an activist group called the Puerto Rican Progressive Movement. Oh wow, it doesn't

get off the ground. He's like, this doesn't really work. No one's like really, says he go, joid, I think this is an important lesson. No one's excited to go join the like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah thing that. And then think's like, do you want to be a become a Young Lord, And people are like absolutely, yeah, totally yeah, Like our background is crime and our future is the overthrow of capitalism. Yeah yeah, you were like,

sign me up. Yeah, So yeah, he's like, all right, well, I'm a gang leader and I need a bunch of people to try and get some stuff done, and we exist to defend ourselves from white racists. So fuck it, and I will say best as I can tell. Most of the history center on him a little bit too much. He is really great, he's cool, but in all of us,

he's not alone. A few of the other Young Lords are with him from the start of all this change and like are part of all the radicalization and are largely left out of the histories because people kind of they pick a guy right to I, and he seems like a great guy to have picked. I got no. You know, there's always worth pointing out. The first thing that they did as the new well, they didn't change their name yet. Eventually they're the Young Lords organization. But

twenty of them show up to a meeting. There's a neighborhood meeting where a bunch of people are talking about gentrifying the neighborhood and like literally bulldozing huge trunks of it. So the Young Lords are very polite and calm, they said, politely through the whole thing, and then they point out the lack of Puerto Rican representation in the group making these decisions. And then they trashed the place after sitting

very politely. Yeah, they like threw chairs around. I feel like it just like emphasizes the sort of intimidation factor if they're like, oh m interesting, yes, and then smash it up. Then they went home and they studied. They just like sat down and fucking read and they talked to people, and they studied leftist movements and they did their homework. And in the end they were like, right,

Black Panther Party, that's our model. And I think that the Black Panther Party, who again I haven't even done episode on yet, but they're like in the center of almost everything we're talking about. So many groups exist because of them. Right, And so the Young Lords they put together a ten point program. And if cha cha had been a target for harassment from cops before when he was, you know, a gang leader with a long record, he has twice as much of one. Now he gets stopped

and arrested like twice a week. Oh Jesus. Everywhere the Young Lords go, the cops are there usually like already, I think, and this is really telling anti gang enforcement in the city of Chicago, including a new intelligence unit started because gangs went political. It was fine when you had raised his gangs of Irish and German youth, and then it was like they actually literally all just get city jobs. And then it was like fine ish when you have the newer non white gangs who just do cry.

But once they go political, then we can arrest you. I'm like, you can all fight each other and yeah, yeah, it's like you're staying as a fighting each other. Yeah. Now when they're politicized, they're fucking scared. Yeah, and the oppression doesn't stop them. They went some of the things that they did in their early days. They defended welfare activists, mothers who did a sit in to demand their back payments, like because they weren't getting paid, and so they went

into security for them. They formally integrated. There was always apparently a not I don't know always, but there was a women's auxiliary to the young lords called the lordets.

And the women's role in this movement is going to increase over time, and we'll talk about that um and when yeah, yeah, and I and going political as a huge part of it, right, So they formally integrate the women's auxiliary into the main group, and then everyone, I believe, including the men, start starts working on offering childcare to

their community. They also get together with a black gang to fundraise through community picnics, teach people about drug safety, They get toys for Christmas for kids, and like food for people's tables, and they're doing mutual aid and they're doing community defense and they're just like doing the ship that makes sixties groups so fucking cool. And meanwhile the city is like, we have to destroy this violent gang. Yeah, exactly,

who are giving Christmas presents two children? Yeah? When they were stabbing people in the beach, the cops were like, ah, you know, yeah, there was a there was a community council meeting at a police station about what to do with the young lords or whatever. And so three to five hundred people, many in purple berets, showed up to this community council meeting and then they disrupted it. They hung up signs on the walls with slogans like city law does not allow pig on the street and pigs

need support centers to keep them off the street. They started pushing for what gets called or what they called Third World unity, welcoming in black and white members as well if they were working class. So working class people of all races were allowed to join the Young Lords. Oh wow, they Yeah, it's interesting. And when we talk the New York one will have even more information, or I have even more information about the multiracial makeup of

the Young Lords. They threw a conference on the matter with Chicago Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton as the keynote speaker for this third world unity concept and trying to get everyone together. And then they joined up with this group. If you ever I hadn't Have you ever heard of a group called the Young Patriots? No, all right, imagine, okay, well first I'm gonna say, okay, so they form the Rainbow Coalition. That's what they because there's all the different

you know, colors of people or whatever. And one of the groups is the Young Patriots, who are a leftist socialist street gang in Chicago who are white Appalachians who use the Confederate battle flag as the flag of their socialist movement. Anyway, can see Elenda's eyes are like staring, just like, wait, my brain is bending, and I'm not like laughing at them. I'm laughing at how incredibly this doesn't translate to modern politics. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Also I'm just like I was first even like, whoa Appalachian folks in Chicago, Like that was interesting to me. Yeah. Well, and that's actually the thing is that they were facing. It's not ethnic oppression, right, but they're facing a specific class oppression that is based on where they're from, right, because they're not just poor white people, but they're poor white Appalachians and it's a different type of classism that still exists to this day, right, Like, um, and so

they get called Hillbillies. They're poorest. Fuck, they're iced out of proper white society, and so they're like, all right, fuck you Yankee, piece of shit. Wasps were doing our own thing or whatever. And they work to start interracial working class organizations to get medical care to children and to end the draft. They tied in their struggle with poor oppressed people everywhere as part of the uprisings around

the world. Their party platform specifically spoke out against cultural nationalism, which makes sense, right because they're white people, right. So yeah, you kind of just I can't do a nationalism if you're white, right, in any given context, I mean, if you're Ireland trying to decolonize as complicated, but that's like literally an Ireland, not some fucking Irish racist gang in Chicago, and like, yeah, they're just like doing all of the

right stuff. They they first met the Panthers when they and the Panthers accidentally double booked a church in Lincoln Park to do a talk. That's really that's like a cute meetings, you know, And so then they just talked about their mutual class interests and anti war interests, right, because this is another thing that's like part of all of us too. You have the Vietnam War going on and or in all of us. I was just thinking that,

like we have the draft going on. My father actually went to Vietnam, so that was like a huge part of my growing up was learning. I was just learning through his eyes and like his experience as a marine, Aquerriican marine in Vietnam when he was super young, and it just like radicalized him. Yeah so much when he

was able to make it home, you know. Yeah, yeah, when I was young, Like my father was very clear with me, you know, elementary school age, just like they put people of color, they put black people and Porto Ricans on the front lines because they expected us to die and we were totally disposable. Just like That's what I was raised with, you know, was from that perspective. When I say that rules, I mean that rules that your dad knew that and passed that along, not that

it rules that they did that. Yeah, he was a total dadass. But that is like such a big part of like the background of this story that is hard for me to remember. I like forget, like, oh yeah, at the same time, you guys were being fucking drafted. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. There's so many different things that are happening in the late sixties, yeah, that it's hard to keep them all in your head at once and hard to

realize that they're all absolutely part of each other. Right, And like you have the young Patriots with their Confederate battle flag, which it only makes sense as a like fuck you to Northerners, right, I mean it does not.

I am not advocating that anyone call themselves patriots or fly Yeah the American either the North or the South flag not a good idea, but like yeah, yeah, And and so they they meet up, right and they're talking about anti warship with the Panthers, and from then on, while they continue to fight for white working class, the white working class, they almost never appear in public to speak without Panthers or Young Lords around to support them

and to show interracial solidarity. And I suspect that this was like specifically a move if you're a white organizer to be like, it's a little bit weird because it's a little bit tokenizing, but it's also a way of being like, you need to know we are not organizing white people in contrast and against people of color, you know, like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let's see some of the shit they did by nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. I'm gonna skip ahead for them just because I'm doing

a little side on the Young Patriots. They're taking pages out of the Panther playbook. They organized free breakfast programs, they ran medical clinics, they organized clothing drives, they cop watched, and one of the main things that they did that they got remembered for is they took patient advocacy. And

this is gonna time to Young Lords later too. They took patient advocacy seriously, people who had to go to the doctor in the communities at this like street gang of socialists, like we're taking care of They would get a Patriot at their door to advocate for them and to come with them to their appointments and shit, whoa yeah incredible. Yeah, you're like trying to be a shitty

classist doctor. And there's this like angry hillbilly is just like yeah, socialists just like you're gonna you're gonna treat them right. Yeah. Wow, especially for like older folks are just like I mean, that's something I always I always knew about like the Young Lords at least was this like yeah, like very much connection with like older generation, you know, totally. And a lot of medical work that is like a huge things particularly in New York, are

going to do. We're gonna be talking about mostly next week. Yeah. They ran a medical clinic, the Young Patriots. They ran a medical clinic. This ends up the most famous of all their activities. It started off serving one hundred and fifty people at dental and medical care. Cops fucked with it constantly. They arrested Patriots for trespassing on their own property. Like. They fought it all in court. It took forever. Eventually they won and their clinic was back open and it

served two thousand people for years, four years. It kept it up until nineteen seventy three. The Feds fucked with them, basically, and it also fucked with all of the churches that supported both them and the Young Lords, and the whole thing fell apart because of federal oppression. And anyone who's curious can listen to probably last week by the time you'all are listening to this episode about the religious radicals and the movement of pacifists that brought down Cointelpro, or

at least revealed it. Yeah, they're cool. There was a I went to the Bronx Museum years ago when I was first learning about the Young Lords because there was a big exhibit about them, and one wall was just printed out papers of like Cointeal Pro find things. Yeah, that makes out all of them and just like phone recordings, just like spying on people, just like covered an entire wall, which is like a whole other like we're talking about. The draft is a big part of the background of this.

It's like constant infiltration, constant more than just infiltration and monitoring, constant fucking with right, you know. Yeah, and so yeah, that's the Young Lords. Sorry, that's the Young Patriots, and that's the Rainbow Coalition. Yeah, the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, the Young Patriots. And then there's another whitish group called Rising Up Angry, who are some of the more radical trunks of the Students for Democratic Society, who are mostly

working class greasers from union families. Cool, I know, like I want them to show up on scooters or so at any I don't know shit about racers. They look cool and I'm not. And it's funny because I'm not. Again, I haven't like Covered Black Panthers deeply, but for anyone who doesn't have a basic understanding, they're a black power organization that I'm certain we'll talk about more or later. They scared the ever living fuck out of the US government.

They were violently repressed through direct application of force and through co intel. Pro Black Panthers were into black power, by which I mean a declaration of self determination for black people, and it included such ideas as to quote quote from this book The Young Lords by Johanna Fernandez, which is the main source, the best book that I'm able to find about the Young Lords, she says that

black Panther. Black power is quote, the right to arm self defense against white racist violence, black pride, and the development of independent black political leadership free from pressures to accommodate the interests of northern white liberals. That's the Rainbow Coalition. Let's talk more about the Lords. By nineteen sixty nine, the Young Lords had their own newspaper which covered all

the protests they were up to. It talked about imperialism, it talked about what connected, It connected everything to what was happening in Puerto Rico to what was happening in Vietnam and Africa, and had kind of an unoriginal name was called y l O or Young Lord's Organization. It's still the point, you know. Yeah, I bet it had great graphic design, I think so. I know the New York one. Did I know more about the New York one, which is named after one of your songs, But we'll

talk about that later. Oh yeah. The paper covered a ton of stuff, including what was going on and their sisters struggles like the Panthers. It had a Pig of the Month feature covering a local coup. Incredible. Um, I can't figure out why the cops get sucking with him? But you know whatever, Wow, And they were all organizing, and there were other organizations they were buds with, like LADDO, the Latin American Defense Organization, and so they provided security

for for LADDO. It didn't they didn't just like perfectly overnight stop being they're doing usual gang shit. It took a while, but their connections in the gang world were really useful to them. One of their own was killed by a cop at a birthday party. I can't remember the details, but he like like walks out on the walks out of the house and cops murder him. Right. The cop was acquitted. This is going to be shocking to anyone living in twenty twenty three. A cop got

away with murdering someone. Um, because so much has changed since. Oh god, that's depressing sarcasm. The cop was acquitted. There's a march of thousands, including members of a ton of other gangs with names like the Cannibals and the hell Stumpers, and this gang that was Irish, Black and Puerto Rican called the Almighty Harrison Gentz. Who I believe we're still around? Oh really yeah? And I can't like again, I'm not like, I try doing more research about the almighty Harrison Jensen.

It's like I don't have enough context to make useful declarations about what gangs are up to. I'm not trying to. Yeah, yeah, the Young Lords are an example of gangs do good many times, you know, but power power structures are complicated, you know. And this gang unity at this march scared the ever loving piss out of the cops. And I don't know if this is like where the Warriors comes from, right, but like, oh it's true, but the whole like there's more of us than there are cops, can you dig it?

Thing like this is what fucking scares like when the working class realizes that they not only do we have the numbers, but we even literally already sometimes have the organizations, the fighting spirit if it could be pointed in the right direction. Yeah, as united it didn't last, But what does last is the cuteness of baby elephants bathing themselves

our sponsor, our sponsor. Yeah, and anything that you hear during this ad break that isn't about baby elephants was a mistake and you should write to complain to Sophie on Twitter because she loves to hear about how the ads suck and you should tell her, or you can just press the forward fifteen seconds button a couple of times. It's up to you your choice. Here's some ads, so we're back. I, for one, particularly enjoyed the one where it was four baby elephants and they were bathing each other.

That was the best of the ads that I what was your favorite of the ads that we just listened to that we're all about baby elephants. You know, I always love when a mom walks in and starts teaching the ways of elephant nature. That's like one of things surefire way to make me cry. Yeah, that was that may have been the best of the ads that you all just listened to. Yeah, yeah, maybe really. I hope that some day we can just have well, I guess it's not a visual medium, all right, so young I

was so stoked that wasn't a visual medium. By the way, anything to not be perceived, Yeah, I understand. Trans Day of Visibility was the other day. I used a picture from two years ago because I was like, I'm not fucking brushing my hair this like, God, makeup that you mother Parker. Absolutely, Yeah, trans day of talking to a microphone, Queer Day of Yeah, microphones are great hiding be observed

by non strangers. That's always my favorite. But what was very visible was the May fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine, occupation of the McCormick Theological Seminary by the Young Lords in Chicago. This will not be the first time the Young Lords the last time that the Young Lords take over at church basically just spontaneously during one of the marshes for

their dead friend. The McCormick Theological Seminary is part of this urban renewal campaign to bulldoze everyone's houses and so people that like that, And I don't know if it's actually related, but I think it's really cute that the other main story I've talked on the show that takes

place in Chicago also centers around a McCormick. It was the McCormick factory in eighteen eighty six that gave us the strike that led to the Haymarket affair, which we talked about in our first ever episode, when immigrant anarchists faced down the Chicago police and someone huked a bomb at them and lots of bad stuff happened. But if you want to hear about nineteenth century labor organizing, go back to our very first episode and you can hear about that. It's all part of the fight for the

eight hour work day, which included bombs and guns. Anyway, back in nineteen sixty nine, when they occupied the McCormick Seminary Factory, no theological seminary instead of the McCormick Harvester Factory, a bunch of the seminary students joined in, Oh wow, yeah, Like this is a thing that comes up a bunch is that people, I don't know, people are more radical than we give them credit for, like random bystanders sometimes

you know, not always sometimes by centers. The university conceded to most of their demands, which included shit like when you rebuild, you'd better include parks and affordable housing and a daycare center and a Puerto Rican cultural center and a people's law office. Next, they went on to occupy Armitage Avenue Methodist Church, where they'd been meeting, which declined them took They basically went, We're like, hey, we meet here, can we rent space to do childcare and free food programs?

And the Methodist Church was like no, And so they're like, we can do it anyway, though, and when they did it, anyway, the minister joined them and was like yeah, no, I mean I wanted you to be able to do it, damn. And the church turned into a center for social services, including a free clinic. I just they just did so much shit. We're like, we're not even halfway. Yeah, And also just like pushing people to live by their ideals.

Like also, it's like they're pushing the church to be like this is what you guys are talking about, like helping children and people who need help. So it's also kind of like trusting. It's giving them the opportunity of

being like, so just join us and live by your ideals. Yeah, you know yeah, And I think that's what a lot of radicals did is they just went up and they're like, yoh, you want to do the thing that you say you want to do, And a ton of them were like yeah, I want to do that, and a ton of and we're like, no, I just prefer having a position of power within a structure and using it to make my life sense. And that is that's religion. It's both of

those things, you know. Yeah, yeah, okay, But for this next part, we're going to go to a different part of the country. Have you ever heard of a city called New York City. I've been there. Oh okay, okay, that's where that's where I was born. As a very unoriginal name, I'll just say. But first it was Dutch and it was New Amsterdam. Just I like doing my little weird history zoom outs on different places. It was

Dutch and it was New Amsterdam. And then the English grabbed it from the Dutch and gave it to the Duke of York, so it became New York. The state is named after the city. Then the Dutch grabbed it back and named it New Orange. Then England. No exactly, this is my theory. The English got it back, thank god, and changed it to New York. Very rarely am I excited when the English take things. But could you imagine an alternate world where New York was named New Orange.

I think New York City would not be an important place. Absolutely not, although like oranges are great, yes, but it doesn't have to say it's definitely not like a tough name. You can't be like from New Orange. You know, it doesn't have the same no they I think New Work would be the center of culture of the United States of America instead of New York Wow, because it's a nicer than New Orange. Yeah. So New York City fine place.

I actually really like New York City for as much as I'm like totally a country mouse right now, New York is fucking amazing. Yeah. If you're going to do a city, it's like you might as well go to the one. Yeah, you might as well be, like be a fucking city. Yeah, totally yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I get the advantage of cities where everyone still has single family homes crammed full of too many people and you can get nice food around the corner, but those

ones you have to drive around. Yeah. Yeah. Being a New Yorker, that definitely is not a part of my experience. I'm terrible driver. Yeah, so I'm stuck in places that I can bike around. Yeah, which is why you know when Horry for the Refraff comes to town, because the tour bus is crashed into the venue every single time you get a new tour bus every time, it's your like rock and roll thing. Instead of setting a start away. Yeah,

so New York City. The Young Lords start up in New York City too, and this crew starts with very different routes. Well, it gets presented as very different routes. But I don't want to pitch this because the Chicago branch was started by preteens looking to fight back against local white bullies and racists, and they wound up socialists and communists and shiit through that work. The New York branch got started by radical political organizers, mostly communists and socialists, okay,

who came out of the gate with that revolution stuff. Right. Most of them were college students, but they were college students from poor neighborhoods. Many of them the first of their families to go to college. Most of them were Puerto Rican, though at least one was person was black, and not Puerto Rican black, but African American black. Okay. And and is this thing where it's like people talk about like the first and their family go to college, as if it's the sort of like kind of upward

mobility American dream like liberally thing or something. But that's it's not a lala la American dream thing. And I don't know if it always is, but it certainly isn't in this case. Some of the founders of the New York Young Lords were the first wave of people integrating school systems and they grew They grew up fighting with their fists and community organization against racist abuse from fellow students, from teachers, and from police. They had to fight all

of those people. So I would argue that even though they're the college educated communists, they're not actually that different from the Chicago Lords in the end in terms of their roots. Yeah. Yeah. In nineteen sixty nine, they heard about the Young Lords through the Black Panthers. They the Black Panthers had an interview with Cha Cha in their newspaper.

In it, Chasha was saying that they were a class forward anti imperialist organization and that was something that they were in a particularly good place to understand as Puerto Ricans. Chasha said, quote, we have all kinds of people, a rainbow of people among Puerto Ricans, and that's why this

is a class struggle. So these aspiring New York Lords they take a road trip to Chicago and they met the Young Lords organization and they were like, yeah, this is what's up, Like, all right, we're gonna start the New York chapter and the Chicago chapters. Like great, I guess we're the Chicago chapter instead of just the Young Lords.

You know, whoa very exciting yeah. And their arrival in New York City was specifically really well timed because the radical scene was in trouble because of the Panther twenty one frame up, frame up. And I've talked about it like really briefly on the show, and I'm going to talk about it really briefly again because but still haven't dived into it. Twenty one Black Panthers had just been

arrested in New York City. They had been accused of bombing and sniping, of planning to bomb and snipe cop stations everyone knows as a frame up, and as a result, the police had an even worse reputation than usual in New York. Everyone was found not guilty at trial in nineteen seventy one, in the most expensive and longest trial

in New York's history to that point. Under oath that shitty infiltrators admitted that the violence had been their ideas basically, and Affini Shakur Tupac, Shakur's mother was one of the defendants. She got the undercovers to admit under oath that they had betrayed their own community. And if you want to hear more about her, I like doing my little like

connections to other episodes. In the Stonewall episode, we can hear more about her because she's one of the Stonewall rioters because the jail she was in the women's House of Detention was across the street from the Stonewall in and they all rioted in solidarity with the queers outside, and or we're all trying to escape and or were a bunch of queers themselves. Yeah wait, this is two buck small. Yeah whoa gay woman who rioted for Stonewall from inside the jail that was on the same street

as Stonewall. Damn No, I had no idea. I didn't either until I was working on the Stonewall episode and my friend Hugh Ryan has been a guest before, was like, you need to make sure to include the House of Detention in it. I was like, I had never even heard no idea that part of the rioters were prisoners, you know, speaking of people I haven't, but I guess I haven't spoken about people who are often invisibilized, but prisoners often invisiblized and struggle. So this is the backdrop

for the young lords. Because the police are on their back foot, they're just they've just been deeply embarrassed. They're not as set up to cope with this new threat. But at the same time, the Black Panthers in the New York can actually kind of across the US by this, but are really fucked right and are like not as well organized anymore because they've just taken this massive blow.

So enter the Young Lords. Some of the founding members were Black Americans, and we talked about this earlier, and you had some good say about there's been tension between black and Puerto Rican communities in New York. There was a but there's also a decades long history of solidarity, especially around instances of police murder, such as in nineteen sixty four. You have the Harlem Riots, which are remembered as the nineteen sixty four Harlem Riots, which is a

terrible name for them. Not well, okay, this is too long for a name, but it's a more descriptive name. When a white off duty cop murdered a fifteen year old black kid named James Powell, and people were justifiably

upset by this. I think it's a Before he was killed, James Powell was part of a small group of black and Puerto Rican students who were being harassed and attacked for congregating near a school, and during one fifteenth month, during one fifteen month period ending in early nineteen sixty five, the NYPDA killed nine Puerto Rican children. Wow, because the police are not an institution that is a positive force in our society, I'll just go with that. But don't worry.

White people had solidarity too with the cops. Oh god, when the mayor tried to pass a really lackluster police review board. I think after this killing, I can't remember, but four thousand signatures against a really lackluster police review board were gathered. The white conservatives went all out on this campaign in order to stop a civilian review board of the fucking police. Oh my god, because nothing ever changes.

They founded the totally legitimate grassroots organization called Citizens Committee Against Civilian Review Boards, which had a total of three hundred and seventy billboards, twenty storefronts, and thousands of people door to door canvassing. They advertised in newspapers, TV, radio, and the ads would feature like pictures of black and brown teenagers with switchblades and scared white women holy shit, yeah, it's fucked up. Yeah, And it worked at that point too.

That's like a high tech, like fucking media campaign I know at that at that time period. Honestly, like I haven't seen yeah, like yeah, like storefronts. I guess that must have been actually how you did it before there was other more media or whatever. But twenty storefronts where you could go in and I guess like organize and learn against the police being overseen by the people who

live in the city. God, Like, it wasn't even like some like a cab campaign, you know, Like no, just like we're checking in yeah, basically, yeah, yeah, exactly, Like it's like body cams. That's one of these things where it's like, yeah, I guess that's good in the abstract, but like it's not. It doesn't stop the things, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is the this is the New York that the Young Lords start in, right, the white people are

being real racist and defending the cops. The cops are being real racist and killing the Puerto Rican children and black kids. And the youngest of these founding Lords in New York was fourteen. Most of them were college age um but the fourteen year old joined as part of an arts program that helped found the New York City chapter that was like one of the groups that did it.

The founding was an arts arts group. The least cool of the founding lords was a guy named Roy Penya, and he was the least cool because he was an undercover cop. Oh right from the beginning. Wow. Their first public appearance was if you want to pick one place in New York City where you think maybe some like radicals met up. I'm curious whether this will work or not. Just one place. Yeah, I don't know, like a public library, No, I would have been a good guess. Tompkins Square Park, Oh,

my humble beginning. I know, that's often where I call. That's my early education. I think when Lynda and I met, I was sometimes sleeping in tom Square Park during the day because they hadn't found a squad to live in. Yeah, they opened it early in the morning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You literally walk around all night, or you go to a party and you hang the party all night, and then you go to Tompkins Square Park and you go to sleep in the park, and that's probably where. Yeah. Yeah,

did you say look at us now? As always said, Oh no, I said, you take a nice now, yeah, I also look at us do. So this is where the Young Lords have their first public appearance in New York on July twenty six. History. There's one thing that's cool about New York City is you can be like, oh, on the following street and you're like, oh, like a

lot of things happened there, you know. Yeah. Yeah. On July twenty six, nineteen sixty nine, there was a commemoration of the Cuban Revolution organized by a ton of New York City left us and the Young Lords. And the Young Lords showed up in purple bretz berets, breys and black fatigues. Breads would be cute, though maybe they had purple breads. And they had their banner a Cuban flag with an AK forty seven superimposed. They're not subtle at all. Their chairman is a poet who spent some time in

prison and came out a community organizer. And his name is Philip Luciano, a real gee. Yeah I've met him before. Shit really oh yeah, it was. It was pretty fucking cool. Yeah. He gave a speech in Tompkins Square Park in July twenty six, nineteen sixty nine. And this is their first appearance. Their first action came out not long after, and they called it, well, I'm not gonna tell you what they called it, because it wasn't called products and services. But

that's where we're gonna cut to you right now. It's products and services because I don't have usually just to tell everyone how the show runs. Basically, Sophie is like, do a fucking had transition? What the fuck? That's um? And here we are without Sophie lost in the wilderness, are fearless leader dud the curse that I brought upon this show. Yeah, we've been things keep happening to all of us, all of them. Anywhere I had the script,

I was like, and it's our second four partner. It's because today I had to go through and change it to be our second four partner because this is going to be the first four partner. But we've had to delay multiple times this recording because of courses that we won't talk too much about. But yeah, yeah, but yeah, speaking of cursed objects, buy some gold with reagans based

on it. That'll make you happy, healthier, younger, more attractive, clear sem Absolutely nothing says smart financial decisions, like what if we got a crypto ad. Anyway, here's some ads and Rebecca and so far I Heart Radio is kick us off. They're talking shit on all their advertisers. We'll see how long. Yeah. It's like I always worry that I'm just doing the thing where it's like by talking shit on them, I'm just like being edgy and then like making them like more appealing or whatever. I just

leaping to fucking feed my dog. Yeah. Like anyway, their first action, the Young Lords, it's not long after their appearance in nineteen sixty nine. They call it the Garbage Offensive. And this is a reference. Yeah, this is like they do a lot of really cool shit. Fuck yeah cool. It's a reference the Tet Offensive and when the Vietcong turned some shit around a year earlier in the Vietnam War. So to tie it all into like we hate America

and the Imperial government, you know. The the first thing they did, it was actually just one around fucking talk to people. They walked around East Harlem, it's their own neighborhoods, and they ask people was wrong, what was on their minds? Like, and they decided that the first thing they should do was something about all the garbage that wasn't getting picked up. There's there were mountains of garbage at the time, whole

abandoned buildings full of garbage, sidewalks full of garbage. And this is because a bunch of complicated reasons, but mostly just classism and racism. The like people didn't the garbage collectors just would ignore those neighborhoods. They didn't bother putting in enough garbage cans at the time, they didn't even use garbage bags and the garbage cans, so the whole garbage can to get picked up, and so garbage goes everywhere. And lots of reasons, but classism and racism at the

core of it. So they go to the sanitation department. They try. I love how radicals like, You're always like they just started off blowing people up, and you're like, no, they started off by They went to the sanitation department and were like, can we have some trash bags and brooms? And the Senate Sanitation department said, well, what if we give you a bunch of racial slur instead. Wow, really

throwing them a curveball. I know, can you just give us some bags and brooms so you can clean our neighborhood And they're like, no, we're gonna yell racist shit at you because we're a bunch of racists. Yeah. People, I feel like white people sometimes think that racism is more subtle than it is, you know. Yeah, So they stole a bunch of brooms from them getting called racist shit.

That's as best as I could tell either way. About thirty five young lords started literally just keeping the streets of East Harlem clean while wearing their uniforms every Sunday. But this wasn't quite the This is like worth trying, but this still wasn't quite the move. They couldn't single handedly do it. There's just thirty five of them, and

it's just sort of volunteerism. Doing that work put them in the public eye, and they put them in conversation with people who mostly assumed they were there with the government or some church. Okay, they got some cruits, but they didn't get a mass of them, and it also didn't clean the streets. It wasn't enough. So they stepped it up to doing the thing that's the epic thing. Yeah, they gathered a ton of trash. If you have any like versions of the story, I'll love to hear them

because it's, like I know about this from books. You know. They gathered yeah, yeah, fair enough, Okay, they gathered a ton of trash from empty lots, including old mattresses and couches and such, took it over to Third Avenue, which is a you know avenue that was used by the rich to move across Manhattan, and dumped it into the street. And then they did this a bunch on various thoroughfares, just over and over again. They did it daily for months.

Thank god, I didn't know that. Oh yes, we've heard like the lore as if it was like this one event, which of course it wasn't. Yeh, think about it. There is one that is the one event, but all of this happens first to build up to it, right, Okay, um, yeah, for months, they just dumped trash daily in the middle of fucking Third alf or any other avenue that like law abiding white people or whatever you use, like inconvenience as rich people. Basically, yeah, and this is a more

effective tactic than the volunteerism on almost every metric. The city was forced to deal with the garbage because it was blocking the streets that white people used. Hundreds of people started joining in, creating the kind of spaces where people get to know each other and hang out because the social fabric has been disrupted. Yeah, and the young lords would lead tempt impromptu discussions and let people air out their grievances and these like temporary autonomous zones that

were being created. Wow. And then when the cops came, they just take off their berets and take off and running and they never got caught. Plus, the other important metric with to judge actions is did you get to build barricades in the middle of the street, And the answer was yes, and it's always fun. On August seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine, they figured out how to have even more fun. What do you think is better than a barricade in the middle of a street setting the barricade

on fire? Yes, exactly. So they called for a mass action. Loads of people did this particular garbage action and then somehow it's spontaneously caught fire after some people from the neighborhood poured gas hut and lit it with a match. Damn, And the whole next day there's a six block radius of East Harlem that was barricaded and people were partying. And it's interesting too, right, because you have this, like the riots are like trashing their neighborhoods, like blah blah

blah blah blahing. Yeah, one of the things they were doing is flipping over cars. And the thing is they were flipping over all the abandoned cars because the city used to have no means in place to deal with abandoned cars, so they just would wind up in poor neighborhoods. Yeah, yeah, totally and be like, well, let the fucking poor brown people deal with it, fuck them, you know. Yeah. So they were like, all right, let's flip over all these

fucking abandoned cars that got abandoned here, you know. And so the cops declared it a riot even though it seems like a block party to me, and they sent helicopters. Meanwhile, the young Lords are giving talks about how to tie sanitation issues into larger systemic problems. They had a press release with a list of demands, which included stuff like,

put these are wild demands, these are absolute terrorists. Put trash cans on our streets and pick up the trash, and not have only white sanitation workers, and also give the sanitation workers a raise. Yeah they're cool. Yeah, and also no more of this weird ship where for a while, in order to get your trash picked up you had to bribe the workers. Oh wow, so that was their demands. May I chime in and is this when Fon Gonzalez

was the press secretary? Oh I don't know. I kind of like weirdly didn't go names on a lot of this, So please tell me, Well, Huang Gonzalez of Democracy now was I know they're they're like head of press, like was the person that spoke to the press. So I'm wondering if he was around for this action or if it was later on. You know, it's funny is because

of all the delays. I wrote this script several months ago, and I don't remember whether he's someone that someone told me about after I finished the script or if he's in here. So there's a chance because I do talk about some of the press stuff a little bit later the answers, I don't know. Yeah, he was there for like the big like famous stuff that we're going to get too as well. Yeah cool, yeah, but just incredible that they had like this organization and they were like,

all right, we have our demands. They were also like very bold but also very reasonable. Like yeah, not even reasonable and just like, oh you're being reasonable, you're not asking for the oppressive forces, like for too much stuff. It's just like this would make our lives better. And also it's bold, yeah, totally yeah, the radical demand of what if there were garbage cans on the street and then the garbage character picker like took it out? No it,

I love it. I love it. And the fact that it's a radical demand just shows us so much about what's happening, you know, the all white sanitation workers. It's actually this funny conflict, like I have a generally positive impression of unions, right, but unions are not always inherently good or often do bad things. And in this case it was the Italian American Sanitation Union, which was very racist and was like holding control over who got to

be a garbageman or sanitation worker. They didn't win most of their demands in this particular go of it, but they won nonetheless. They won in two ways. First, they showed themselves in other people that collective direct action is an incredibly effective method of accomplishing change. They got rid of a ton of trash because they fucking just got rid of it. And two they fundamentally changed how sanitation

worked in New York City. Wow. Sanitation became a hot topic issue in the mayoral race which was happening that year, and so each side was one up in the other about how they were going to get the trash pickup to be good in the city. Interesting, and the city changed how it did trash. This is when they started putting plastic bags into the trash cans, and dumping schedules were changed, mechanics were put on standby to fix trucks.

In three years, the city went from meeting seventy seven percent of its trash pickup per day to ninety seven point eight percent of the trash pickup per day. Wow, that's incredible. Direct action gets the fucking goods, Like seriously, and not to mention like what I've said before about like reaching out to older generations, like well, from what I've read about this event, a major thing was that older folks were like, we ust you because you're actually

listening to us, you know. Yeah, And it became a thing of like we we believe that you young, you know, like radical kids are actually caring about what we want as well. And I just think that's really powerful. Yeah, that is such a good point. And the fact that the first thing they did was a listening project. They were and they were like, yo, what's up. What makes your life hard? You know? Yeah? What can we do

something about? Instead of like, I feel like it's really easy as a radical to be like I care about this, so I'm going to go do this, you know, yeah, or I think this should be good for you, you know. Yeah, that's where it's real bad. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, they won, not completely. They changed the face of the city by a combination of organized and spontaneous direct action, which I think also rules right because it wasn't entirely spontaneous. They

organized that event right like you know. Um, And they also tripled or quadrupled size in a matter of weeks because they were getting shit fucking done. Damn. And what are they going to do with all those people find out next Monday? That's my cliffhanger. Exciting. Yeah, but what also people should find out about is you and what you've been working on and how people can find you. Well,

I have a band. I play music, and my band's called Hurry for the roof Raff and we will be on tour the month of May on the West Coast and in July, and you can find me on Instagram. I don't really I lurk on Twitter and and yeah, I'll be around. I just and I'm working on some new music. So that's good. Yeah. Okay, Wait, can I ask you a question about your music? Yeah? So your music has been primarily folk and then you put out

a song called Hungry Ghosts. Is that it? Oh? Yes, did a bunch of people like did all the like white hipsters get mad at you over this? None told me? Oh no, Now I feel really guilty having brought it up. Ian, please cut that entire thing out out? Okay, fine, okay, fine, No, I can take it. I can take it. Okay. Um there's a dance song that that Alinda has done. It's amazing. It's called Hungry ghost and it's this queer love music video about being kind of thirsty after a breakup. That's

the best I can tell. Or maybe that was my interpretation because of where interpretation. Yeah, all right, And and the comments on YouTube at least when the song came out, I don't know what you came out time is No, they were mad that you had moved away from folk music. Oh, this is my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing. I will say mostly I find that is older British gentleman. Yeah, so it really makes me happy. Yeah, it's like the one time I am a troll. Like I definitely don't.

I don't really find myself feeling very truly, but when it comes to that, I'm very like, yes, okay, yeah, no, I like it certainly didn't affect your like you know that was really fun. Yeah, like people were still very excited about your music. But I just had this moment. I was like, oh, is this the like Bob Dylan goes electric moment for at Absolutely no. But now I'm back.

I'm back to like the like whatever. I'm not definitely not in a mainstream music world, but I feel like the music industry has beaten me down enough that I'm like, I just want my me and my guitar are going to hit the road. I don't want all this gear that's legit. Yeah okay, but wait, what's the song about to you? I'm the for the listeners who are still listening. I mean most of my songs, like especially like kind of like songs like that. I was I don't know

what I would call like heart not heartbroken song. Well, yeah, heartbroken songs actually are about my family d m I okay, but a lot of that that song was a lot about like running away and being like um and yeah, like literally it's not even poetic. It's like I was like a ghost to my family, and I was also very hungry. Okay, okay, so yeah that is I love.

I love that breakup interpretation. Yeah no, yeah, it just seemed like a thirsty song, like like well, also the video, the video that's I think that's yeah, yeah I didn't. I didn't pull that out of nowhere. Well, if you want to hear more about the Young Lords, you all can check in next Monday and next Wednesday when we talk even more about all the amazing shit they did, because we're just getting started and I will talk to you all soon. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is

a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.