Young Lords

But anyway, we dived into it.

And one of the things we discovered there was maybe highlighting, you know, the whole conflict that they had with the police over the years, the spread of the Panther Party around the country, and even hooking up with the Young Lords.

I was thinking another one significant chapter in the book.

And of course, you know, with the murder, the assassination of Fred Hampton, you know, so all of that comes into play.

Like, they were in Black Panther mode.

And those that, you know what I'm saying, are familiar with the Black Panthers know that we had, the Puerto Ricans had their kind of very own version of the Black Panthers known as the Young Lords.

And in the Young Lords, it wasn't just Puerto Ricans.

It was also Black brothers in the Young Lords as well.

You know what I'm saying? Now, those beyond the revolutionary organizations, take it a couple years later towards the late 60s, which, you know, the Black Panthers, I believe, were founded in 1966.

I'm not sure exactly when the Young Lords were founded, somewhere around the same time, probably maybe a little after, right? um because that was constructed and and influenced by the black panther party so in the late 60s you had the street organizations throughout new york city um like the black spades the most largest and most dominant so-called black gang in the streets black spades had many puerto rican members in fact um one of the hip-hop pioneers dj um Hollywood was a Puerto Rican brother and he was the leader, the supreme president of the young spades, which was, you know, you had the black spades, you had the young spades, and then you had the baby spades who were the youngest of them all.

You know what I'm saying? So a Puerto Rican man ran the young space.

He was the Supreme President.

They had housing, all of that.

In Chicago, you know, they started the original Rainbow Coalition, which was Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party, and the Young Lords and the Young Patriots, which brought together the, you know, the Black people and Puerto Ricans and poor white people.

All of the revolutionary struggle, they all recognized how Palestine was connected.

Nelson Mandela talked about South African apartheid and how Palestinians, there was that connection there, right? And the fact that most people don't know about it, even people in progressive movements-

It's called Live Forever.

This song, Pa'lante, was featured in the short New York Times documentary, Takeover, about the Young Lords who took over Lincoln Hospital in 1970.

Pa'lante means onwards, or as Juan says, right on.

[applause] [guitar music]

And I think a starting point is to have activists and organizers who are rooted in the communities they're working to protect.

I write in the book about the Young Lords Party, a group of Puerto Rican activists in New York in the late 60s and early 70s.

And many of them had grown up in New York City, Puerto Rican neighborhoods.

And they understood the problem of housing that contributed to lead poisoning, the problem of going to the hospital and there being no empty beds and people having to wait in the emergency room for hours and hours and hours in order to get care, the problem of doctors not being able to either communicate in Spanish or to be able to understand the Puerto Rican culture to offer culturally appropriate care.

The old Lincoln was called the Butcher House of the Bronx.

And the New Lincoln was a modern hospital.

The Young Lords insisted that they hire Puerto Rican doctors who could understand the culture and communicate with patients.

And they also developed community-informed programs around substance abuse, around mental health that were actually accessible to the community.

And it gave

birth to other movements as well, like the Young Lords and everything else.

So it inspired the Panther Party.

We had the Young Lords out here, and it really didn't.

Rest in peace to Fred Hampton and the others.

Their impact was very influential.

The Bronx during this period was ridden with gang activity.

And there was a particular gang war that was happening in the Bronx between the Black Spades, which was a black gang in the Bronx, and the Young Lords, which was a Puerto Rican gang.

And it was not just a place of urban abandonment, and de-industrialization on the part of greater New York City.

But it was also a place of incredible violence and poverty.

And Afrika Baabata had the idea to take some of those combative energies that were pervading the Bronx and try to reroute them towards artistic ends.

And so he started the Zulu Nation as a way to create peace between the Young Lords and the Black Spades and to start creating hip hop battles right, freestyle cyphers, break dancing battles as a way to again channel those violent energies in a different direction into like artistic combat as opposed to like violent combat.

And it was a really successful organization.

As you can see here, he's wearing an African medallion.

And, you know, it strikes me, you know, in 79, they take over the abandoned school building to start the Boyoke Community Center.

But maybe a precursor to that historically is the Young Lords in the Bronx taking over Lincoln Hospital.

Basically... demanding standard of care, alleging that the care being offered to poor, marginalized communities in the neighborhood was not acceptable.

And, you know, Herman, you were saying that Chino would have known and, you know, communicated, maybe shared culturally with a lot of that movement, you know, uptown and in the Bronx.

Anything else you want to say about how those echoes of history between, for example, the Young Lords and then the Charas Buyo Community Center?

Well, like I said, I met Chino and stuff on 116th Street and Lexington Avenue.

So I guarantee that Chino was familiar with all those because we were introduced to some of the young lords later years before they disbanded at El Bojillo.

And El Bojillo encompasses, we never ask what your politics were, what your feeling was, this stuff.