Fifty years ago, in 1969, we witnessed the Apollo moon landing. Young people gathered at Woodstock. Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton was assassinated by the police. LBGTQ activists fought back at Stonewall. The Chicago Seven were put on trial.
That same year, New York's Young Lords were founded.
In the midst of the African American liberation struggle, Vietnam War protests, and the women's liberation movement, the Young Lords emerged from Puerto Rican working class communities to demand justice, racial and gender equality, decent living conditions, and an end to the colonial status of Puerto Rico.
The Young Lords Organization began in Chicago. The New York chapter established in 1969 also formed branches in Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Newark, Boston, Puerto Rico and united with affiliates in other cities.
I’m looking back to a time when many of you who are reading were not even born, when still others may know little or nothing about the Young Lords. I sit here and think about how this group of predominantly Puerto Rican young people, many not yet old enough to vote (our average age was 17) came together to change the political landscape of not only New York City, but of other urban areas where Puerto Ricans live on the mainland. I say, predominantly Puerto Rican, since about a third of the members were African American (like me), or from other Latinx groups.
Protests are currently taking place in Puerto Rico under the banner of #RickyRenuncia, as people throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora are demanding Governor Ricardo Rosselló’s resignation while waiting for the next blow to fall with looming cutoffs of Medicaid which will doom over 900,000 people on the island. We must never forget that there are 5.5 million people here on the mainland who identify as Puerto Rican.
The history of the Young Lords and our impact has been virtually erased from public memory. Many young people—living in the neighborhoods and communities affected and changed by our resistance, are unaware that we existed. That is being changed by an extraordinary exhibit of the photography from that time in 1969 and the early ‘70s. Photographs that are not in a museum or art gallery. Photographs not in a history book. Photographs that now live on the very streets where we young people fought to change the world around us. This installation by artist Miguel Luciano of the photographs of Hiram Maristany, “Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio” brings history alive on the very streets that birthed a movement.
I normally write a fairly long piece here on Sundays. I feel like I should let the photographs do the most of the talking today. They have been featured on several websites, as well as on the project site.
Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio (May 15th-September 30th, 2019) is a public art project exploring the activist history of the Young Lords in East Harlem. The Young Lords were a revolutionary organization of young Puerto Rican activists who organized for social justice in this community during the late 1960s-1970s. They were committed to the liberation of all oppressed peoples, fighting racism and injustice with an emphasis on issues of health, food, housing and education. Inspired by the Black Panthers, they were founded in Chicago in 1968, and formed a New York chapter in East Harlem in 1969.
This project features the photography of Hiram Maristany, a lifelong resident of East Harlem who was an original member of the Young Lords in New York, and also their official photographer. Historic photographs of activist moments of the Young Lords have been enlarged and installed throughout the neighborhood (see map), at the same locations where the events took place fifty years ago. Walking tours with inter-generational audiences are taking place throughout the summer - celebrating and reclaiming the activist history of East Harlem at a time when widespread gentrification is threatening to erase it.
Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio is a public art project organized by artist Miguel Luciano, currently an artist in residence within The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Civic Practice Partnership. This project is supported by the Surdna Foundation, A Blade of Grass, and El Museo del Barrio.
Other sites:
GothamtoGo — Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio ~ Images by Hiram Maristany, Presented by Miguel Luciano
ABladeofGrass AT CAPACITY—Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio | Walking Tour
El Museo del Barrio
Some have been posted to Twitter.
Many movements are documented by professional photographers and photojournalists who are on assignment. In the case of this exhibit of the work of Hiram Maristany—he was a photographer, Young Lord, and lifelong member of the East Harlem community.
Hiram Maristany’s street photographs of New York City's El Barrio in the 1960s and early 1970s are an ode to his beloved neighborhood.
During the rest of 2019, the Young Lords of NY will be holding events across the city, in conjunction with many other groups who are continuing the struggle for the basic human rights of food, clothing, shelter, health care, justice, and self-determination for Puerto Rico.
The keynote event will be held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem.
The Schomburg is named for Arturo Schomburg—a black Puerto Rican, who I featured here last year.
Ten years ago—when the New York Young Lords celebrated our 40th anniversary—I wrote about it here on Daily Kos. I was pretty new—and it got few readers. I talked about what we did in such a short period of time.
The Lords took over Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx along with health care workers and a group of doctors, after the wrongful death of community member Carmen Rodriguez. We "liberated" a TB testing truck, parked in a rich area of the Bronx with no tuberculosis, and brought it into our community where it was needed. We tested every child in East Harlem for lead poisoning, which led to the city of NY establishing new laws about lead paint use by landlords. We established a 10-Point Health Program, which became a model for later struggles around health care which we hear reflected in today's debate
We raised the issue of women’s health and choice, before the use of the term “reproductive justice” which I wrote about here, in “Women's History Month: Sterilization and experimental testing on Puerto Rican women.” Key were these positions cited by Raquel Reichard, in “10 Ways the Young Lords Fought for Women's Rights:”
1. The Young Lords called for an end to the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women on and off the island. In 1968, a survey revealed that one-third of all Puerto Rican women, ages 20 to 49, had been sterilized, many through coercive strategies that denied them access to informed consent. Viewing this as evidence that Puerto Ricans were targets for mass genocide through population control, the Young Lords protested against the massive sterilization program.
2. Unlike other 1960s and early 1970s nationalist organizations like the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, however, the Young Lords considered abortion a woman’s choice, and they demanded safe and legal access to the procedure. In fact, the group fought fervently for hospital reforms so that poor and minority women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy could do so without risking their own lives with inadequate and dangerous services, which were standard in public facilities in communities of color.
3. The Young Lords also fought for safe and legal contraception. Though they were anti-genocide, resisting coerced sterilizations and their women being treated like Guinea pigs for birth control research, the Young Lords understood the nuances of reproductive justice and developed a reproductive rights agenda that encompassed access to voluntary birth control.
Today, there are more books about us, and our history. I am elated to report that I get calls and emails from many students across the U.S. and in other countries who are researching us.
A good starting point is the documentary film—produced by Young Lord Iris Morales:
Suggested further reading:
The first book about us was, Palante: Young Lords Party—by photographer Michael Abramson, which had gone out of print, and was republished in 2011.
We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords, by Miguel Melendez
The Young Lords: A Reader. by Darrel Enck-Wanzer. Foreword by Iris Morales and Denise Oliver-Velez
The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation, by Darrel Wanzer-Serrano
Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords, 1969-1976, Iris Morales
The Young Lords: A Radical History, by Johanna Fernández
I realize that most readers here today are not in New York or neighboring states and will not be able to see the exhibit except online. I won’t get a chance to see you at the Schomburg on July 26. I will be able to answer any questions you may have here in comments.
Till then,
¡Pa'lante Siempre Pa'lante!
