Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to well, actually Sophie's not here, so
Speaker 1: we can name it whatever we want. Welcome to Sophie Town,
Speaker 1: the only podcast where all of us are named Sophie
Speaker 1: and pretend like we live in a town called Sophie
Speaker 1: Town where only good things happen. No, yeah, that's true. Yeah, Sophie,
Speaker 1: you've done a really good I like what you've done
Speaker 1: with the place. And our audio editor is Sophie. Or
Speaker 1: this is cool. People did cool stuff which you probably
Speaker 1: knew because this is a part two of a series
Speaker 1: for which I'll be host Margaret Sophie Killjoy and with
Speaker 1: me today is my guest, a Linda Sophie Sagata, the
Speaker 1: one and only. Yeah, are you doing a Linda on
Speaker 1: this day? That's totally a different day than last day. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm doing good. I had a snack a sleek bar,
Speaker 1: so I'm feeling great. I'm here in New Orleans. You
Speaker 1: know New Orleans also known as Sophie Town, right and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: doing good? Yeah, excited to talk about one of my
Speaker 1: favorite topics. Hell, yeah, Sophie, I mean the young Lord. Yea.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Ian Sophie Or. Theme music was written
Speaker 1: for us by young woman, and I'm going to drop
Speaker 1: that bit now. This is part two of our extra
Speaker 1: cool four part on the Young Lords, only the second
Speaker 1: topic to end up four part and where we last
Speaker 1: left our heroes. You've got this guy named Cha Cha
Speaker 1: who's just been politicized in jail and then he gets
Speaker 1: out and he's the leader of a gang called the
Speaker 1: Young Lords. So he puts two to two together and
Speaker 1: decides to get some shit done. First, he tries to
Speaker 1: get shit done the normal way. He doesn't. He doesn't
Speaker 1: immediately be like, hey, the Young Lords, now we're radical socialists.
Speaker 1: He forms an activist group. He forms an activist group
Speaker 1: called the Puerto Rican Progressive Movement. Oh wow, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get off the ground. He's like, this doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: No one's like really, says he go, joid, I think
Speaker 1: this is an important lesson. No one's excited to go
Speaker 1: join the like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: thing that. And then think's like, do you want to
Speaker 1: be a become a Young Lord, And people are like absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally yeah, Like our background is crime and our future
Speaker 1: is the overthrow of capitalism. Yeah yeah, you were like,
Speaker 1: sign me up. Yeah, So yeah, he's like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a gang leader and I need a bunch of
Speaker 1: people to try and get some stuff done, and we
Speaker 1: exist to defend ourselves from white racists. So fuck it,
Speaker 1: and I will say best as I can tell. Most
Speaker 1: of the history center on him a little bit too much.
Speaker 1: He is really great, he's cool, but in all of us,
Speaker 1: he's not alone. A few of the other Young Lords
Speaker 1: are with him from the start of all this change
Speaker 1: and like are part of all the radicalization and are
Speaker 1: largely left out of the histories because people kind of
Speaker 1: they pick a guy right to I, and he seems
Speaker 1: like a great guy to have picked. I got no.
Speaker 1: You know, there's always worth pointing out. The first thing
Speaker 1: that they did as the new well, they didn't change
Speaker 1: their name yet. Eventually they're the Young Lords organization. But
Speaker 1: twenty of them show up to a meeting. There's a
Speaker 1: neighborhood meeting where a bunch of people are talking about
Speaker 1: gentrifying the neighborhood and like literally bulldozing huge trunks of it.
Speaker 1: So the Young Lords are very polite and calm, they said,
Speaker 1: politely through the whole thing, and then they point out
Speaker 1: the lack of Puerto Rican representation in the group making
Speaker 1: these decisions. And then they trashed the place after sitting
Speaker 1: very politely. Yeah, they like threw chairs around. I feel
Speaker 1: like it just like emphasizes the sort of intimidation factor
Speaker 1: if they're like, oh m interesting, yes, and then smash
Speaker 1: it up. Then they went home and they studied. They
Speaker 1: just like sat down and fucking read and they talked
Speaker 1: to people, and they studied leftist movements and they did
Speaker 1: their homework. And in the end they were like, right,
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party, that's our model. And I think that
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party, who again I haven't even done
Speaker 1: episode on yet, but they're like in the center of
Speaker 1: almost everything we're talking about. So many groups exist because
Speaker 1: of them. Right, And so the Young Lords they put
Speaker 1: together a ten point program. And if cha cha had
Speaker 1: been a target for harassment from cops before when he was,
Speaker 1: you know, a gang leader with a long record, he
Speaker 1: has twice as much of one. Now he gets stopped
Speaker 1: and arrested like twice a week. Oh Jesus. Everywhere the
Speaker 1: Young Lords go, the cops are there usually like already,
Speaker 1: I think, and this is really telling anti gang enforcement
Speaker 1: in the city of Chicago, including a new intelligence unit
Speaker 1: started because gangs went political. It was fine when you
Speaker 1: had raised his gangs of Irish and German youth, and
Speaker 1: then it was like they actually literally all just get
Speaker 1: city jobs. And then it was like fine ish when
Speaker 1: you have the newer non white gangs who just do cry.
Speaker 1: But once they go political, then we can arrest you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you can all fight each other and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you're staying as a fighting each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now when they're politicized, they're fucking scared. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: oppression doesn't stop them. They went some of the things
Speaker 1: that they did in their early days. They defended welfare activists,
Speaker 1: mothers who did a sit in to demand their back payments,
Speaker 1: like because they weren't getting paid, and so they went
Speaker 1: into security for them. They formally integrated. There was always
Speaker 1: apparently a not I don't know always, but there was
Speaker 1: a women's auxiliary to the young lords called the lordets.
Speaker 1: And the women's role in this movement is going to
Speaker 1: increase over time, and we'll talk about that um and
Speaker 1: when yeah, yeah, and I and going political as a
Speaker 1: huge part of it, right, So they formally integrate the
Speaker 1: women's auxiliary into the main group, and then everyone, I believe,
Speaker 1: including the men, start starts working on offering childcare to
Speaker 1: their community. They also get together with a black gang
Speaker 1: to fundraise through community picnics, teach people about drug safety,
Speaker 1: They get toys for Christmas for kids, and like food
Speaker 1: for people's tables, and they're doing mutual aid and they're
Speaker 1: doing community defense and they're just like doing the ship
Speaker 1: that makes sixties groups so fucking cool. And meanwhile the
Speaker 1: city is like, we have to destroy this violent gang. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: who are giving Christmas presents two children? Yeah? When they
Speaker 1: were stabbing people in the beach, the cops were like, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, there was a there was a community
Speaker 1: council meeting at a police station about what to do
Speaker 1: with the young lords or whatever. And so three to
Speaker 1: five hundred people, many in purple berets, showed up to
Speaker 1: this community council meeting and then they disrupted it. They
Speaker 1: hung up signs on the walls with slogans like city
Speaker 1: law does not allow pig on the street and pigs
Speaker 1: need support centers to keep them off the street. They
Speaker 1: started pushing for what gets called or what they called
Speaker 1: Third World unity, welcoming in black and white members as
Speaker 1: well if they were working class. So working class people
Speaker 1: of all races were allowed to join the Young Lords.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, they Yeah, it's interesting. And when we talk
Speaker 1: the New York one will have even more information, or
Speaker 1: I have even more information about the multiracial makeup of
Speaker 1: the Young Lords. They threw a conference on the matter
Speaker 1: with Chicago Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton as the keynote
Speaker 1: speaker for this third world unity concept and trying to
Speaker 1: get everyone together. And then they joined up with this group.
Speaker 1: If you ever I hadn't Have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: a group called the Young Patriots? No, all right, imagine, okay,
Speaker 1: well first I'm gonna say, okay, so they form the
Speaker 1: Rainbow Coalition. That's what they because there's all the different
Speaker 1: you know, colors of people or whatever. And one of
Speaker 1: the groups is the Young Patriots, who are a leftist
Speaker 1: socialist street gang in Chicago who are white Appalachians who
Speaker 1: use the Confederate battle flag as the flag of their
Speaker 1: socialist movement. Anyway, can see Elenda's eyes are like staring,
Speaker 1: just like, wait, my brain is bending, and I'm not
Speaker 1: like laughing at them. I'm laughing at how incredibly this
Speaker 1: doesn't translate to modern politics. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Also I'm just like I was first even like, whoa
Speaker 1: Appalachian folks in Chicago, Like that was interesting to me. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's actually the thing is that they were facing.
Speaker 1: It's not ethnic oppression, right, but they're facing a specific
Speaker 1: class oppression that is based on where they're from, right,
Speaker 1: because they're not just poor white people, but they're poor
Speaker 1: white Appalachians and it's a different type of classism that
Speaker 1: still exists to this day, right, Like, um, and so
Speaker 1: they get called Hillbillies. They're poorest. Fuck, they're iced out
Speaker 1: of proper white society, and so they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: fuck you Yankee, piece of shit. Wasps were doing our
Speaker 1: own thing or whatever. And they work to start interracial
Speaker 1: working class organizations to get medical care to children and
Speaker 1: to end the draft. They tied in their struggle with
Speaker 1: poor oppressed people everywhere as part of the uprisings around
Speaker 1: the world. Their party platform specifically spoke out against cultural nationalism,
Speaker 1: which makes sense, right because they're white people, right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of just I can't do a nationalism if
Speaker 1: you're white, right, in any given context, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're Ireland trying to decolonize as complicated, but that's like
Speaker 1: literally an Ireland, not some fucking Irish racist gang in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, they're just like doing all of the
Speaker 1: right stuff. They they first met the Panthers when they
Speaker 1: and the Panthers accidentally double booked a church in Lincoln
Speaker 1: Park to do a talk. That's really that's like a
Speaker 1: cute meetings, you know, And so then they just talked
Speaker 1: about their mutual class interests and anti war interests, right,
Speaker 1: because this is another thing that's like part of all
Speaker 1: of us too. You have the Vietnam War going on
Speaker 1: and or in all of us. I was just thinking that,
Speaker 1: like we have the draft going on. My father actually
Speaker 1: went to Vietnam, so that was like a huge part
Speaker 1: of my growing up was learning. I was just learning
Speaker 1: through his eyes and like his experience as a marine,
Speaker 1: Aquerriican marine in Vietnam when he was super young, and
Speaker 1: it just like radicalized him. Yeah so much when he
Speaker 1: was able to make it home, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was young, Like my father was very clear
Speaker 1: with me, you know, elementary school age, just like they
Speaker 1: put people of color, they put black people and Porto
Speaker 1: Ricans on the front lines because they expected us to
Speaker 1: die and we were totally disposable. Just like That's what
Speaker 1: I was raised with, you know, was from that perspective.
Speaker 1: When I say that rules, I mean that rules that
Speaker 1: your dad knew that and passed that along, not that
Speaker 1: it rules that they did that. Yeah, he was a
Speaker 1: total dadass. But that is like such a big part
Speaker 1: of like the background of this story that is hard
Speaker 1: for me to remember. I like forget, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: at the same time, you guys were being fucking drafted. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. There's so many different things that are happening
Speaker 1: in the late sixties, yeah, that it's hard to keep
Speaker 1: them all in your head at once and hard to
Speaker 1: realize that they're all absolutely part of each other. Right,
Speaker 1: And like you have the young Patriots with their Confederate
Speaker 1: battle flag, which it only makes sense as a like
Speaker 1: fuck you to Northerners, right, I mean it does not.
Speaker 1: I am not advocating that anyone call themselves patriots or
Speaker 1: fly Yeah the American either the North or the South
Speaker 1: flag not a good idea, but like yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: and so they they meet up, right and they're talking
Speaker 1: about anti warship with the Panthers, and from then on,
Speaker 1: while they continue to fight for white working class, the
Speaker 1: white working class, they almost never appear in public to
Speaker 1: speak without Panthers or Young Lords around to support them
Speaker 1: and to show interracial solidarity. And I suspect that this
Speaker 1: was like specifically a move if you're a white organizer
Speaker 1: to be like, it's a little bit weird because it's
Speaker 1: a little bit tokenizing, but it's also a way of
Speaker 1: being like, you need to know we are not organizing
Speaker 1: white people in contrast and against people of color, you know,
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let's see some of
Speaker 1: the shit they did by nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna skip ahead for them just because I'm doing
Speaker 1: a little side on the Young Patriots. They're taking pages
Speaker 1: out of the Panther playbook. They organized free breakfast programs,
Speaker 1: they ran medical clinics, they organized clothing drives, they cop watched,
Speaker 1: and one of the main things that they did that
Speaker 1: they got remembered for is they took patient advocacy. And
Speaker 1: this is gonna time to Young Lords later too. They
Speaker 1: took patient advocacy seriously, people who had to go to
Speaker 1: the doctor in the communities at this like street gang
Speaker 1: of socialists, like we're taking care of They would get
Speaker 1: a Patriot at their door to advocate for them and
Speaker 1: to come with them to their appointments and shit, whoa
Speaker 1: yeah incredible. Yeah, you're like trying to be a shitty
Speaker 1: classist doctor. And there's this like angry hillbilly is just
Speaker 1: like yeah, socialists just like you're gonna you're gonna treat
Speaker 1: them right. Yeah. Wow, especially for like older folks are
Speaker 1: just like I mean, that's something I always I always
Speaker 1: knew about like the Young Lords at least was this
Speaker 1: like yeah, like very much connection with like older generation,
Speaker 1: you know, totally. And a lot of medical work that
Speaker 1: is like a huge things particularly in New York, are
Speaker 1: going to do. We're gonna be talking about mostly next week. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They ran a medical clinic, the Young Patriots. They ran
Speaker 1: a medical clinic. This ends up the most famous of
Speaker 1: all their activities. It started off serving one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty people at dental and medical care. Cops fucked with
Speaker 1: it constantly. They arrested Patriots for trespassing on their own property. Like.
Speaker 1: They fought it all in court. It took forever. Eventually
Speaker 1: they won and their clinic was back open and it
Speaker 1: served two thousand people for years, four years. It kept
Speaker 1: it up until nineteen seventy three. The Feds fucked with them, basically,
Speaker 1: and it also fucked with all of the churches that
Speaker 1: supported both them and the Young Lords, and the whole
Speaker 1: thing fell apart because of federal oppression. And anyone who's
Speaker 1: curious can listen to probably last week by the time
Speaker 1: you'all are listening to this episode about the religious radicals
Speaker 1: and the movement of pacifists that brought down Cointelpro, or
Speaker 1: at least revealed it. Yeah, they're cool. There was a
Speaker 1: I went to the Bronx Museum years ago when I
Speaker 1: was first learning about the Young Lords because there was
Speaker 1: a big exhibit about them, and one wall was just
Speaker 1: printed out papers of like Cointeal Pro find things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes out all of them and just like phone recordings,
Speaker 1: just like spying on people, just like covered an entire wall,
Speaker 1: which is like a whole other like we're talking about.
Speaker 1: The draft is a big part of the background of this.
Speaker 1: It's like constant infiltration, constant more than just infiltration and monitoring,
Speaker 1: constant fucking with right, you know. Yeah, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Young Lords. Sorry, that's the Young Patriots, and
Speaker 1: that's the Rainbow Coalition. Yeah, the Young Lords, the Black Panthers,
Speaker 1: the Young Patriots. And then there's another whitish group called
Speaker 1: Rising Up Angry, who are some of the more radical
Speaker 1: trunks of the Students for Democratic Society, who are mostly
Speaker 1: working class greasers from union families. Cool, I know, like
Speaker 1: I want them to show up on scooters or so
Speaker 1: at any I don't know shit about racers. They look
Speaker 1: cool and I'm not. And it's funny because I'm not. Again,
Speaker 1: I haven't like Covered Black Panthers deeply, but for anyone
Speaker 1: who doesn't have a basic understanding, they're a black power
Speaker 1: organization that I'm certain we'll talk about more or later.
Speaker 1: They scared the ever living fuck out of the US government.
Speaker 1: They were violently repressed through direct application of force and
Speaker 1: through co intel. Pro Black Panthers were into black power,
Speaker 1: by which I mean a declaration of self determination for
Speaker 1: black people, and it included such ideas as to quote
Speaker 1: quote from this book The Young Lords by Johanna Fernandez,
Speaker 1: which is the main source, the best book that I'm
Speaker 1: able to find about the Young Lords, she says that
Speaker 1: black Panther. Black power is quote, the right to arm
Speaker 1: self defense against white racist violence, black pride, and the
Speaker 1: development of independent black political leadership free from pressures to
Speaker 1: accommodate the interests of northern white liberals. That's the Rainbow Coalition.
Speaker 1: Let's talk more about the Lords. By nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the Young Lords had their own newspaper which covered all
Speaker 1: the protests they were up to. It talked about imperialism,
Speaker 1: it talked about what connected, It connected everything to what
Speaker 1: was happening in Puerto Rico to what was happening in
Speaker 1: Vietnam and Africa, and had kind of an unoriginal name
Speaker 1: was called y l O or Young Lord's Organization. It's
Speaker 1: still the point, you know. Yeah, I bet it had
Speaker 1: great graphic design, I think so. I know the New
Speaker 1: York one. Did I know more about the New York one,
Speaker 1: which is named after one of your songs, But we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that later. Oh yeah. The paper covered a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff, including what was going on and their
Speaker 1: sisters struggles like the Panthers. It had a Pig of
Speaker 1: the Month feature covering a local coup. Incredible. Um, I
Speaker 1: can't figure out why the cops get sucking with him?
Speaker 1: But you know whatever, Wow, And they were all organizing,
Speaker 1: and there were other organizations they were buds with, like LADDO,
Speaker 1: the Latin American Defense Organization, and so they provided security
Speaker 1: for for LADDO. It didn't they didn't just like perfectly
Speaker 1: overnight stop being they're doing usual gang shit. It took
Speaker 1: a while, but their connections in the gang world were
Speaker 1: really useful to them. One of their own was killed
Speaker 1: by a cop at a birthday party. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the details, but he like like walks out on the
Speaker 1: walks out of the house and cops murder him. Right.
Speaker 1: The cop was acquitted. This is going to be shocking
Speaker 1: to anyone living in twenty twenty three. A cop got
Speaker 1: away with murdering someone. Um, because so much has changed since.
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's depressing sarcasm. The cop was acquitted. There's
Speaker 1: a march of thousands, including members of a ton of
Speaker 1: other gangs with names like the Cannibals and the hell Stumpers,
Speaker 1: and this gang that was Irish, Black and Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: called the Almighty Harrison Gentz. Who I believe we're still around?
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah? And I can't like again, I'm not like,
Speaker 1: I try doing more research about the almighty Harrison Jensen.
Speaker 1: It's like I don't have enough context to make useful
Speaker 1: declarations about what gangs are up to. I'm not trying to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Young Lords are an example of gangs do good
Speaker 1: many times, you know, but power power structures are complicated,
Speaker 1: you know. And this gang unity at this march scared
Speaker 1: the ever loving piss out of the cops. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is like where the Warriors comes from, right,
Speaker 1: but like, oh it's true, but the whole like there's
Speaker 1: more of us than there are cops, can you dig it?
Speaker 1: Thing like this is what fucking scares like when the
Speaker 1: working class realizes that they not only do we have
Speaker 1: the numbers, but we even literally already sometimes have the organizations,
Speaker 1: the fighting spirit if it could be pointed in the
Speaker 1: right direction. Yeah, as united it didn't last, But what
Speaker 1: does last is the cuteness of baby elephants bathing themselves
Speaker 1: our sponsor, our sponsor. Yeah, and anything that you hear
Speaker 1: during this ad break that isn't about baby elephants was
Speaker 1: a mistake and you should write to complain to Sophie
Speaker 1: on Twitter because she loves to hear about how the
Speaker 1: ads suck and you should tell her, or you can
Speaker 1: just press the forward fifteen seconds button a couple of times.
Speaker 1: It's up to you your choice. Here's some ads, so
Speaker 1: we're back. I, for one, particularly enjoyed the one where
Speaker 1: it was four baby elephants and they were bathing each other.
Speaker 1: That was the best of the ads that I what
Speaker 1: was your favorite of the ads that we just listened
Speaker 1: to that we're all about baby elephants. You know, I
Speaker 1: always love when a mom walks in and starts teaching
Speaker 1: the ways of elephant nature. That's like one of things
Speaker 1: surefire way to make me cry. Yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: may have been the best of the ads that you
Speaker 1: all just listened to. Yeah, yeah, maybe really. I hope
Speaker 1: that some day we can just have well, I guess
Speaker 1: it's not a visual medium, all right, so young I
Speaker 1: was so stoked that wasn't a visual medium. By the way,
Speaker 1: anything to not be perceived, Yeah, I understand. Trans Day
Speaker 1: of Visibility was the other day. I used a picture
Speaker 1: from two years ago because I was like, I'm not
Speaker 1: fucking brushing my hair this like, God, makeup that you
Speaker 1: mother Parker. Absolutely, Yeah, trans day of talking to a microphone,
Speaker 1: Queer Day of Yeah, microphones are great hiding be observed
Speaker 1: by non strangers. That's always my favorite. But what was
Speaker 1: very visible was the May fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine, occupation
Speaker 1: of the McCormick Theological Seminary by the Young Lords in Chicago.
Speaker 1: This will not be the first time the Young Lords
Speaker 1: the last time that the Young Lords take over at
Speaker 1: church basically just spontaneously during one of the marshes for
Speaker 1: their dead friend. The McCormick Theological Seminary is part of
Speaker 1: this urban renewal campaign to bulldoze everyone's houses and so
Speaker 1: people that like that, And I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: actually related, but I think it's really cute that the
Speaker 1: other main story I've talked on the show that takes
Speaker 1: place in Chicago also centers around a McCormick. It was
Speaker 1: the McCormick factory in eighteen eighty six that gave us
Speaker 1: the strike that led to the Haymarket affair, which we
Speaker 1: talked about in our first ever episode, when immigrant anarchists
Speaker 1: faced down the Chicago police and someone huked a bomb
Speaker 1: at them and lots of bad stuff happened. But if
Speaker 1: you want to hear about nineteenth century labor organizing, go
Speaker 1: back to our very first episode and you can hear
Speaker 1: about that. It's all part of the fight for the
Speaker 1: eight hour work day, which included bombs and guns. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty nine, when they occupied the McCormick
Speaker 1: Seminary Factory, no theological seminary instead of the McCormick Harvester Factory,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the seminary students joined in, Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like this is a thing that comes up a bunch
Speaker 1: is that people, I don't know, people are more radical
Speaker 1: than we give them credit for, like random bystanders sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, not always sometimes by centers. The university conceded
Speaker 1: to most of their demands, which included shit like when
Speaker 1: you rebuild, you'd better include parks and affordable housing and
Speaker 1: a daycare center and a Puerto Rican cultural center and
Speaker 1: a people's law office. Next, they went on to occupy
Speaker 1: Armitage Avenue Methodist Church, where they'd been meeting, which declined
Speaker 1: them took They basically went, We're like, hey, we meet here,
Speaker 1: can we rent space to do childcare and free food programs?
Speaker 1: And the Methodist Church was like no, And so they're like,
Speaker 1: we can do it anyway, though, and when they did it, anyway,
Speaker 1: the minister joined them and was like yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: mean I wanted you to be able to do it, damn.
Speaker 1: And the church turned into a center for social services,
Speaker 1: including a free clinic. I just they just did so
Speaker 1: much shit. We're like, we're not even halfway. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: also just like pushing people to live by their ideals.
Speaker 1: Like also, it's like they're pushing the church to be
Speaker 1: like this is what you guys are talking about, like
Speaker 1: helping children and people who need help. So it's also
Speaker 1: kind of like trusting. It's giving them the opportunity of
Speaker 1: being like, so just join us and live by your ideals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know yeah, And I think that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of radicals did is they just went up and they're like, yoh,
Speaker 1: you want to do the thing that you say you
Speaker 1: want to do, And a ton of them were like yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to do that, and a ton of and
Speaker 1: we're like, no, I just prefer having a position of
Speaker 1: power within a structure and using it to make my
Speaker 1: life sense. And that is that's religion. It's both of
Speaker 1: those things, you know. Yeah, yeah, okay, But for this
Speaker 1: next part, we're going to go to a different part
Speaker 1: of the country. Have you ever heard of a city
Speaker 1: called New York City. I've been there. Oh okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that's where that's where I was born. As a very
Speaker 1: unoriginal name, I'll just say. But first it was Dutch
Speaker 1: and it was New Amsterdam. Just I like doing my
Speaker 1: little weird history zoom outs on different places. It was
Speaker 1: Dutch and it was New Amsterdam. And then the English
Speaker 1: grabbed it from the Dutch and gave it to the
Speaker 1: Duke of York, so it became New York. The state
Speaker 1: is named after the city. Then the Dutch grabbed it
Speaker 1: back and named it New Orange. Then England. No exactly,
Speaker 1: this is my theory. The English got it back, thank god,
Speaker 1: and changed it to New York. Very rarely am I
Speaker 1: excited when the English take things. But could you imagine
Speaker 1: an alternate world where New York was named New Orange.
Speaker 1: I think New York City would not be an important place.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, although like oranges are great, yes, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to say it's definitely not like a tough name.
Speaker 1: You can't be like from New Orange. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same no they I think New Work
Speaker 1: would be the center of culture of the United States
Speaker 1: of America instead of New York Wow, because it's a
Speaker 1: nicer than New Orange. Yeah. So New York City fine place.
Speaker 1: I actually really like New York City for as much
Speaker 1: as I'm like totally a country mouse right now, New
Speaker 1: York is fucking amazing. Yeah. If you're going to do
Speaker 1: a city, it's like you might as well go to
Speaker 1: the one. Yeah, you might as well be, like be
Speaker 1: a fucking city. Yeah, totally yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I get the advantage of cities where everyone still has
Speaker 1: single family homes crammed full of too many people and
Speaker 1: you can get nice food around the corner, but those
Speaker 1: ones you have to drive around. Yeah. Yeah. Being a
Speaker 1: New Yorker, that definitely is not a part of my experience.
Speaker 1: I'm terrible driver. Yeah, so I'm stuck in places that
Speaker 1: I can bike around. Yeah, which is why you know
Speaker 1: when Horry for the Refraff comes to town, because the
Speaker 1: tour bus is crashed into the venue every single time
Speaker 1: you get a new tour bus every time, it's your
Speaker 1: like rock and roll thing. Instead of setting a start away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so New York City. The Young Lords start up in
Speaker 1: New York City too, and this crew starts with very
Speaker 1: different routes. Well, it gets presented as very different routes.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to pitch this because the Chicago
Speaker 1: branch was started by preteens looking to fight back against
Speaker 1: local white bullies and racists, and they wound up socialists
Speaker 1: and communists and shiit through that work. The New York
Speaker 1: branch got started by radical political organizers, mostly communists and socialists, okay,
Speaker 1: who came out of the gate with that revolution stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: Most of them were college students, but they were college
Speaker 1: students from poor neighborhoods. Many of them the first of
Speaker 1: their families to go to college. Most of them were
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican, though at least one was person was black,
Speaker 1: and not Puerto Rican black, but African American black. Okay.
Speaker 1: And and is this thing where it's like people talk
Speaker 1: about like the first and their family go to college,
Speaker 1: as if it's the sort of like kind of upward
Speaker 1: mobility American dream like liberally thing or something. But that's
Speaker 1: it's not a lala la American dream thing. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if it always is, but it certainly isn't
Speaker 1: in this case. Some of the founders of the New
Speaker 1: York Young Lords were the first wave of people integrating
Speaker 1: school systems and they grew They grew up fighting with
Speaker 1: their fists and community organization against racist abuse from fellow students,
Speaker 1: from teachers, and from police. They had to fight all
Speaker 1: of those people. So I would argue that even though
Speaker 1: they're the college educated communists, they're not actually that different
Speaker 1: from the Chicago Lords in the end in terms of
Speaker 1: their roots. Yeah. Yeah. In nineteen sixty nine, they heard
Speaker 1: about the Young Lords through the Black Panthers. They the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers had an interview with Cha Cha in their newspaper.
Speaker 1: In it, Chasha was saying that they were a class
Speaker 1: forward anti imperialist organization and that was something that they
Speaker 1: were in a particularly good place to understand as Puerto Ricans.
Speaker 1: Chasha said, quote, we have all kinds of people, a
Speaker 1: rainbow of people among Puerto Ricans, and that's why this
Speaker 1: is a class struggle. So these aspiring New York Lords
Speaker 1: they take a road trip to Chicago and they met
Speaker 1: the Young Lords organization and they were like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what's up, Like, all right, we're gonna start the
Speaker 1: New York chapter and the Chicago chapters. Like great, I
Speaker 1: guess we're the Chicago chapter instead of just the Young Lords.
Speaker 1: You know, whoa very exciting yeah. And their arrival in
Speaker 1: New York City was specifically really well timed because the
Speaker 1: radical scene was in trouble because of the Panther twenty
Speaker 1: one frame up, frame up. And I've talked about it
Speaker 1: like really briefly on the show, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about it really briefly again because but still haven't
Speaker 1: dived into it. Twenty one Black Panthers had just been
Speaker 1: arrested in New York City. They had been accused of
Speaker 1: bombing and sniping, of planning to bomb and snipe cop
Speaker 1: stations everyone knows as a frame up, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the police had an even worse reputation than usual in
Speaker 1: New York. Everyone was found not guilty at trial in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, in the most expensive and longest trial
Speaker 1: in New York's history to that point. Under oath that
Speaker 1: shitty infiltrators admitted that the violence had been their ideas basically,
Speaker 1: and Affini Shakur Tupac, Shakur's mother was one of the defendants.
Speaker 1: She got the undercovers to admit under oath that they
Speaker 1: had betrayed their own community. And if you want to
Speaker 1: hear more about her, I like doing my little like
Speaker 1: connections to other episodes. In the Stonewall episode, we can
Speaker 1: hear more about her because she's one of the Stonewall
Speaker 1: rioters because the jail she was in the women's House
Speaker 1: of Detention was across the street from the Stonewall in
Speaker 1: and they all rioted in solidarity with the queers outside,
Speaker 1: and or we're all trying to escape and or were
Speaker 1: a bunch of queers themselves. Yeah wait, this is two
Speaker 1: buck small. Yeah whoa gay woman who rioted for Stonewall
Speaker 1: from inside the jail that was on the same street
Speaker 1: as Stonewall. Damn No, I had no idea. I didn't
Speaker 1: either until I was working on the Stonewall episode and
Speaker 1: my friend Hugh Ryan has been a guest before, was like,
Speaker 1: you need to make sure to include the House of
Speaker 1: Detention in it. I was like, I had never even
Speaker 1: heard no idea that part of the rioters were prisoners,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of people I haven't, but I guess
Speaker 1: I haven't spoken about people who are often invisibilized, but
Speaker 1: prisoners often invisiblized and struggle. So this is the backdrop
Speaker 1: for the young lords. Because the police are on their
Speaker 1: back foot, they're just they've just been deeply embarrassed. They're
Speaker 1: not as set up to cope with this new threat.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the Black Panthers in the
Speaker 1: New York can actually kind of across the US by this,
Speaker 1: but are really fucked right and are like not as
Speaker 1: well organized anymore because they've just taken this massive blow.
Speaker 1: So enter the Young Lords. Some of the founding members
Speaker 1: were Black Americans, and we talked about this earlier, and
Speaker 1: you had some good say about there's been tension between
Speaker 1: black and Puerto Rican communities in New York. There was
Speaker 1: a but there's also a decades long history of solidarity,
Speaker 1: especially around instances of police murder, such as in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. You have the Harlem Riots, which are remembered
Speaker 1: as the nineteen sixty four Harlem Riots, which is a
Speaker 1: terrible name for them. Not well, okay, this is too
Speaker 1: long for a name, but it's a more descriptive name.
Speaker 1: When a white off duty cop murdered a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old black kid named James Powell, and people were justifiably
Speaker 1: upset by this. I think it's a Before he was killed,
Speaker 1: James Powell was part of a small group of black
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rican students who were being harassed and attacked
Speaker 1: for congregating near a school, and during one fifteenth month,
Speaker 1: during one fifteen month period ending in early nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: the NYPDA killed nine Puerto Rican children. Wow, because the
Speaker 1: police are not an institution that is a positive force
Speaker 1: in our society, I'll just go with that. But don't worry.
Speaker 1: White people had solidarity too with the cops. Oh god,
Speaker 1: when the mayor tried to pass a really lackluster police
Speaker 1: review board. I think after this killing, I can't remember,
Speaker 1: but four thousand signatures against a really lackluster police review
Speaker 1: board were gathered. The white conservatives went all out on
Speaker 1: this campaign in order to stop a civilian review board
Speaker 1: of the fucking police. Oh my god, because nothing ever changes.
Speaker 1: They founded the totally legitimate grassroots organization called Citizens Committee
Speaker 1: Against Civilian Review Boards, which had a total of three
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy billboards, twenty storefronts, and thousands of people
Speaker 1: door to door canvassing. They advertised in newspapers, TV, radio,
Speaker 1: and the ads would feature like pictures of black and
Speaker 1: brown teenagers with switchblades and scared white women holy shit, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fucked up. Yeah, And it worked at that point too.
Speaker 1: That's like a high tech, like fucking media campaign I
Speaker 1: know at that at that time period. Honestly, like I
Speaker 1: haven't seen yeah, like yeah, like storefronts. I guess that
Speaker 1: must have been actually how you did it before there
Speaker 1: was other more media or whatever. But twenty storefronts where
Speaker 1: you could go in and I guess like organize and
Speaker 1: learn against the police being overseen by the people who
Speaker 1: live in the city. God, Like, it wasn't even like
Speaker 1: some like a cab campaign, you know, Like no, just
Speaker 1: like we're checking in yeah, basically, yeah, yeah, exactly, Like
Speaker 1: it's like body cams. That's one of these things where
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, I guess that's good in the abstract,
Speaker 1: but like it's not. It doesn't stop the things, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is the this is the New York that
Speaker 1: the Young Lords start in, right, the white people are
Speaker 1: being real racist and defending the cops. The cops are
Speaker 1: being real racist and killing the Puerto Rican children and
Speaker 1: black kids. And the youngest of these founding Lords in
Speaker 1: New York was fourteen. Most of them were college age
Speaker 1: um but the fourteen year old joined as part of
Speaker 1: an arts program that helped found the New York City
Speaker 1: chapter that was like one of the groups that did it.
Speaker 1: The founding was an arts arts group. The least cool
Speaker 1: of the founding lords was a guy named Roy Penya,
Speaker 1: and he was the least cool because he was an
Speaker 1: undercover cop. Oh right from the beginning. Wow. Their first
Speaker 1: public appearance was if you want to pick one place
Speaker 1: in New York City where you think maybe some like
Speaker 1: radicals met up. I'm curious whether this will work or not.
Speaker 1: Just one place. Yeah, I don't know, like a public library, No,
Speaker 1: I would have been a good guess. Tompkins Square Park, Oh,
Speaker 1: my humble beginning. I know, that's often where I call.
Speaker 1: That's my early education. I think when Lynda and I met,
Speaker 1: I was sometimes sleeping in tom Square Park during the
Speaker 1: day because they hadn't found a squad to live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they opened it early in the morning. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You literally walk around all night, or you go to
Speaker 1: a party and you hang the party all night, and
Speaker 1: then you go to Tompkins Square Park and you go
Speaker 1: to sleep in the park, and that's probably where. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you say look at us now? As always said,
Speaker 1: Oh no, I said, you take a nice now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I also look at us do. So this is where
Speaker 1: the Young Lords have their first public appearance in New
Speaker 1: York on July twenty six. History. There's one thing that's
Speaker 1: cool about New York City is you can be like, oh,
Speaker 1: on the following street and you're like, oh, like a
Speaker 1: lot of things happened there, you know. Yeah. Yeah. On
Speaker 1: July twenty six, nineteen sixty nine, there was a commemoration
Speaker 1: of the Cuban Revolution organized by a ton of New
Speaker 1: York City left us and the Young Lords. And the
Speaker 1: Young Lords showed up in purple bretz berets, breys and
Speaker 1: black fatigues. Breads would be cute, though maybe they had
Speaker 1: purple breads. And they had their banner a Cuban flag
Speaker 1: with an AK forty seven superimposed. They're not subtle at all.
Speaker 1: Their chairman is a poet who spent some time in
Speaker 1: prison and came out a community organizer. And his name
Speaker 1: is Philip Luciano, a real gee. Yeah I've met him before.
Speaker 1: Shit really oh yeah, it was. It was pretty fucking cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He gave a speech in Tompkins Square Park in July
Speaker 1: twenty six, nineteen sixty nine. And this is their first appearance.
Speaker 1: Their first action came out not long after, and they
Speaker 1: called it, well, I'm not gonna tell you what they
Speaker 1: called it, because it wasn't called products and services. But
Speaker 1: that's where we're gonna cut to you right now. It's
Speaker 1: products and services because I don't have usually just to
Speaker 1: tell everyone how the show runs. Basically, Sophie is like,
Speaker 1: do a fucking had transition? What the fuck? That's um?
Speaker 1: And here we are without Sophie lost in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: are fearless leader dud the curse that I brought upon
Speaker 1: this show. Yeah, we've been things keep happening to all
Speaker 1: of us, all of them. Anywhere I had the script,
Speaker 1: I was like, and it's our second four partner. It's
Speaker 1: because today I had to go through and change it
Speaker 1: to be our second four partner because this is going
Speaker 1: to be the first four partner. But we've had to
Speaker 1: delay multiple times this recording because of courses that we
Speaker 1: won't talk too much about. But yeah, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of cursed objects, buy some gold with reagans based
Speaker 1: on it. That'll make you happy, healthier, younger, more attractive,
Speaker 1: clear sem Absolutely nothing says smart financial decisions, like what
Speaker 1: if we got a crypto ad. Anyway, here's some ads
Speaker 1: and Rebecca and so far I Heart Radio is kick
Speaker 1: us off. They're talking shit on all their advertisers. We'll
Speaker 1: see how long. Yeah. It's like I always worry that
Speaker 1: I'm just doing the thing where it's like by talking
Speaker 1: shit on them, I'm just like being edgy and then
Speaker 1: like making them like more appealing or whatever. I just
Speaker 1: leaping to fucking feed my dog. Yeah. Like anyway, their
Speaker 1: first action, the Young Lords, it's not long after their
Speaker 1: appearance in nineteen sixty nine. They call it the Garbage Offensive.
Speaker 1: And this is a reference. Yeah, this is like they
Speaker 1: do a lot of really cool shit. Fuck yeah cool.
Speaker 1: It's a reference the Tet Offensive and when the Vietcong
Speaker 1: turned some shit around a year earlier in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: So to tie it all into like we hate America
Speaker 1: and the Imperial government, you know. The the first thing
Speaker 1: they did, it was actually just one around fucking talk
Speaker 1: to people. They walked around East Harlem, it's their own neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: and they ask people was wrong, what was on their minds? Like,
Speaker 1: and they decided that the first thing they should do
Speaker 1: was something about all the garbage that wasn't getting picked up.
Speaker 1: There's there were mountains of garbage at the time, whole
Speaker 1: abandoned buildings full of garbage, sidewalks full of garbage. And
Speaker 1: this is because a bunch of complicated reasons, but mostly
Speaker 1: just classism and racism. The like people didn't the garbage
Speaker 1: collectors just would ignore those neighborhoods. They didn't bother putting
Speaker 1: in enough garbage cans at the time, they didn't even
Speaker 1: use garbage bags and the garbage cans, so the whole
Speaker 1: garbage can to get picked up, and so garbage goes everywhere.
Speaker 1: And lots of reasons, but classism and racism at the
Speaker 1: core of it. So they go to the sanitation department.
Speaker 1: They try. I love how radicals like, You're always like
Speaker 1: they just started off blowing people up, and you're like, no,
Speaker 1: they started off by They went to the sanitation department
Speaker 1: and were like, can we have some trash bags and brooms?
Speaker 1: And the Senate Sanitation department said, well, what if we
Speaker 1: give you a bunch of racial slur instead. Wow, really
Speaker 1: throwing them a curveball. I know, can you just give
Speaker 1: us some bags and brooms so you can clean our
Speaker 1: neighborhood And they're like, no, we're gonna yell racist shit
Speaker 1: at you because we're a bunch of racists. Yeah. People,
Speaker 1: I feel like white people sometimes think that racism is
Speaker 1: more subtle than it is, you know. Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: stole a bunch of brooms from them getting called racist shit.
Speaker 1: That's as best as I could tell either way. About
Speaker 1: thirty five young lords started literally just keeping the streets
Speaker 1: of East Harlem clean while wearing their uniforms every Sunday.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't quite the This is like worth trying,
Speaker 1: but this still wasn't quite the move. They couldn't single
Speaker 1: handedly do it. There's just thirty five of them, and
Speaker 1: it's just sort of volunteerism. Doing that work put them
Speaker 1: in the public eye, and they put them in conversation
Speaker 1: with people who mostly assumed they were there with the
Speaker 1: government or some church. Okay, they got some cruits, but
Speaker 1: they didn't get a mass of them, and it also
Speaker 1: didn't clean the streets. It wasn't enough. So they stepped
Speaker 1: it up to doing the thing that's the epic thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they gathered a ton of trash. If you have any
Speaker 1: like versions of the story, I'll love to hear them
Speaker 1: because it's, like I know about this from books. You know.
Speaker 1: They gathered yeah, yeah, fair enough, Okay, they gathered a
Speaker 1: ton of trash from empty lots, including old mattresses and
Speaker 1: couches and such, took it over to Third Avenue, which
Speaker 1: is a you know avenue that was used by the
Speaker 1: rich to move across Manhattan, and dumped it into the street.
Speaker 1: And then they did this a bunch on various thoroughfares,
Speaker 1: just over and over again. They did it daily for months.
Speaker 1: Thank god, I didn't know that. Oh yes, we've heard
Speaker 1: like the lore as if it was like this one event,
Speaker 1: which of course it wasn't. Yeh, think about it. There
Speaker 1: is one that is the one event, but all of
Speaker 1: this happens first to build up to it, right, Okay, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: for months, they just dumped trash daily in the middle
Speaker 1: of fucking Third alf or any other avenue that like
Speaker 1: law abiding white people or whatever you use, like inconvenience
Speaker 1: as rich people. Basically, yeah, and this is a more
Speaker 1: effective tactic than the volunteerism on almost every metric. The
Speaker 1: city was forced to deal with the garbage because it
Speaker 1: was blocking the streets that white people used. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: people started joining in, creating the kind of spaces where
Speaker 1: people get to know each other and hang out because
Speaker 1: the social fabric has been disrupted. Yeah, and the young
Speaker 1: lords would lead tempt impromptu discussions and let people air
Speaker 1: out their grievances and these like temporary autonomous zones that
Speaker 1: were being created. Wow. And then when the cops came,
Speaker 1: they just take off their berets and take off and
Speaker 1: running and they never got caught. Plus, the other important
Speaker 1: metric with to judge actions is did you get to
Speaker 1: build barricades in the middle of the street, And the
Speaker 1: answer was yes, and it's always fun. On August seventeenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, they figured out how to have even
Speaker 1: more fun. What do you think is better than a
Speaker 1: barricade in the middle of a street setting the barricade
Speaker 1: on fire? Yes, exactly. So they called for a mass action.
Speaker 1: Loads of people did this particular garbage action and then
Speaker 1: somehow it's spontaneously caught fire after some people from the
Speaker 1: neighborhood poured gas hut and lit it with a match. Damn,
Speaker 1: And the whole next day there's a six block radius
Speaker 1: of East Harlem that was barricaded and people were partying.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too, right, because you have this, like
Speaker 1: the riots are like trashing their neighborhoods, like blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blahing. Yeah, one of the things they were
Speaker 1: doing is flipping over cars. And the thing is they
Speaker 1: were flipping over all the abandoned cars because the city
Speaker 1: used to have no means in place to deal with
Speaker 1: abandoned cars, so they just would wind up in poor neighborhoods. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally and be like, well, let the fucking poor brown
Speaker 1: people deal with it, fuck them, you know. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: they were like, all right, let's flip over all these
Speaker 1: fucking abandoned cars that got abandoned here, you know. And
Speaker 1: so the cops declared it a riot even though it
Speaker 1: seems like a block party to me, and they sent helicopters. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the young Lords are giving talks about how to tie
Speaker 1: sanitation issues into larger systemic problems. They had a press
Speaker 1: release with a list of demands, which included stuff like,
Speaker 1: put these are wild demands, these are absolute terrorists. Put
Speaker 1: trash cans on our streets and pick up the trash,
Speaker 1: and not have only white sanitation workers, and also give
Speaker 1: the sanitation workers a raise. Yeah they're cool. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also no more of this weird ship where for a while,
Speaker 1: in order to get your trash picked up you had
Speaker 1: to bribe the workers. Oh wow, so that was their demands.
Speaker 1: May I chime in and is this when Fon Gonzalez
Speaker 1: was the press secretary? Oh I don't know. I kind
Speaker 1: of like weirdly didn't go names on a lot of this,
Speaker 1: So please tell me, Well, Huang Gonzalez of Democracy now
Speaker 1: was I know they're they're like head of press, like
Speaker 1: was the person that spoke to the press. So I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if he was around for this action or if
Speaker 1: it was later on. You know, it's funny is because
Speaker 1: of all the delays. I wrote this script several months ago,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember whether he's someone that someone told
Speaker 1: me about after I finished the script or if he's
Speaker 1: in here. So there's a chance because I do talk
Speaker 1: about some of the press stuff a little bit later
Speaker 1: the answers, I don't know. Yeah, he was there for
Speaker 1: like the big like famous stuff that we're going to
Speaker 1: get too as well. Yeah cool, yeah, but just incredible
Speaker 1: that they had like this organization and they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we have our demands. They were also like
Speaker 1: very bold but also very reasonable. Like yeah, not even
Speaker 1: reasonable and just like, oh you're being reasonable, you're not
Speaker 1: asking for the oppressive forces, like for too much stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just like this would make our lives better. And
Speaker 1: also it's bold, yeah, totally yeah, the radical demand of
Speaker 1: what if there were garbage cans on the street and
Speaker 1: then the garbage character picker like took it out? No it,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. And the fact that
Speaker 1: it's a radical demand just shows us so much about
Speaker 1: what's happening, you know, the all white sanitation workers. It's
Speaker 1: actually this funny conflict, like I have a generally positive
Speaker 1: impression of unions, right, but unions are not always inherently
Speaker 1: good or often do bad things. And in this case
Speaker 1: it was the Italian American Sanitation Union, which was very
Speaker 1: racist and was like holding control over who got to
Speaker 1: be a garbageman or sanitation worker. They didn't win most
Speaker 1: of their demands in this particular go of it, but
Speaker 1: they won nonetheless. They won in two ways. First, they
Speaker 1: showed themselves in other people that collective direct action is
Speaker 1: an incredibly effective method of accomplishing change. They got rid
Speaker 1: of a ton of trash because they fucking just got
Speaker 1: rid of it. And two they fundamentally changed how sanitation
Speaker 1: worked in New York City. Wow. Sanitation became a hot
Speaker 1: topic issue in the mayoral race which was happening that year,
Speaker 1: and so each side was one up in the other
Speaker 1: about how they were going to get the trash pickup
Speaker 1: to be good in the city. Interesting, and the city
Speaker 1: changed how it did trash. This is when they started
Speaker 1: putting plastic bags into the trash cans, and dumping schedules
Speaker 1: were changed, mechanics were put on standby to fix trucks.
Speaker 1: In three years, the city went from meeting seventy seven
Speaker 1: percent of its trash pickup per day to ninety seven
Speaker 1: point eight percent of the trash pickup per day. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. Direct action gets the fucking goods, Like seriously,
Speaker 1: and not to mention like what I've said before about
Speaker 1: like reaching out to older generations, like well, from what
Speaker 1: I've read about this event, a major thing was that
Speaker 1: older folks were like, we ust you because you're actually
Speaker 1: listening to us, you know. Yeah, And it became a
Speaker 1: thing of like we we believe that you young, you know,
Speaker 1: like radical kids are actually caring about what we want
Speaker 1: as well. And I just think that's really powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is such a good point. And the fact that
Speaker 1: the first thing they did was a listening project. They
Speaker 1: were and they were like, yo, what's up. What makes
Speaker 1: your life hard? You know? Yeah? What can we do
Speaker 1: something about? Instead of like, I feel like it's really
Speaker 1: easy as a radical to be like I care about this,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to go do this, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: or I think this should be good for you, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where it's real bad. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, they won,
Speaker 1: not completely. They changed the face of the city by
Speaker 1: a combination of organized and spontaneous direct action, which I
Speaker 1: think also rules right because it wasn't entirely spontaneous. They
Speaker 1: organized that event right like you know. Um, And they
Speaker 1: also tripled or quadrupled size in a matter of weeks
Speaker 1: because they were getting shit fucking done. Damn. And what
Speaker 1: are they going to do with all those people find
Speaker 1: out next Monday? That's my cliffhanger. Exciting. Yeah, but what
Speaker 1: also people should find out about is you and what
Speaker 1: you've been working on and how people can find you. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a band. I play music, and my band's
Speaker 1: called Hurry for the roof Raff and we will be
Speaker 1: on tour the month of May on the West Coast
Speaker 1: and in July, and you can find me on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I don't really I lurk on Twitter and and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be around. I just and I'm working on some
Speaker 1: new music. So that's good. Yeah. Okay, Wait, can I
Speaker 1: ask you a question about your music? Yeah? So your
Speaker 1: music has been primarily folk and then you put out
Speaker 1: a song called Hungry Ghosts. Is that it? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: did a bunch of people like did all the like
Speaker 1: white hipsters get mad at you over this? None told me?
Speaker 1: Oh no, Now I feel really guilty having brought it up. Ian,
Speaker 1: please cut that entire thing out out? Okay, fine, okay, fine, No,
Speaker 1: I can take it. I can take it. Okay. Um
Speaker 1: there's a dance song that that Alinda has done. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's called Hungry ghost and it's this queer love music
Speaker 1: video about being kind of thirsty after a breakup. That's
Speaker 1: the best I can tell. Or maybe that was my
Speaker 1: interpretation because of where interpretation. Yeah, all right, And and
Speaker 1: the comments on YouTube at least when the song came out,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you came out time is No,
Speaker 1: they were mad that you had moved away from folk music. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing. I
Speaker 1: will say mostly I find that is older British gentleman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it really makes me happy. Yeah, it's like the
Speaker 1: one time I am a troll. Like I definitely don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really find myself feeling very truly, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to that, I'm very like, yes, okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I like it certainly didn't affect your like you know
Speaker 1: that was really fun. Yeah, like people were still very
Speaker 1: excited about your music. But I just had this moment.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, is this the like Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: goes electric moment for at Absolutely no. But now I'm back.
Speaker 1: I'm back to like the like whatever. I'm not definitely
Speaker 1: not in a mainstream music world, but I feel like
Speaker 1: the music industry has beaten me down enough that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just want my me and my guitar are going
Speaker 1: to hit the road. I don't want all this gear
Speaker 1: that's legit. Yeah okay, but wait, what's the song about
Speaker 1: to you? I'm the for the listeners who are still listening.
Speaker 1: I mean most of my songs, like especially like kind
Speaker 1: of like songs like that. I was I don't know
Speaker 1: what I would call like heart not heartbroken song. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: heartbroken songs actually are about my family d m I okay,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that that song was a lot
Speaker 1: about like running away and being like um and yeah,
Speaker 1: like literally it's not even poetic. It's like I was
Speaker 1: like a ghost to my family, and I was also
Speaker 1: very hungry. Okay, okay, so yeah that is I love.
Speaker 1: I love that breakup interpretation. Yeah no, yeah, it just
Speaker 1: seemed like a thirsty song, like like well, also the video,
Speaker 1: the video that's I think that's yeah, yeah I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't pull that out of nowhere. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to hear more about the Young Lords, you all
Speaker 1: can check in next Monday and next Wednesday when we
Speaker 1: talk even more about all the amazing shit they did,
Speaker 1: because we're just getting started and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you all soon. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.