Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this week I'm traveling
Speaker 2: and instead of doing the thing, I'm doing a different
Speaker 2: thing where I play a rerun, and in this case,
Speaker 2: I'm playing a rerun that I thought would tie in
Speaker 2: really well with last week's episode. Last week we talked
Speaker 2: about the first Paramedics, So this week we're gonna revisit
Speaker 2: the Young Lords. We're going to talk about the group
Speaker 2: of radicals who completely changed the way that healthcare works
Speaker 2: in this country by taking direct action and doing all
Speaker 2: kinds of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
Speaker 2: a podcast about Wait a second, Sophie's not here. We
Speaker 2: can do anything we want. Hello and welcome to Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Hollywood. That's a real place and we
Speaker 2: care about the people there. Sreen, do you think that's
Speaker 2: a good podcast? I feel like will be the first
Speaker 2: people to come up with that kind of podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be a big hit, smash hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna get some podcast money. Hell yeah, or okay,
Speaker 2: actually maybe we should just we'll do that later. First,
Speaker 2: we'll do a cool people did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, yay, I guess we have to get that out
Speaker 1: of the way first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, great, we'll jump in. Yeah, because I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about today's guest and topic. My guest today is
Speaker 2: a Linda Sagata and the principal songwriter. I guess is
Speaker 2: the maybe a way to say it, but I'm not
Speaker 2: entirely certain of one of the best bands out there.
Speaker 2: Hooray for the riff raff Melinda, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm good.
Speaker 3: I'm on a wild journey of life, but I'm really
Speaker 3: happy to be here and I've missed you.
Speaker 1: Yay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I keep finding my guests are like my old friends
Speaker 2: from back in the day in a nice way. And
Speaker 2: Alinda and I know each other from New York many
Speaker 2: many years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's beautiful, Linda.
Speaker 2: I was going to describe your music, and then I realized,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to. Is there like a catchy
Speaker 2: one sentence version that you use?
Speaker 3: I guess like sometimes I say folk rock because I
Speaker 3: feel like people not when I say that.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know, I will go out, go ahead, Sorry,
Speaker 4: there's rock in it, but it's also folk. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: will say to anyone who I don't usually like folk
Speaker 4: rock as its described, and I really like her ray
Speaker 4: for the riff raff, So if anyone, yeah.
Speaker 1: Wun't you call it?
Speaker 3: Also, one time somebody called it folk punk and I
Speaker 3: was like, whoa. I felt like younger me was really excited,
Speaker 3: but only younger me.
Speaker 2: I used to distinguish between folk punk and punk's playing
Speaker 2: folk mmm, because folk punk is when you take the
Speaker 2: punk vocals and put them over folk instrumentation exactly, and
Speaker 2: then punk's playing folk is when punks play folk music. Yes,
Speaker 2: and I like that one more. I gotta yeah, I
Speaker 2: want some I want to stop playing shows because I
Speaker 2: was playing with an accordion and I told this other
Speaker 2: person I played with. I was like, oh, I don't
Speaker 2: usually like folk punk, but I really like your set.
Speaker 2: And he got really offended and he was like, which
Speaker 2: is fair. It was a dumb thing for me to
Speaker 2: have said, and he was like, what do you call
Speaker 2: what you do? And then I stopped playing shows. Anyway,
Speaker 2: That's not what we're talking about today. We are not
Speaker 2: talking about folk punk today. Okay. Well, first, as people
Speaker 2: might have noticed, our our producer Sophie is not with us. Instead,
Speaker 2: we have Sharen at least partly, but otherwise we're flying solo.
Speaker 2: I believe in you, Thank you. That's all claim that
Speaker 2: I do too, so that everyone feels safe. Our audio
Speaker 2: engineers Ian Hi Ian, and our theme music was written
Speaker 2: for us by Unwoman. And our topic today Alanda. People
Speaker 2: talk a lot about like getting shit done, but usually
Speaker 2: they don't get shit done. They talk about getting shit done.
Speaker 2: Today we're gonna talk about the people who got shit done.
Speaker 2: This was the thing that I kept running over and
Speaker 2: over again, was just like getting shit done, be out
Speaker 2: of They got so much done that this is our
Speaker 2: second four partner. There's two weeks that we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about a street gang that turned into revolutionary
Speaker 2: socialists who fought for change, and they only got the
Speaker 2: tiniest portion of what they wanted, and they still got
Speaker 2: more than almost anyone I ever read about. In case
Speaker 2: anyone's wondering, anyone who's listening, if you were wondering, huh,
Speaker 2: I wonder if the reason that the trash gets picked
Speaker 2: up is because of people rioting. I wonder if the
Speaker 2: reason that people don't use lead paint anymore is because
Speaker 2: of militant demonstrators who were threatening to overthrow capitalism, and
Speaker 2: was it people committed to the destruction of capitalism who
Speaker 2: brought us the patient's Bill of Rights and the fact
Speaker 2: that some of times were treated okay at hospitals. The
Speaker 2: answer is yes, because today we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 2: Young Lords. Alynda, have you heard of the Young Lords?
Speaker 1: I have learned. I heard of the Young Lords.
Speaker 3: I was very deeply affected by learning about them some
Speaker 3: years ago, and it like really changed my music and
Speaker 3: it changed my life.
Speaker 2: That's cool. The reason Alinda is the guest for this
Speaker 2: is that I started writing a script for someone else
Speaker 2: and then I was name dropping Alinda and one of
Speaker 2: one of their songs in the script, and then I
Speaker 2: was like, Elinda should be the guest for this, and
Speaker 2: then Alinda said, yes, I'm.
Speaker 3: Really excited to learn about them. You know, like I've
Speaker 3: had the emotional experience of learning some about the Young Lords,
Speaker 3: but I am ready to deep dive.
Speaker 2: Fuck yeah. Okay, So today we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: this week and next week we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: some of the amazing stuff done by the Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: radicals in the continental the United States. And that means
Speaker 2: we should at least briefly talk about Puerto Rico itself.
Speaker 2: Puerto Rico is an American colony. The US doesn't like
Speaker 2: to use that word. They used the word unincorporated territory. Whoa, yeah,
Speaker 2: it means.
Speaker 1: I've heard commonwealth my whole life.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I think.
Speaker 3: That which is well, I just think it's a very
Speaker 3: silly term when it's like there is no common wealth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the that's white people in the United States
Speaker 2: have the commonwealth. It was all extracted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the US got this colony in eighteen ninety eight
Speaker 2: by the usual means of colony, getting colonies through war,
Speaker 2: and in this case, they stole it from Spain as
Speaker 2: the result of the Spanish American War. Spain, of course,
Speaker 2: had stolen it in the first place. They stole it
Speaker 2: from the indigenous people the island back in fifteen oh
Speaker 2: eight Puerto Rico, so it becomes a colony of the
Speaker 2: US instead of Spain. And then in nineteen seventeen, Puerto
Speaker 2: Ricans were suddenly granted US citizenship, which was so benevolent.
Speaker 2: It was just a strange coincidence that this was just
Speaker 2: in time for all the Puerto Rican men to get drafted. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: So the US gave Puerto Rican's US citizenship because they
Speaker 2: wanted to throw them into the meat grinder of World
Speaker 2: War One, and the entire Puerto Rican House of Delegates,
Speaker 2: like the local governance in Puerto Rico, voted against getting
Speaker 2: US citizenship because they were like, oh, whoa, yeah, that
Speaker 2: part actually a little bit surprised me because a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, US statehood is a big part of
Speaker 2: a lot of Puerto Rican movement stuff now right when
Speaker 2: we talk a little bit about that, But they knew
Speaker 2: it was a fucking trick as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: They were just like, yeah, no, why would we go
Speaker 2: off and do this. So Ever since Puerto Rican folks
Speaker 2: have been fighting for and this depends on who you ask.
Speaker 2: Some people are fighting from independence from the US, some
Speaker 2: people are fighting for statehood. Either way, people are fighting.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of.
Speaker 2: Curious whether, like in your family, whether like there was
Speaker 2: a strong sense of statehood, independence, that kind of thing, Like.
Speaker 1: It really depends.
Speaker 3: It's like, I think there's definitely an exhaustion that my
Speaker 3: family has, I think is pretty common to Puerto Ricans, who,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't really have a lot of family
Speaker 3: in the island. Anymore, And it seems like my family
Speaker 3: is very much like, well, how would the island survive
Speaker 3: if we weren't owned by the US at this point,
Speaker 3: like an exhaustion of this idea of independence even being possible.
Speaker 3: But then there are certain people, like, you know, there's
Speaker 3: like some more radically leaning people in my family that
Speaker 3: are just like the point is to try, the point
Speaker 3: is to figure it out, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like it's like useful to understand
Speaker 2: and be sympathetic to both of those positions. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 2: as someone who's not Puerto Rican, as just being like,
Speaker 2: all right, like independence, the more radical thing sounds always
Speaker 2: cooler to me. But I'm like I could get people
Speaker 2: just trying for what they can, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I feel that too, even being like a
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican person that wasn't brought up on the island.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what right do.
Speaker 3: I have to tell people how to like to make
Speaker 3: a decision that really it affects them. It doesn't affect me,
Speaker 3: you know, it affects their daily life. So I definitely
Speaker 3: try to be aware of that, especially with like having
Speaker 3: a band and being sometimes the only Puerto Rican person
Speaker 3: that someone's ever talked.
Speaker 2: To right, you know. Yeah, well part four of this
Speaker 2: episode will be particularly interesting as relates to not the
Speaker 2: band part, but the mainland US Puerto Ricans. And well
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that later. Everyone's gonunt to wait a lot.
Speaker 2: But so the US, they want Puerto Rico still, and
Speaker 2: it is part of the US exercising power across the globe.
Speaker 2: It's not like some benevolence thing that we have this
Speaker 2: fucking colony. The majority of US interventions in Latin America
Speaker 2: are staged on the island of Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: And since Perto Rico is a colony, it means the
Speaker 2: US is out to extract whatever value it can from
Speaker 2: the island, which in nineteen seventeen met Grist for the
Speaker 2: mill post World War Two. It was something different, but
Speaker 2: something related. It was needed workers. We need workers because
Speaker 2: so many of ours just died because we just fought
Speaker 2: World War two. So please everyone come over. And so
Speaker 2: between nineteen forty seven and nineteen seventy a third of
Speaker 2: the population of Puerto Rico moved to the United States
Speaker 2: looking for something like stability in a decent life. Disproportionately,
Speaker 2: this was youth who came and ninety percent of them
Speaker 2: went at least to begin with, to New York City.
Speaker 2: This mass immigration started because of a US project called
Speaker 2: Operation Bootstrap, which was this massive spike in industrialization that
Speaker 2: displaced people even as it put in power line So
Speaker 2: it was like kind of like, oh, we're doing all
Speaker 2: this nice stuff. We're bringing in power lines and industry
Speaker 2: and infrastructure, but it just fucked everything up. It was
Speaker 2: openly an attempt to stabilize the political situation in the
Speaker 2: colony and make it more useful for US interests. The
Speaker 2: sugar economy, which was also bad, but it was like
Speaker 2: what Spain was mostly up to, was replaced by industrialization,
Speaker 2: also bad, and US investment in capitalism just like poured
Speaker 2: into Puerto Rico. So Puerto Rico folk, Puerto Rican folks
Speaker 2: led the fucking up of their country and moved to
Speaker 2: the US, where they were welcomed with open arms, economic opportunity,
Speaker 2: good living conditions, the American dream and no, no, wait no,
Speaker 2: it's the opposite of that. Puerto Rican immigrants was even
Speaker 2: immigrants the right word. I mean, you know, people coming from.
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico to them, yeah.
Speaker 2: Met with violence, nativism, bigotry, racism, classism. Instead Puerto Ricans
Speaker 2: in the US were immediately slandered as junkies and thugs
Speaker 2: and welfare dependents, the same as marginalized people always are.
Speaker 2: They're treated like illegal immigrants, which of course is not true,
Speaker 2: and obviously documented people should also be treated well on borders.
Speaker 2: But in this case, literally it's us since moving to
Speaker 2: another part of the US, and they'd come over basically
Speaker 2: at the behest of the US government to work. But
Speaker 2: the piece of shit racists didn't like thinking period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is actually when my family came over, is
Speaker 3: like around nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, oh damn, so like kind of like first
Speaker 2: wave of all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dad came over when he was a kid,
Speaker 3: and he asked this story about being on a plane, that.
Speaker 1: The chairs were actually like.
Speaker 3: Lawn chairs, and that my grandmother came with like her
Speaker 3: three kids because my grandfather was already over in New
Speaker 3: York working and like it just being like okay, every
Speaker 3: you know, I'm sure they were like some somehouse that
Speaker 3: bolted down, but just like this totally crazy yeah experience
Speaker 3: of like let's get as many of these people over
Speaker 3: as we can, you.
Speaker 2: Know, fucking I mean, it doesn't surprise me. But I
Speaker 2: just had never even imagined that kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like I wonder how I thought. I never really thought
Speaker 2: about how folks came over, you know. Yeah, yeah, Operation
Speaker 2: Boostrap had another impact. It showed the world that the
Speaker 2: quote unquote third world was open for business. And I
Speaker 2: think it was like one of the things that kind
Speaker 2: of started the industrial economy disappearing from the United States,
Speaker 2: as industrialization is moved out to the colonies and to
Speaker 2: the sort of you know, in a neoliberal sense, you
Speaker 2: can kind of claim that most of the quote unquote
Speaker 2: developing world is colonies for the rich nations, you know.
Speaker 2: So there's a weird, awful downside to this. Millions of
Speaker 2: people are showing up for looking for work in the
Speaker 2: cities because they've been told to come over and get
Speaker 2: work in the cities, just as the US is like
Speaker 2: starting to eradicate industrialization within in the continental United States,
Speaker 2: and so there's not a lot of work. In nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six, a study found that the unemployment or underemployment
Speaker 2: of Puerto Rican men in East Harlem or what's called
Speaker 2: Spanish Harlem or Albodio was forty seven percent. Half the
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican families in New York lived worse than immigrant
Speaker 2: families in New York during the fucking Great Depression. So
Speaker 2: by nineteen sixty six, twenty percent of the students in
Speaker 2: New York City where Puerto Rican and thirty percent were black,
Speaker 2: which means it's the first time that white people weren't
Speaker 2: the majority in New York City in the schools. Whoa wow,
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you knew this, but white
Speaker 2: people don't historically like that.
Speaker 1: They don't. Yeah, it's not a not a cool look. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they haven't figured out that. They're like, they don't
Speaker 2: want to get treated like they've been treating people, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So two thousand white parents picketed City Hall over school
Speaker 2: integration in nineteen sixty four, almost half a million white
Speaker 2: students stayed home in a boycott protest organized by their racist,
Speaker 2: fucking parents in New York City.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like half a million fucking kids didn't go to
Speaker 2: school and protest of there being people of color in
Speaker 2: their schools. And like white Northerners have this attitude that
Speaker 2: like white Southerners are the only racist people.
Speaker 1: Seriously. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: So we'll come back to New York later. Our story
Speaker 2: winds up in New York, but it starts in Chicago. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in Chicago, nineteen fifty four, some white assholes firebombed to
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican bar and an apartment, which led to a
Speaker 2: week of fighting, and it led to non white gangs
Speaker 2: forming for self defense, specifically Puerto Rican, Mexican and Black
Speaker 2: gang started forming in Chicago in the nineteen fifties. And
Speaker 2: you've got a bunch of capitalists exploiting this racist fear.
Speaker 2: White people started fleeing cargo in the fifties out to
Speaker 2: the suburbs, the classic white flight. The white people who
Speaker 2: stayed in Chicago were like really paranoid about black people
Speaker 2: driving down their property values or whatever. So these real
Speaker 2: estate assholes who created the racist panic in the first
Speaker 2: place would get white people to sell out a loss
Speaker 2: and basically like stoke these fears in order to make
Speaker 2: money and flip houses. And it was kind of like
Speaker 2: Domino's style, and so like the white flight was like
Speaker 2: both racist cowards and also racist capitalists were looking to
Speaker 2: exploit the fear of the racist capitalists racist cowards. And
Speaker 2: that's the condition into which are very young heroes or
Speaker 2: lords as we might call them, and to our story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but first we're going to talk about some other heroes,
Speaker 2: capitalism and products and services that support our show because
Speaker 2: were ads sponsored and now you can listen to those ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back and we are talking about the beginning
Speaker 2: of the Young Lords. They formed as a street gang
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty nine in Lincoln Park in Chicago. They
Speaker 2: were formed by seven kids. Six of them were Puerto Rican,
Speaker 2: one of them was Mexican. And this part I didn't
Speaker 2: know what I mean it when I say kids. How
Speaker 2: old do you think these kids were?
Speaker 1: I mean I always imagined like mid twenties, but I
Speaker 1: know that's wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like half that some of them are like eleven
Speaker 2: what yeah, in.
Speaker 1: Fact, well like actual children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the kind of like main founder of the we'll
Speaker 2: get to this, like one of our like heroes that
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about, Jose Cha Cha Yumenez.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: He was eleven years old in nineteen fifty nine when
Speaker 2: he was a founding member of this gang. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, okay, that reminds me though. Have you heard there
Speaker 3: is a story about kids in Puerto Rico talking about
Speaker 3: kids not going to school, about kids in Puerto Rico
Speaker 3: like not going to school, in protest of this time
Speaker 3: when they were trying to make when the US was
Speaker 3: trying to force like English to be the official language
Speaker 3: of the school system.
Speaker 2: Oh no, this is cool.
Speaker 1: No. Yeah, so there is I don't know.
Speaker 3: A lot about it, but this there is like a
Speaker 3: history of Puerto.
Speaker 1: Rican children being like, yeah, fuck you.
Speaker 2: But we're just not going to go, which is the
Speaker 2: opposite of blood. Sorry, go ahead, it's in the blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's the opposite of those half a million white
Speaker 2: kids who are like, we don't want to go to
Speaker 2: school because there might someone at school speaking Spanish. I
Speaker 2: can't handle it. Yeah, God forbid.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Eleven Yeah, hose chau Cha Yumenez. He was a founding member.
Speaker 2: He's eleven years old. By the time he was fourteen,
Speaker 2: he was a petty crook. He got caught up bunch,
Speaker 2: going in and out of facilities all the time. His
Speaker 2: Catholic parents had come over from Puerto Rico with him
Speaker 2: when he was two. His mom passed when they moved
Speaker 2: to Chicago. His mom packed Christmas cards for a living,
Speaker 2: and his dad worked in a meat packing plant. As
Speaker 2: the city redeveloped and tore down everything and like fucked
Speaker 2: over all the poor people. They moved nine times in
Speaker 2: the first six years they lived in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Where they wound up in Lincoln Park was like diverse
Speaker 2: quote quote unquote, but it was segregated block by block.
Speaker 2: His mom pulled a bunch of strings to get him
Speaker 2: put into a Catholic school because he'd been she'd been
Speaker 2: raised in a Catholic poorhouse and had connections. But this
Speaker 2: will be shocking to you. So the priest at this
Speaker 2: school not so cool. They were all a bunch of racists.
Speaker 2: They used the N word constantly. They just fucking hated
Speaker 2: these like as best as I can tell, it was
Speaker 2: like white Catholics and they were like, fuck, go why
Speaker 2: did And it's like, honey, that's on you. Your missionaries
Speaker 2: went and turned on these people of color into you.
Speaker 3: Know, My family had so many stories about like nuns,
Speaker 3: like hitting them with rulers and shit. Like Luckily I
Speaker 3: was able to grow up. Not like we went to
Speaker 3: Mass like for Christmas, but I was raised so I
Speaker 3: was raised by a bunch of like hippies basically that
Speaker 3: got hit by nuns.
Speaker 1: We're just yeah, yeah, so I'm very lucky. Yeah that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My dad went to Catholic school, so I didn't
Speaker 2: have to exactly. Yeah, so this is what he's getting raised,
Speaker 2: how he was getting raised. His dad had actually been
Speaker 2: in a gang himself, Lacho Vieha the Old Hatchet, which
Speaker 2: is the oldest known Puerto Rican street gang and at
Speaker 2: least Chicago. I'm unsure if there's older older Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: street gangs in the United States. I tried looking and
Speaker 2: like it would come back being like nineteen seventy and
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, no, that's not the oldest one.
Speaker 1: Well, cool name though, I know, right.
Speaker 2: Name, Okay, but you're breaking my rule I have, like
Speaker 2: if there's like Margaret's Law, it's that everyone who says
Speaker 2: that would be a cool band name is wrong, but
Speaker 2: this actually would be a good band name, Like hey,
Speaker 2: I want yeah, you broke the law, band jail you
Speaker 2: have to go to Yeah, I know. And especially because
Speaker 2: the Old Hatchet was probably a bunch of teenagers, right.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, the only uh like Puerto Rican streaking I
Speaker 3: know about is the Ghetto.
Speaker 2: Brothers, okay, and I don't know about but I think.
Speaker 3: That was I think that was later on. Okay, they
Speaker 3: eventually became a band.
Speaker 2: Oh word, yeah, so different than the ghetto boys. Yes, great,
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, so the history I feel like
Speaker 2: it's worth pointing out if I'm talking about this streak gang, right,
Speaker 2: and people have like various impressions about street gangs depending
Speaker 2: on where you live and all of these things, but
Speaker 2: it's like really worth understanding why people are forming a
Speaker 2: street gang. There is a long history of ethnic gangs
Speaker 2: in Chicago. This is not a nice history. It goes
Speaker 2: back into the late nineteenth century when German and Irish
Speaker 2: youth crewed up not with each other, but with other
Speaker 2: German and the Germans, with the Germans the Irish of
Speaker 2: the Irish because everyone's fucking bullshit in order to be
Speaker 2: shitty to more recent immigrants. That's where ethnic gangs come
Speaker 2: from in Chicago. And this tied very happily and easily
Speaker 2: into the city's politics. The city gave the gang's resources,
Speaker 2: and the kids would grow up and join the more
Speaker 2: formal political structure. They all became cops and firefighters. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's this this criminal justice professor guy, his names John M.
Speaker 2: Haggerdorn and his quote is the Irish gang in effect
Speaker 2: was reinvented as the Chicago Police Department.
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, corruption and Chicago go the long history together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so the white ethnic gangs continue to be fucked up,
Speaker 2: whether before joining the cops or after joining the cops.
Speaker 2: And they did a bunch of racist shit time and
Speaker 2: time again as black labor moved into the city. And
Speaker 2: so I feel like this is important to understand when
Speaker 2: we talk about the development of non white gangs in
Speaker 2: the US more broadly, right, because like a huge part
Speaker 2: of racism is like being like, but the gangs or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, totally and it's like, Okay, they came from
Speaker 2: defending themselves against you, yeah for real, which isn't to
Speaker 2: say whatever, We'll talk about someone what they got up to,
Speaker 2: and you know it's complicated. Right. So Chasha starts a
Speaker 2: gang when he's eleven because white gangs have been fucking
Speaker 2: with him for a year already, since he's ten years old.
Speaker 2: He's used to white gangs, like because the white kids
Speaker 2: in the area outnumbered everyone else seventeen to one at
Speaker 2: that point demographically. Yeah, and he guess his nickname because
Speaker 2: racist kids keep saying chah cha cha every time they
Speaker 2: see him. Oh wow, And he's like, all right, fuck it,
Speaker 2: that's my name. I'm Cha Cha.
Speaker 1: He just becomes a badass.
Speaker 2: I know. And it like be like a scary name
Speaker 2: to run into someone who's like fucking with you.
Speaker 1: Chacha Definitely.
Speaker 2: It's like you go and like someone's like maybe picking
Speaker 2: a fight with you, and you're like, what's your name?
Speaker 2: They're like Tiddley Winks and you're like, I gotta go.
Speaker 1: I hear my mom, Colin, like you've seen some shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They met up at a junior high school, the
Speaker 2: Young Lords. Their founder was this darker skin Puerto Rican kid,
Speaker 2: Orlando da Villa, who was red as black and got
Speaker 2: even more shit from people from which he learned to
Speaker 2: defend himself. And I'm kind of curious your take on
Speaker 2: this part because it's like, this is something I can
Speaker 2: read about, but there's this, Yeah, there's this interesting writing
Speaker 2: about race relations into Puerto Rican immigrants. At the time,
Speaker 2: for most immigrants, the Puerto Rican ethnicity was far more
Speaker 2: important than their race is viewed by other people in
Speaker 2: the continental US. So like Chacha had green eyes and
Speaker 2: light skin, Orlando was red as black. But for the
Speaker 2: second generation American views like mainland American group views, crept
Speaker 2: in more and more younger Puerto Ricans identified with black struggle,
Speaker 2: and their parents were largely trying to distinguish themselves from
Speaker 2: black struggle.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I have like, especially in my family,
Speaker 3: it's like I have so much white privilege, you know,
Speaker 3: and I feel like, definitely I witnessed a lot of
Speaker 3: racism get just like crammed into my family's minds.
Speaker 1: I think, like what I've experienced is also.
Speaker 3: Like a lot of pride about like not being considered immigrants, right,
Speaker 3: even though they have this immigrant experience. It's like the
Speaker 3: classic American thing where it's like, well, we are one
Speaker 3: step closer to this pyramid, the top of the pyramid
Speaker 3: than people who are dealing with immigrations staff.
Speaker 1: We don't have to deal with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And racism and colorism definitely was something that I
Speaker 3: saw all the time.
Speaker 2: Okay, And yeah, that makes sense, Like one of the
Speaker 2: things I have the hardest time because again I'm mostly
Speaker 2: just reading about this stuff, and everyone who's writing has different,
Speaker 2: you know, things that they're trying to say or not
Speaker 2: say right, and like so like sometimes I read about
Speaker 2: like all of the awful interfighting but horizontal conflict between
Speaker 2: black New Yorkers and Puerto Rican New Yorkers, right, And
Speaker 2: then other places I read, I'll read about all of
Speaker 2: these like moments of solidarity, and people will be like, oh,
Speaker 2: we all got along, and like, yeah, I have a
Speaker 2: feeling the answer is both maybe, you know.
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 3: I mean also, like I said, there was a generation
Speaker 3: like who was radicalized and then after you know, not
Speaker 3: to jump ahead, but then they experienced the fucking eighties
Speaker 3: and it's like such disillusionment, and then my generation comes.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's only now that I'm seeing kids
Speaker 3: like get radicalized in the same way.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel like, so, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think I think there is more like solidarity now,
Speaker 3: but I also feel like a white kid looking in right.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Also, an interesting thing in New York at least is
Speaker 3: the fighting between Dominican and.
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican Oh okay people.
Speaker 3: That was something I witnessed a lot because of like
Speaker 3: immigration status and also racism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Yeah, it's I love. Love is not
Speaker 2: the right word, But I'm so interested in all these
Speaker 2: things that like complicate the mainstream conception of like the
Speaker 2: racial hierarchy, right, and like, you know, the fact that
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican immigrants would be coming from different ethnic backgrounds
Speaker 2: with or different racial backgrounds. I guess you would say
Speaker 2: from Puerto Rico, whereas like to like the people who
Speaker 2: live in the US, maybe it was like whatever, you're
Speaker 2: all fucking Puerto Ricans. Fuck you, you know, as compared
Speaker 2: to like white Puerto Ricans and black Puerto Ricans. And
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about race relations within Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: I've only read about them and how they relate to
Speaker 2: the mainland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I've definitely experienced, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I get this like platform and because I feel like
Speaker 3: I just make people feel more comfortable, They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I understand you more, Like I don't have to experience
Speaker 3: that racism. So I think certain Puerto Ricans that are
Speaker 3: super light skin it's not I think. I know, like
Speaker 3: we get these you know, platforms and experience you know,
Speaker 3: these opportunities and shit, and Jlo becomes like the idea
Speaker 3: of what being Puerto Rican is instead of a super
Speaker 3: complex identity.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that Jayla was Puerto Rican. But
Speaker 2: I also really okay, this is the like main running
Speaker 2: in joke is that I don't know anything about pop culture.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, Ricky Martin and Martin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I grew up thinking that was what being Puerto
Speaker 3: Rican was.
Speaker 1: So then to find out about the Young.
Speaker 3: Lords is like a mind altering moment where I'm like, wait,
Speaker 3: what We're like revolutionary fucking fighters?
Speaker 1: Is this crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I thought we were just.
Speaker 3: Like popa, you know, like I was just raised with
Speaker 3: this idea of what it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that, well, I guess we'll get to it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the death nel of everything in the eighties and all that.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of sad thing about like cool
Speaker 2: people in history, and they're like, well, if you tell
Speaker 2: the story long enough, but there's amazing stuff along the way,
Speaker 2: which is all any of us have is our lives anyway, right,
Speaker 2: like all of them. So they're a gang now to
Speaker 2: come back to Chicago nineteen fifties, and they immediately set
Speaker 2: out and they're like eleven to fourteen, and I think
Speaker 2: May someone were like sixteen or whatever, and they immediately
Speaker 2: set out to do gang shit. They're really into stealing cars.
Speaker 2: You gotta have a nice car, and selling stolen car
Speaker 2: parts is good money. Cha Cha had white passing privilege,
Speaker 2: so he was the kid who would do the initial stealing.
Speaker 2: Also probably the fact that he's like a white passing
Speaker 2: eleven year old is probably part of that. We got
Speaker 2: away with us, you know, Oh my god. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: then the Young Lords immediately got to fighting anyone who
Speaker 2: fucked with them, and they immediately started getting arrested for
Speaker 2: weapons possession, assault, petty theft, and drugs. Most of the
Speaker 2: fighting they did this is like where they was. They
Speaker 2: would forcefully integrate places that were informally whites only.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when older folks would get pushed around, like older
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican folks and would get pushed around or slapped
Speaker 2: for being in the wrong place. There's like the Lake
Speaker 2: Shore Drive beach. The Young Lords would just show up
Speaker 2: and be like, no, that's cool, We're allowed to be here,
Speaker 2: Like wow, that beach in particular, they fought with broken
Speaker 2: bottles and knives for the right to swim there.
Speaker 1: Holy shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, really little badasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: I like my friend who turned me on to I'd
Speaker 2: heard some about the Young Lords but not like a
Speaker 2: ton right, and my friends like, you really need to
Speaker 2: do an episode on them. And it ties into there's
Speaker 2: like some stuff that keeps coming up over over and
Speaker 2: over again. We're going to talk about tuberculosis in this episode.
Speaker 2: For some reason, tuberculosi is this running theme throughout all
Speaker 2: these things, and it's going to come up, but not yet.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so and the white gangs would fight back, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the I presume German, German and Irish gangs
Speaker 2: would fight back and try and fight the young Lords
Speaker 2: and be like, no, we want our whites only beach
Speaker 2: or whatever. But eventually the white gangs relented. And I'm
Speaker 2: under the impression this isn't less because the Young Lord's
Speaker 2: always won and more because they always fought. And I
Speaker 2: think that this is how oppressive power works. You don't
Speaker 2: even need to always win, You just need to keep fighting,
Speaker 2: and they'll back off first because they have more to lose, right,
Speaker 2: they're more privileged.
Speaker 1: Wow, what a great lesson to like keep in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, When Joshaw was fifteen, he found himself increasingly
Speaker 2: in charge of their gang because he was willing to
Speaker 2: do the paperwork for the gang.
Speaker 1: What did like paperwork entail?
Speaker 2: So he was the business manager and he would raise
Speaker 2: money to get everyone in the gang black and purple
Speaker 2: sweaters and yeah, and they would throw soul dance parties
Speaker 2: and that's how they would raise the money, and so
Speaker 2: he was this fundraiser. Yeah, and he was like he
Speaker 2: wasn't afraid to throw down, but he was always also
Speaker 2: trying to figure out non violent solutions to most problems.
Speaker 2: He still thought a lot. He got arrested twenty times
Speaker 2: over the course of his young life, like only a
Speaker 2: couple of years. So I really like this, like this
Speaker 2: is my favorite version of non violence, is the like,
Speaker 2: our preference is non violence, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: We're gonna swim at this beach non violently ideally, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I do it all right. So then he's sixteen, and
Speaker 2: he might be fifteen or something. I get the year
Speaker 2: something happened and not the age of the person. So
Speaker 2: I do rough math and he gets sentenced too. I
Speaker 2: don't remember. We get caught for this time. He gets
Speaker 2: sentenced to go live in Puerto Rico for a year.
Speaker 2: The judge is like, WHOA, yeah, I didn't know this
Speaker 2: was a thing. It was an assault that would have
Speaker 2: had him in prison for years. And I think that
Speaker 2: the judge was just actually like, you dumb fucking kid,
Speaker 2: go get out of here, you know, like wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So he goes to Puerto Rico, and while he's there
Speaker 2: he tries to get up to all his usual shit.
Speaker 2: At one point he steals a horse to ride off
Speaker 2: to go hot wire a priest's car in order to
Speaker 2: go see a girl he likes.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah exactly, I know.
Speaker 2: But they catch him and they don't throw him in
Speaker 2: jail when he's in Puerto Rico. Instead, they chew him
Speaker 2: out in public like I think, in like the town square,
Speaker 2: basically a priest and then an older woman just like
Speaker 2: yell at him for being a fuck up in front
Speaker 2: of everyone.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And this works. I mean he does like one eighty,
Speaker 2: but it's way more effective than getting sent to jail totally,
Speaker 2: and going to Puerto Rico is like a sea change.
Speaker 2: His two main sea change moments about how he becomes
Speaker 2: who he becomes, and going to Puerto Rico is one
Speaker 2: of them. He did come back in a week later,
Speaker 2: go to jail for stealing a toaster. Okay, so he's
Speaker 2: not one eighty. New habits they take a little while
Speaker 2: to catch on, much like what also takes a while
Speaker 2: to catch on our products and services, And that's why
Speaker 2: you have to hear about them over and over again
Speaker 2: before they stick in your mind. And you know that
Speaker 2: we've had really bad sponsors lately. The main bad one
Speaker 2: is Reagan Gold, So go buy gold. That'll teach him.
Speaker 2: And we're back. Oh we should have thought of. Now
Speaker 2: that we're back from a break, I want to go
Speaker 2: back to being sponsored by really nice stuff. Historically some
Speaker 2: of the things that we got sponsored by. For a
Speaker 2: long time, we were sponsored by the Concept of Potatoes.
Speaker 2: We've also been sponsored well not officially, but our unofficial
Speaker 2: sponsors the concept of potatoes, okay, And we've also been
Speaker 2: sponsored by like a nice comb. The Happy Sleeping Dogs
Speaker 2: is a good sponsor for the show. So I'm wondering
Speaker 2: if you have any sponsors you'd like us. When Sophie
Speaker 2: is back, Sophie will get us sponsored by by whatever
Speaker 2: you want.
Speaker 3: You know, lately, I've been really into baby elephants in general,
Speaker 3: especially baby elephants bathing.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so if that's if that's a possibility.
Speaker 2: We can do it. Sophie is really good at shit,
Speaker 2: and this show is brought to you by baby elephants bathing.
Speaker 2: Go wash videos of baby elephants and see them be cute,
Speaker 2: and that is substantially better than buying a wrecking gold.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty six in Chicago, you have the Division
Speaker 2: Street riots. Chicago declared Puerto Rican Week, which included the
Speaker 2: city's first Puerto Rican parade. Cops were there, yeah, and
Speaker 2: the cops were super respect No, the cops were being cops.
Speaker 2: So they shot someone. They shot someone in the leg
Speaker 2: during the celebrations, and so a crowd showed up, and
Speaker 2: then cops sicked a dog on someone and the crowd
Speaker 2: went wild, and the rioting went on for three days,
Speaker 2: destroying fifty white owned businesses that ran through a Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Holy shit.
Speaker 2: And Shasha was sitting in jail during this, and he
Speaker 2: was just like for something else, maybe the toaster, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. And so he's just cheering it on, right,
Speaker 2: He's like, go, kids, go, this rules, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Other young lords are involved in the organizing in the
Speaker 2: wake of it for structural change. And a bunch of
Speaker 2: new groups pop up in the wake of this. And
Speaker 2: the most influential one, or the one that I keep
Speaker 2: writing about in the books that I was reading about
Speaker 2: this is the Latin American Defense Organization or LEDO latdo
Speaker 2: oh wow. And they rule. They spread across the country.
Speaker 2: They bring together working class Latin Americans. But the Young
Speaker 2: Lords they're not ready to be a socialist organization quite yet.
Speaker 2: In fact, they're starting to drift apart. Members grew up,
Speaker 2: they get married, they joined the military, They co to
Speaker 2: prison for a long time because they keep doing crime.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty eight, Cha Cha is in prison again.
Speaker 2: I think he's doing a sixty day stint for heroin possession.
Speaker 2: This is another thing no one likes talking about in
Speaker 2: all the history. Everyone who's listening has heard me go
Speaker 2: on about this before. But like, they always cut so
Speaker 2: much shit out of history books. They never talk about
Speaker 2: how a bunch of our heroes were drug users, how
Speaker 2: a bunch of our heroes were sex workers, a bunch
Speaker 2: of our heroes were like had specific political ideologies. There's
Speaker 2: all this stuff that gets cut out. And so I
Speaker 2: don't know much about Chasha's drug use. I do know
Speaker 2: a lot about how the Young Lords dealt with heroin
Speaker 2: use in New York, and we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1: Oh really interested him?
Speaker 2: Cool, It's really interesting. Yeah, like I'm I kept whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited about this. Everyone knows this. So he's
Speaker 2: only a sixty day stint for heroin possession and in prison.
Speaker 2: This is his second Sea change moment. A bunch of
Speaker 2: shit that happens solidifies his future politics. First, he's in
Speaker 2: prison when MLK is assassinated. Second, a bunch of Spanish
Speaker 2: speaking prisoners, including him, get thrown into solitary for basically
Speaker 2: no reason, and a guard tries to call him white
Speaker 2: in order to get black prisoners to beat him up
Speaker 2: to like race bait people against each other. But a
Speaker 2: black prisoner stood up for him, and that black prisoner
Speaker 2: said a few simple words that everyone needs to shout
Speaker 2: from time to time. Shut the fuck up, you pig.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so cha Chaz like, oh cross, racial solidarity is real, right,
Speaker 2: And while he's in solitary, he likes to read. And
Speaker 2: the Nation of Islam has prison is in prisons because
Speaker 2: we get arrested a lot, and they would get themselves
Speaker 2: jobs in prison libraries in order to provide radical books
Speaker 2: to people, which is fucking rad. And so he started
Speaker 2: reading Martin Luther King. He starts reading Malcolm X. He
Speaker 2: also started reading a book called The Seven Story Mountain,
Speaker 2: written by a radical Catholic monk named Thomas Merton.
Speaker 1: Oh kind of look that up immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. He was super social justice in his faith.
Speaker 2: He was really into inter faith understandings. Like all of
Speaker 2: his like theological books are about like why Catholicism isn't
Speaker 2: the only way even though it's his way or whatever,
Speaker 2: how different people from different religions can get along and
Speaker 2: understand each other and like including not just like the
Speaker 2: monotheistic religions, but like he writes a lot about I
Speaker 2: didn't write this in my script, but I think it
Speaker 2: was Buddhism, but I don't remember. And he's really into
Speaker 2: writing fight racism in war, and he has this quote,
Speaker 2: I really like, the world is full of great criminals
Speaker 2: with enormous power and they are in a death struggle
Speaker 2: with each other. It is a huge gang battle, using
Speaker 2: well meaning lawyers and policemen and clergymen as they're front,
Speaker 2: controlling papers, means of communication, and enrolling everybody in their armies.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, what is his name again? His name
Speaker 2: is Thomas Merton. I haven't read his books yet, but
Speaker 2: I really like this weird like, yeah, he reads them, Okay,
Speaker 2: he reads Malcolm as he reads Thomas Merton. And then
Speaker 2: he gets out of prison and he's like you know
Speaker 2: we need something like the Black Panthers. Good thing, I'm
Speaker 2: the leader of a gang. Nice what will he do?
Speaker 2: Who is to say you certainly can't go read a
Speaker 2: book or some article on some website. You have to
Speaker 2: wait until Wednesday for part two of this epic four
Speaker 2: part series on the Young Lords. But first, before people
Speaker 2: wait until Wednesday, they should hear more about you and
Speaker 2: what you've been working on and how people can find you.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: I actually am working on a new album, so that's
Speaker 3: really exciting. I just put out an album last year
Speaker 3: called Life on Earth. My band's called Hooray for the
Speaker 3: riff Raff. And you can find me on all the
Speaker 3: social media's, even though Twitter scares the fuck out of me,
Speaker 3: so I don't really hang out there. I'm like trying
Speaker 3: to figure out how to exist on the internet without
Speaker 3: it severely damaging me.
Speaker 1: I think we all are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Instagram, you know all those places you could
Speaker 3: probably see me on tour.
Speaker 1: You should do that definitely.
Speaker 2: When are you going on tour?
Speaker 1: I'll be on.
Speaker 3: Tour in May on the West Coast. I don't know
Speaker 3: when this will come out, come on in July then,
Speaker 3: oh cool, So I'll be on tour in May on
Speaker 3: the West coast and in July, I'll be like through
Speaker 3: the Midwest, cool and some other places.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and you seriously owe it to yourself to
Speaker 2: go check out Hooray for the riff Raff if you
Speaker 2: haven't heard it before, or if you came here to
Speaker 2: listen to this because you like Alinda. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 2: and I hope you stick around for Wednesday. And you
Speaker 2: can follow me on the internet at Magpie kill Joy
Speaker 2: on Twitter, which I also hate, but I'm there.
Speaker 1: You're so good at it though, thank you.
Speaker 2: All I do is get really sad about it at
Speaker 2: least once a week, and Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy, where
Speaker 2: I mostly post pictures of.
Speaker 1: My dog as I go hiking. Really cute dog.
Speaker 2: Thanks, I like him. And I will see everyone on Wednesday. Farewell, hello,
Speaker 2: and welcome to wha Acually, Sophie's not here so we
Speaker 2: can name it whatever we want. Welcome to Sophie Town,
Speaker 2: the only podcast where all of us are named Sophie
Speaker 2: and pretend like we live in a town called Sophie
Speaker 2: Town where only good things happen. No, I love, Yeah
Speaker 2: that's true. Yeah, Sophie, You've done a really good. I
Speaker 2: like what you've done with the place. And our audio
Speaker 2: editor is Sophie or this is cool. People did cool
Speaker 2: stuff which you probably knew because this is part two
Speaker 2: of a series for which I'll be your host, Margaret
Speaker 2: Sophie Killjoy and with me today is my guest Alinda
Speaker 2: Sophie Sagata, the one a. Yeah, are you doing a
Speaker 2: Linda on this day? That's totally different day than last day.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm doing good. I had a snack a slig bar,
Speaker 3: so I'm feeling great.
Speaker 1: I'm here in New Orleans. You know New Orleans also
Speaker 1: known as Sophie Town, right and yeah, yeah, doing good?
Speaker 3: Yeah, excited to talk about one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Sophie, I mean the Young Lord.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Our producer is Ian Sophie. Our theme music was written
Speaker 2: for us by un woman, and I'm going to drop
Speaker 2: that bit now. This is part two of our extra
Speaker 2: cool four parterer on the Young Lord's only the second
Speaker 2: topic to end up four parter and where we last
Speaker 2: left our heroes. You've got this guy named Cha Cha
Speaker 2: who's just been politicized in jail and then he gets
Speaker 2: out and he's the leader of a gang called the
Speaker 2: Young Lords. So he puts two to two together and
Speaker 2: decides to get some shit done. First, he tries to
Speaker 2: get shitpedne the normal way. He doesn't immediately be like, hey,
Speaker 2: the Young Lords now were radical socialists. He forms an
Speaker 2: activist group. He forms an activist group called the Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican Progressive Movement. Oh wow, it doesn't get off the ground. No,
Speaker 2: he's like, this doesn't really work. No one's like really
Speaker 2: excited to go join. I think this is an important lesson.
Speaker 2: No one's really going excited to go join the like
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah thing that.
Speaker 3: And then he's like, do you want to be a
Speaker 3: become a Young Lord? And people are like absolute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally yeah, Like our background is crime and our
Speaker 2: future is the overthrow of capitalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, you were like sign me up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's like, all right, well, I'm a gang
Speaker 2: leader and I need a bunch of people to try
Speaker 2: and get some stuff done, and we exist to defend
Speaker 2: ourselves from white racists. So fuck it. And I will
Speaker 2: say best as I can tell. Most of the history
Speaker 2: center on him a little bit too much. He's really great,
Speaker 2: he's cool, but in all of this, He's not alone.
Speaker 2: A few of the other Young Lords are with him
Speaker 2: from the start of all this change and like are
Speaker 2: part of all the radicalization and are largely left out
Speaker 2: of the histories because people kind of they pick a guy, right,
Speaker 2: and he seems like a great guy to have picked.
Speaker 2: I got no. You know, it's always worth pointing out
Speaker 2: the first thing that they did as the new well,
Speaker 2: they didn't change their name yet. Eventually they're the Young
Speaker 2: Lord's organization. But twenty of them show up to a meeting.
Speaker 2: There's a neighborhood meeting where a bunch of people are
Speaker 2: talking about gentrifying the neighborhood and like literally those huge
Speaker 2: trunks of it. So the Young Lords are very polite
Speaker 2: and calm, they said, politely through the whole thing, and
Speaker 2: then they point out the lack of Puerto Rican representation
Speaker 2: in the group making these decisions. And then they trashed
Speaker 2: the place after sitting very politely. Yeah, they like threw
Speaker 2: chairs around. Yeah. I feel like it just like emphasizes
Speaker 2: the sort of intimidation factor if they're like, oh, interesting, yes,
Speaker 2: and then smash it up. Then they went home and
Speaker 2: they studied. They just like sat down and fucking read
Speaker 2: and they talked to people, and they studied leftist movements
Speaker 2: and they like did their homework, and in the end
Speaker 2: they were like, all right, Black Panther Party, that's our model.
Speaker 2: And I think that the Black Panther Party, who again
Speaker 2: I haven't even done episode on yet, but they're like
Speaker 2: in the center of almost everything we're talking about. So
Speaker 2: many groups exist because of them, right, And so the
Speaker 2: Young Lords they put together a ten point program. And
Speaker 2: if Chascha had been a target for harassment from cops
Speaker 2: before when he was, you know, a gang leader with
Speaker 2: a long record, he has twice as much of one.
Speaker 2: Now he gets stopped and arrested like twice a week.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus.
Speaker 2: Everywhere the Young Lords go, the cops are there usually
Speaker 2: like already, I think, and this is really telling. Anti
Speaker 2: gang enforcement in the city of Chicago, including a new
Speaker 2: intelligence unit, started because gangs went political. It was fine
Speaker 2: when you had racist gangs of Irish and German youth,
Speaker 2: and then it was like they actually literally all just
Speaker 2: get city jobs. And then it was like fine ish
Speaker 2: when you have the newer non white gangs who just
Speaker 2: do crime. But once they go political.
Speaker 1: Then we can arrest you and like you can all
Speaker 1: fight each.
Speaker 3: Other and yeah, yeah, it's like you're staying busy fighting
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now when they're politicized, they're fucking scared. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: the oppression doesn't stop them. They went some of the
Speaker 2: things that they did in their early days. They defended
Speaker 2: welfare activist mothers who did a sit in to demand
Speaker 2: their back payments, like because they weren't getting paid, and
Speaker 2: so they went to security for them. They formally integrated.
Speaker 2: There was always apparently a not I don't know I always,
Speaker 2: but there was a women's auxiliary to the young lords
Speaker 2: called the lord Nets. And the women's role in this
Speaker 2: movement is going to increase over time, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about that and when they go tal yeah yeah, and
Speaker 2: going political is a huge part of it, right. So
Speaker 2: they formally integrate the women's auxiliary into the main group
Speaker 2: and then everyone, I believe, including the men, start starts
Speaker 2: working on offering childcare to their community. They also get
Speaker 2: together with a black gang to fundraise through community picnics,
Speaker 2: teach people about drug safety. They get toys for Christmas
Speaker 2: for kids, and like food for people's tables, and they're
Speaker 2: doing mutual aid and they're doing community defense and they're
Speaker 2: just like doing the shit that makes sixties groups so
Speaker 2: fucking cool.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile the city is like, we have to destroy
Speaker 3: this violent gang. Yeah exactly who were giving Christmas presents
Speaker 3: two children?
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they were stabbing people in the beach, the
Speaker 2: cops were like, you know boys. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: there was a community council meeting at a police station
Speaker 2: about what to do with the Young Lords or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so three to five hundred people, made many in
Speaker 2: purple berets, showed up to this community council meeting and
Speaker 2: then they disrupted it. They hung up signs on the
Speaker 2: walls with slogans like city law does not allow pigs
Speaker 2: on the street, and pigs need support centers to keep
Speaker 2: them off the street. They started pushing for what gets
Speaker 2: called or what they called Third World unity, welcoming in
Speaker 2: black and white members as well if they were working class.
Speaker 2: So working class people of all races were a to
Speaker 2: join the Young Lords.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, they didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, and when we talk the New York
Speaker 2: one will have even more information, or I have even
Speaker 2: more information about the multiracial makeup of the Young Lords.
Speaker 2: They threw a conference on the matter with Chicago Black
Speaker 2: Panther chairman Fred Hampton is the keynote speaker for this
Speaker 2: third world unity concept and trying to get everyone together.
Speaker 2: And then they joined up with this group. Have you
Speaker 2: ever I hadn't. Have you ever heard of a group
Speaker 2: called the Young Patriots?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: All right, imagine okay, well, first I'm gonna say, okay,
Speaker 2: so they form the Rainbow Coalition, that's what they because
Speaker 2: there's all the different you know, colors of people or whatever.
Speaker 2: And one of the groups is the Young Patriots, who
Speaker 2: are a leftist socialist street gang in Chicago who are
Speaker 2: white Appalachians who use the Confederate battle flag as the
Speaker 2: flag of their socialist movement. Anyway, can't see a Linda's
Speaker 2: eyes are like staring.
Speaker 1: Just like wait, my brain is bending, you know, and.
Speaker 2: I like laughing at them. I'm laughing at how incredibly
Speaker 2: this doesn't translate to modern politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Also I'm just like I was first even like, whoa
Speaker 3: Appalachian folks in Chicago?
Speaker 1: Like that was interesting to me? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, And that's actually the thing is that they were facing.
Speaker 2: It's not ethnic oppression, right, but they're facing a specific
Speaker 2: class oppression that is based on where they're from, right,
Speaker 2: because they're not just poor white people, but they're poor
Speaker 2: white Appalachians, and it's a different type of classism that
Speaker 2: still exists to this day, right, Like, and so they
Speaker 2: get called Hillbillies. They're poor as fuck, they're iced out
Speaker 2: of proper white society, and so they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: fuck you, Yankee pieces of wasps. Were doing our own
Speaker 2: thing or whatever. And they work to start interracial working
Speaker 2: class organizations, to get medical care to children and to
Speaker 2: end the draft. They tied in their struggle with poor
Speaker 2: oppressed people everywhere as part of the uprisings around the world.
Speaker 2: Their party platform specifically spoke out against cultural nationalism, which
Speaker 2: makes sense, right because they're white people, right, So yeah,
Speaker 2: you kind of just like can't do a nationalism if
Speaker 2: you're white, right in any given context. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you're Ireland trying to decolonize, as complicated, but that's like
Speaker 2: literally in Ireland, not some fucking Irish racist gang in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, they're just like doing all of the
Speaker 2: right stuffy. They first met the Panthers when they and
Speaker 2: the Panthers accidentally double booked a church in Lincoln Park
Speaker 2: to do a talk.
Speaker 3: That's really that's like a cute meeting minds, I know.
Speaker 2: And so then they just talked about their mutual class
Speaker 2: interests and anti war interests, right, because this is another
Speaker 2: thing that's like part of all of us too. You
Speaker 2: have the Vietnam War going on and right all of us.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking that, like we have the draft
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 3: My father actually went to Vietnam, so that was like
Speaker 3: a huge part of my growing.
Speaker 1: Up was learning.
Speaker 3: It was just learning through his eyes and like his
Speaker 3: experience as a marine, a Puerto Rican marine in Vietnam
Speaker 3: when he was super young, and it just like radicalized him, yeah,
Speaker 3: so much when he was able to make it home,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, when I.
Speaker 3: Was young, Like my father was very clear with me,
Speaker 3: you know, elementary school age, just like they put people
Speaker 3: of color, they put black people and Puerto Ricans on
Speaker 3: the front lines because they expected us to die and
Speaker 3: we were totally disposable. Just like that's what I was
Speaker 3: raised with, you know, was from that perspective.
Speaker 2: When I say that rules, I mean that rules that
Speaker 2: your dad knew that and passed that along, not that
Speaker 2: it rules that they did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a total dad ass.
Speaker 3: But that is like such a big part of like
Speaker 3: the background of this story that is hard for me
Speaker 3: to remember. I forget, like, oh yeah, at the same time,
Speaker 3: you guys were being fucking drafted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. There's so many different things that
Speaker 2: are happening in the late sixties, yeah, that it's hard
Speaker 2: to keep them all in your head at once and
Speaker 2: hard to realize that they're all absolutely part of each other. Right,
Speaker 2: And like you have the young Patriots with their Confederate
Speaker 2: battle flag, which it only makes sense as a like
Speaker 2: fuck you to Northerners, right, I mean it does not.
Speaker 2: I am not advocating that anyone call themselves patriots or flight. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the American either the North or the South flag not
Speaker 2: a good idea, but like yeah, yeah, And and so
Speaker 2: they they they meet up, right, and they're talking about
Speaker 2: anti warshit with the Panthers, And from then on, while
Speaker 2: they continue to fight for white working class, the white
Speaker 2: working class, they almost never appear in public to speak
Speaker 2: without Panthers or young Lords around to support them and
Speaker 2: to show into racial solidarity. And I suspect that this
Speaker 2: was like specifically a move if you're a white organizer
Speaker 2: to be like it's a little bit weird because it's
Speaker 2: a little bit tokenizing, but it's also a way of
Speaker 2: being like, you need to know, we are not organizing
Speaker 2: white people in contrast and against people of color, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And uh, let's see some of the shit they did
Speaker 2: by nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. I'm must skip ahead
Speaker 2: for them just because I'm doing a little side on
Speaker 2: the young Patriots. They're taking pages out of the Panther playbook.
Speaker 2: They organized free breakfast programs, they ran medical clinics, they
Speaker 2: organized clothing drives, they cop watched, and one of the
Speaker 2: main things that they did that they got remembered for
Speaker 2: is they took patient advocacy. And this is gonna time
Speaker 2: into young lords later too. They took patient advocacy. Seriously,
Speaker 2: people who had to go to the doctor in the
Speaker 2: communities at this like street gang of socialists, like we're
Speaker 2: taken care of. They would get a Patriot at their
Speaker 2: door to advocate for them and to come with them
Speaker 2: to their appointments and shit, whoa yeah, incredible. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: like trying to be a shitty classes doctor. And there's
Speaker 2: this like angry hillbilly who's just.
Speaker 1: Like berat Yeah, it's socialists.
Speaker 2: Just like you're gonna you're gonna treat him right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, especially for like older folks or just like
Speaker 3: I mean, that's something I always I always knew about,
Speaker 3: like the Young Lords at least was just like yeah,
Speaker 3: like very much connection with like older generation.
Speaker 2: You know totally and and and a lot of medical
Speaker 2: work that is like a huge thing that you, particularly
Speaker 2: in New York, are gonna do. We're gonna be talking
Speaker 2: about mostly next week.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They ran a medical clinic, the Young Patriots. They ran
Speaker 2: a medical clinic. This ends up the most famous of
Speaker 2: all their activities. It started off serving one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty people at dental and medical care. Cops fucked with
Speaker 2: it constantly. They arrested Patriots for trespassing on their own property.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: They fought it all in court. It took forever. Eventually
Speaker 2: they won and their clinic was back open and it
Speaker 2: served two thousand people for years, four years. It kept
Speaker 2: it up until nineteen seventy three. The Feds fucked with them, basically,
Speaker 2: and it also fucked with all of the churches that
Speaker 2: supported both them and the Young Lords, and the whole
Speaker 2: thing fell apart because of federal oppression, and anyone who's
Speaker 2: curious can listen to probably last week by the time
Speaker 2: you all are listening to this episode about the religious
Speaker 2: radicals and the movement of pacifists that brought down co
Speaker 2: intel Pro, or at least revealed it. Yeah, they're cool.
Speaker 3: There was a I went to the Bronx Museum years
Speaker 3: ago when I was first learning about the because there
Speaker 3: was a big exhibit about them, and one wall was
Speaker 3: just printed out papers of like co intil Pro findings. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes and just like phone recordings, just like spying
Speaker 3: on people, just like covered an entire.
Speaker 2: Wall, which is like a whole other like we're talking about.
Speaker 2: The draft is a big part of the background of this.
Speaker 2: It's like constant infiltration, constant more than just infiltration and monitoring,
Speaker 2: constant fucking with right, you know. Yeah. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the Young Lords. Sorry, that's the Young Patriots.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And that's the Rainbow Coalition. Yeah, the Young Lords, the
Speaker 2: Black Panthers, the Young Patriots. And then there's another Whitish
Speaker 2: group called Rising Up Angry, who are some of the
Speaker 2: more radical chunks of the Students for Democratic Society, who
Speaker 2: are mostly working class greasers from union families.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: I know, like I want them to show up on
Speaker 2: scooters or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but they look cool, and it's funny
Speaker 2: because I'm not. Again, I haven't like covered the Black
Speaker 2: Panthers deeply, but for anyone who doesn't have a basic understanding,
Speaker 2: they're a black power organization that I'm certain we'll talk
Speaker 2: about more or later. They scared the ever living fuck
Speaker 2: out of the US government. They were violently repressed through
Speaker 2: direct application of force and through cointel. Pro Black Panthers
Speaker 2: were into black power, by which I mean a declaration
Speaker 2: of self determination for black people, and it included such
Speaker 2: ideas as to quote quote from this book The Young
Speaker 2: Lords by Johanna Fernandez, which is the main source, the
Speaker 2: best book that I'm able to find about the Young Lords,
Speaker 2: she says that black panther black power is quote the
Speaker 2: right to arm self defense against white racist violence, black pride,
Speaker 2: and the development of independent black political leadership free from
Speaker 2: pressures to accommodate the interests of northern white liberals. That's
Speaker 2: the Rainbow Coalition. Let's talk more about the Lords. By
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, the Young Lords had their own newspaper
Speaker 2: which covered all the protests they were up to. It
Speaker 2: talked about imperialism, It talked about what connected, It connected
Speaker 2: everything to what was happening in Puerto Rico to what
Speaker 2: was happening in Vietnam and Africa. It had kind of
Speaker 2: an unoriginal name. It was called why l Ylo or
Speaker 2: Young Lord's Organization. It's to the point, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet it had great graphic design, I think.
Speaker 2: So, I know the New York one. Did I know
Speaker 2: more about the New York one, which is named after
Speaker 2: one of your songs, But we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: The paper covered a ton of stuff, including what was
Speaker 2: going on and their sister struggles like the Panthers. It
Speaker 2: had a Pig of the Month feature covering a local cop.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 2: I can't figure out why the cops get fucking with him,
Speaker 2: but you know whatever.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And they were all organizing, and there were other organizations
Speaker 2: they were buds with, like LATTO, the Latin American Defense Organization,
Speaker 2: and so they provided security for LADDO. It didn't they
Speaker 2: didn't just like perfectly overnight stop being the doing usual
Speaker 2: gang shit. It took a while, but their connections in
Speaker 2: the gang world were really useful to them. One of
Speaker 2: their own was killed by a cop at a birthday party.
Speaker 2: I can't remember the details, but he like like, walks
Speaker 2: out on this walks out of the house, and CoP's
Speaker 2: murder him. Right the cop was acquitted. This is going
Speaker 2: to be shocking to anyone living in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: A cop got away with murdering someone because so much
Speaker 2: has changed since. Oh god, that's depressing sarcasm.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: The cop was acquitted. There was a march of thousands,
Speaker 2: including members of a ton of other gangs with names
Speaker 2: like the Cannibals and the Health Stompers, and this gang
Speaker 2: that was Irish, Black and Puerto Rican called the Almighty
Speaker 2: Harrison Gents, who I believe are still around. Oh really yeah,
Speaker 2: And I can't like again, I'm not like I tried
Speaker 2: doing research about the Almighty Harrison Johnsen. It's like I
Speaker 2: don't have enough context to make useful declarations about what
Speaker 2: gangs are up to. I'm not trying to ye. The
Speaker 2: Young Lords are an example of gangs do good many times,
Speaker 2: you know, but power power structures are complicated, you know.
Speaker 2: And this gang unity at this march scared the ever
Speaker 2: loving piss out of the cops. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is like where the Warriors comes from, right,
Speaker 2: but like, oh it's true, but the whole like there's
Speaker 2: more of us than there are cops, can you dig it?
Speaker 2: Thing like this is what fucking scares like when the
Speaker 2: working class realizes that they not only do we have
Speaker 2: the numbers, but we even literally already sometimes have the
Speaker 2: organizations and the fighting spirit if it could be pointed
Speaker 2: in the right direction. Yeah, it's the United It didn't last,
Speaker 2: but what does last is the cuteness of baby elephants
Speaker 2: bathing themselves.
Speaker 1: Our sponsor, our sponsor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and anything that you hear during this ad break
Speaker 2: that isn't about baby elephants was a mistake. And you
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Speaker 2: you your choice. Here's some ads, so we're back. I
Speaker 2: for one, particularly enjoyed the one where it was four
Speaker 2: baby elephants and they were bathing each other. That was
Speaker 2: the best of the ads that I what was your
Speaker 2: favorite of the ads that we just listened to that
Speaker 2: were all about baby elephants.
Speaker 3: Now, I always love when a mom walks in and
Speaker 3: starts teaching the ways of elephant nature.
Speaker 1: That's like one of them's. Sure if I were to
Speaker 1: make me cry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that may have been the best of
Speaker 2: the odds that you all just listened to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it'd be really I hope that someday we can just
Speaker 2: have Well, I guess it's not a visual medium, all right,
Speaker 2: so the young line.
Speaker 3: I was so stoked that wasn't a visual medium. By
Speaker 3: the way, anything to not be perceived, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I know, I understand. Trans Day of Visibility was the
Speaker 2: other day. I used a picture from two years ago
Speaker 2: because I was like, I'm not fucking brushing my hair,
Speaker 2: my god, makeup?
Speaker 1: Fuck that you mothers.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, trans day of talking to a microphone queer
Speaker 2: day of Yeah, microphones are great be observed by non strangers.
Speaker 2: That's always my favorite. But what was very visible was
Speaker 2: the May fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine, occupation of the McCormick
Speaker 2: Theological Seminary by the Young Lords in Chicago. This will
Speaker 2: not be the first time the Young Lord's the last
Speaker 2: time that the Young Lords take over at church. Basically,
Speaker 2: just spontaneously during one of the marches for their dead friend.
Speaker 2: The McCormick Theological Seminary is part of this urban renewal
Speaker 2: campaign to bulldoze everyone's houses and so people who don't
Speaker 2: like that, and I don't know if it's actually related,
Speaker 2: but I think it's really cute that the other main
Speaker 2: story I've talked on the show that takes place in
Speaker 2: Chicago also centers around a McCormick. It was the McCormick
Speaker 2: factory in eighteen eighty six that gave us the strike
Speaker 2: that led to the Haymarket affair, which we talked about
Speaker 2: in our first ever episode, when immigrant anarchists face down
Speaker 2: the Chicago police and someone hucked a bomb at them
Speaker 2: and lots of bad stuff happened. But if you want
Speaker 2: to hear about nineteenth century labor organizing, go back to
Speaker 2: our very first episode and you can hear about that.
Speaker 2: It's all part of the fight for the eight hour workday,
Speaker 2: which included bombs and guns. Anyway back in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: when they occupied the McCormick Seminary factory, no Theological Seminary
Speaker 2: instead of the McCormick harvester factory, a bunch of the
Speaker 2: seminary students joined in, Oh wow, yeah, Like this is
Speaker 2: a thing that comes up a bunch is that people,
Speaker 2: I don't know, people are more radical than we give
Speaker 2: them credit for, like random bystanders sometimes you know, not
Speaker 2: always sometimes bysenders. The university conceded to most of their demands,
Speaker 2: which included shit like when you rebuild, you'd better include
Speaker 2: parks and affordable housing and a daycare center and a
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican cultural center and a people's law office. Next,
Speaker 2: they went on to occupy Armitage Avenue Methodist Church, where
Speaker 2: they'd been meeting, which declined them to They basically went
Speaker 2: and were like, hey, we meet here, can we rent
Speaker 2: space to do childcare and free food programs? And the
Speaker 2: Methodist church was like no, And so they're like, are
Speaker 2: we gonna do it anyway? Though, And when they did
Speaker 2: it anyway, the minister joined them and was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I mean I wanted to be able to do it, damn.
Speaker 2: And the church turned into a center for social services,
Speaker 2: including a free clinic. I just they just did so
Speaker 2: much shit. We're like, we're not even halfway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also just like pushing people to live by
Speaker 1: their ideals.
Speaker 3: Like also, it's like they're pushing the church to be like,
Speaker 3: this is what you guys are talking about, like helping
Speaker 3: children and people who need help.
Speaker 1: So it's also kind of like trusting.
Speaker 3: It's giving them the opportunity of being like, so just
Speaker 3: join us and live by your ideals.
Speaker 2: Actually, you know yeah, And I think that's what a
Speaker 2: lot of radicals did is they just went up and
Speaker 2: they're like, yo, you want to like do the thing
Speaker 2: that you say you want to do. And a ton
Speaker 2: of them were like, yeah, I want to do that,
Speaker 2: and a ton of them were like no, I just
Speaker 2: prefer having a position of power within a structure and
Speaker 2: using it to make my life thase. And that is
Speaker 2: that's religion. It's both of those things, you know. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: But for this next part, we're going to go to
Speaker 2: a different part of the country. Have you ever heard
Speaker 2: of a city called New York City.
Speaker 1: I've been there. Oh okay, okay, that's where That's where
Speaker 1: I was born.
Speaker 2: It has a very unoriginal name, I'll just say. But
Speaker 2: first it was Dutch and it was New Amsterdam. I
Speaker 2: like doing my little weird history and zoom outs some
Speaker 2: different places. It was Dutch and it was New Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: And then the English grabbed it from the Dutch and
Speaker 2: gave it to the Duke of York, so it became
Speaker 2: New York. The state is named after the city. Then
Speaker 2: the Dutch grabbed it back and named it New Orange.
Speaker 2: Then England get no exactly, this is my theory. The
Speaker 2: English got it back, thank god, and changed it to
Speaker 2: New York. Very rarely am I excited when the English
Speaker 2: take things. But could you imagine an alternate world where
Speaker 2: New York was named New Orange. I think New York
Speaker 2: City would not be an important place.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not, although like Oranges are great, yeah, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't have the same 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, the York.
Speaker 2: I think Newark would be the center of culture of
Speaker 2: the United States of America instead of New York. Wow,
Speaker 2: because it's a nicer than New Orange. Yeah, So New
Speaker 2: York City fine place. I actually really like New York
Speaker 2: City for as much as I'm like totally a country
Speaker 2: mouse right now. So New York is fucking amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're going to do a city, it's like
Speaker 1: you might as well go to the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might as well be like, be a fucking city. Yeah, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah. I get the advantage of cities where everyone
Speaker 2: still has a single family homes crammed full of too
Speaker 2: many people, and you can get nice food around the corner,
Speaker 2: but those ones you have to drive around.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Being a New Yorker, that definitely is. It's not a
Speaker 3: part of my experience. I'm terrible driver. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 3: stuck in places that I can bike around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is why you know when Hurry for the
Speaker 2: riff Raff comes to town, because the tour bus is
Speaker 2: crashed into the venu every single time. You get a
Speaker 2: new tour bus every time that's here, like rock and
Speaker 2: roll thing. Instead of setting the guitar and firet's start away. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so New York City. The Young Lords start up in
Speaker 2: New York City too, and this crew starts with very
Speaker 2: different routes. Well, it gets presented as very different routes.
Speaker 2: But I don't want to pitch this because the Chicago
Speaker 2: branch was started by preteens looking to fight back against
Speaker 2: local white bullies and racists, and they wound up socialists
Speaker 2: and communists and shit through that work. The New York
Speaker 2: branch got started by radical political organizers, mostly communists and
Speaker 2: socialists m okay, who came out of the gate with
Speaker 2: that revolution stuff. Right. Most of them were college students,
Speaker 2: but there were college students from poor neighborhoods, many of
Speaker 2: the first of their families to go to college. Most
Speaker 2: of them were Puerto Rican, though at least one this
Speaker 2: person was black, and not Puerto Rican black, but African
Speaker 2: American black.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And is this thing where it's like people talk about
Speaker 2: like the first and their family go to college, as
Speaker 2: if it's the sort of like kind of upward mobility
Speaker 2: American dream, like liberally thing or something. But it's it's
Speaker 2: not a la la la American dream thing. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if it always is, but it certainly isn't
Speaker 2: in this case. Some of the founders of the New
Speaker 2: York Young Lords were the first wave of people integrating
Speaker 2: school systems, and they grew They grew up fighting with
Speaker 2: their fists and community organization against racist abuse from fellow students,
Speaker 2: from teachers, and from police. They had to fight all
Speaker 2: of those people. So I would argue that even though
Speaker 2: they're the college educated communists, they're not actually that different
Speaker 2: from the Chicago Lords in the end in terms of
Speaker 2: their roots.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty nine, they heard about the Young Lords
Speaker 2: through the Black Panthers. They the Black Panthers had an
Speaker 2: interview with Cha Cha in their newspaper. In it, Chasha
Speaker 2: was saying that they were a class forward, anti imperialist
Speaker 2: organization and that was something that they were in a
Speaker 2: particularly good place to understand as Puerto Ricans. Chasha said, quote,
Speaker 2: we have all kinds of people, a rainbow of people
Speaker 2: among Puerto Ricans, and that's why this is a class struggle.
Speaker 2: So they'se aspiring New York Lords. They take a road
Speaker 2: trip to Chicago and they met the Young Lord's organization
Speaker 2: and they're like, yeah, this is what's up, Like, all right,
Speaker 2: we're gonna start the New York chapter and the Chicago chapters.
Speaker 2: Like great, I guess we're the Chicago chapter instead of
Speaker 2: just the Young Lords, you know WHOA very exciting yeah,
Speaker 2: And their arrival in New York City was specifically really
Speaker 2: well timed because the radical scene was in trouble because
Speaker 2: of the Panther twenty one frame up. And I've talked
Speaker 2: about it, like really briefly the show and I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about it really briefly again, but still haven't
Speaker 2: dived into it. Twenty one Black Panthers had just been
Speaker 2: arrested in New York City. They had been accused of
Speaker 2: bombing and sniping, of planning to bomb in snipe cop stations.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows it's a frame up, and as a result,
Speaker 2: the police had an even worse reputation than usual in
Speaker 2: New York. Everyone was found not guilty at trial in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, in the most expensive and longest trial
Speaker 2: in New York's history to that point. Under oath, the
Speaker 2: shitty infiltrators admitted that the violence had been their ideas basically,
Speaker 2: and Afeni Shakur Tupac, Shakor's mother was one of the defendants.
Speaker 2: She got the undercovers to admit under oath that they
Speaker 2: had betrayed their own community. And if you want to
Speaker 2: hear more about her, I like doing my little connections
Speaker 2: to other episodes in the In the Stonewall episode, we
Speaker 2: can hear more about her because she's one of the
Speaker 2: Stonewall rioters. Because the jail she was in the Women's
Speaker 2: House of Detention was across the street from the Stonewall
Speaker 2: in and they all rioted in solidarity with the queers outside,
Speaker 2: and or we're all trying to escape and or a
Speaker 2: bunch of queers themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah wait, this is two bucks mom.
Speaker 2: Yeah whoa gay woman who rioted for Stonewall from inside
Speaker 2: the jail that was on the same street as Stonewall.
Speaker 1: Damn No, I I had no idea.
Speaker 2: I didn't either until I was working on the Stonewall
Speaker 2: episode and my friend Hugh Ryan has been a guest before,
Speaker 2: was like, you need to make sure to include the
Speaker 2: House of Detention in it. And I was like, I
Speaker 2: had never even heard no idea that part of the
Speaker 2: rioters were prisoners, you know, speaking of people I haven't,
Speaker 2: but I guess I haven't spoken about people who are
Speaker 2: often invisibilized, but prisoners often invisibilized in struggle. So this
Speaker 2: is the backdrop for the young lords because the the
Speaker 2: police are on their back foot. They're just they've just
Speaker 2: been deeply embarrassed. They're not as set up to cope
Speaker 2: with this new threat. But at the same time time,
Speaker 2: the Black Panthers in in New York and actually kind
Speaker 2: of across the US by this, but are really fucked
Speaker 2: right and are like not as well organized anymore because
Speaker 2: they've just taken this massive blow. So enter the Young Lords.
Speaker 2: Some of the founding members were Black Americans, and we
Speaker 2: talked about this earlier and you had some goods to
Speaker 2: say about There have been tension between black and Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican communities in New York. There was a but there's
Speaker 2: also a decades long history of solidarity, especially around instances
Speaker 2: of police murder, such as in nineteen sixty four. You
Speaker 2: have the Harlem Riots, which are remembered as the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four Harlem Riots, which is a terrible name for them.
Speaker 2: Not well, okay, this is too long for a name,
Speaker 2: but it's a more descriptive name. When a white off
Speaker 2: duty cop murdered a fifteen year old black kid named
Speaker 2: James Powell, and people were justifiably upset by this. I
Speaker 2: think it's a racket. Before he was killed, James Powell
Speaker 2: was part of a small group of black and Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican students who were being harassed in a act for
Speaker 2: congregating near a school. And during one fifteenth month, during
Speaker 2: one fifteen month period ending in early nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: the nypdad killed nine Puerto Rican children. Because the police
Speaker 2: are not an institution that is a positive force in
Speaker 2: our society. I'll just go with that. But don't worry.
Speaker 2: White people had solidarity too with the cops.
Speaker 1: Oh god.
Speaker 2: Uh when the mayor tried to pass a really lackluster
Speaker 2: police review board. I think after this killing. I can't remember,
Speaker 2: but four thousand signatures against a really lackluster police review
Speaker 2: board were gathered. The white conservatives went all out on
Speaker 2: this campaign in order to stop a civilian review board
Speaker 2: or the fucking police. Oh my god, because nothing ever changes.
Speaker 2: They founded the totally legitimate grassroots organization called Citizens Committee
Speaker 2: against Civilian Review Boards, which had a total of three
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy billboards, twenty storefronts, and thousands of people
Speaker 2: door to door canvascene. They advertised in newspapers, TV radio,
Speaker 2: and the ads would feature like pictures of black and
Speaker 2: brown teenagers with switchblades and scared white women. Holy shit, yeah,
Speaker 2: is fucked up? Yeah, and it worked at.
Speaker 1: That point too.
Speaker 3: That's like a high tech, like fucking media campaign I
Speaker 3: know at that time period.
Speaker 2: Honestly, like I haven't seen yeah, like yeah, like storefronts,
Speaker 2: I guess that must have been not like how you
Speaker 2: did it before. There was other more media or whatever,
Speaker 2: but twenty storefronts where you could go in and I
Speaker 2: guess like organize and learn against the police being overseen
Speaker 2: by the people who live in the city. Like it
Speaker 2: wasn't even like some like a cab campaign, you know,
Speaker 2: like no, just like we're checking in yeah basically, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: Like it's like body cams. That's one of these things
Speaker 2: where it's like, yeah, I guess it's good in the abstract,
Speaker 2: but like it's not. It doesn't stop the things, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is the this is the New York that
Speaker 2: the Young Lords start in. Right there, white people are
Speaker 2: being real racist and defending the cops. The cops are
Speaker 2: being real racist and killing the Puerto Rican children and
Speaker 2: black kids. And the youngest of these Founding Lords in
Speaker 2: New York was fourteen. Most of them were college age,
Speaker 2: but the fourteen year old joined as part of an
Speaker 2: arts program that helped found the New York City chapter
Speaker 2: that was like one of the groups that did it.
Speaker 2: The founding was an arts arts group. The least cool
Speaker 2: of the Founding Lords was a guy named Roy Henya,
Speaker 2: and he was the least cool because he was an
Speaker 2: undercover cop.
Speaker 1: Oh nice right from the beginning. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Their first public appearance was if you want to pick
Speaker 2: one place in New York City where you think maybe
Speaker 2: some like radicals met up. I'm curious whether this will
Speaker 2: work or not.
Speaker 1: Just one place. Yeah, I don't know, like a public library.
Speaker 2: No, that would have been a good guess. Tompkins Square Park.
Speaker 1: My humble beginning. I know, that's often where I call that.
Speaker 1: That's my early education.
Speaker 2: I think when a Lynda and I met, I was
Speaker 2: sometimes sleeping in Tompkins Square Park during the day because
Speaker 2: I hadn't found a squad to live in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they open it early in the morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You literally walk around all night, or
Speaker 2: you go to a party and you hang out a
Speaker 2: party all night, and then you go to Tompkin's Park
Speaker 2: and you go to sleep in the park. And that's
Speaker 2: probably where I mid sung now yeah, yeah, you say
Speaker 2: look at us now? Is that we said?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I said, you take a nice now, yeah,
Speaker 1: also look at us. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is where the Young Lords have their first
Speaker 2: public appearance in New York on July twenty six.
Speaker 1: So connected, I know this history.
Speaker 2: That's one thing that's cool about New York City. Is
Speaker 2: you can be like, oh, on the following street and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, like a lot of things happened there,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: On July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty nine, there was a
Speaker 2: commemoration of the Cuban Revolution organized by a ton of
Speaker 2: New York City leftists and the Young Lords, and the
Speaker 2: Young Lords showed up in purple berets, berets berets and
Speaker 2: black fatigues. Brets would be cute though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They had purple breads, definitely, and.
Speaker 2: They had their banner a Cuban flag with an AK
Speaker 2: forty seven superimposed. They're not subtle.
Speaker 1: At all.
Speaker 2: Their chairman is a poet who spent some time in
Speaker 2: prison and came out of community organizer. And his name
Speaker 2: is Felipe Luciano, a.
Speaker 1: Real g I've met him before. Shit really, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty fucking cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He gave a speech in Tompkins Square Park on
Speaker 2: July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty nine. And this is their
Speaker 2: first appearance. Their first action came out not long after,
Speaker 2: and they called it, well, I'm not going to tell
Speaker 2: you what they called it, because it wasn't called Products
Speaker 2: and Services. But that's what we're going to cut to
Speaker 2: right now, it's products and services, because I don't have
Speaker 2: usually just to tell everyone how the show runs. Basically,
Speaker 2: Sophie is like, do a fucking ad transition? What the
Speaker 2: fuck that's And here we are without Sophie, lost in
Speaker 2: the wilderness.
Speaker 1: Our fearless leader due the curse that I brought upon
Speaker 1: this show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been things keep happening to all of us,
Speaker 2: all of the anywhere I had the script, I was like,
Speaker 2: and it's our second four part. It's because today I
Speaker 2: had to go through and change it to be our
Speaker 2: our second four part because this is going to be
Speaker 2: the first four partter. But we've had to delay multiple
Speaker 2: times this recording because of courses that we won't talk
Speaker 2: too much about. But yeah, yeah, but yeah, speaking of
Speaker 2: cursed objects, buy some gold with reagans based on it.
Speaker 2: That'll make you happy, healthier, younger, more attractive. Absolutely nothing
Speaker 2: says smart financial decisions, like what if we got a
Speaker 2: crypto ad? Anyway, here's some ads and we'rebeca and so
Speaker 2: far iHeartRadio hasn't kicked us off for talking shit on
Speaker 2: all their advertisers. We'll see how long they last. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like I always worry that I'm just doing the
Speaker 2: thing where it's like by talking shit on them, I'm
Speaker 2: just like being edgy and then like making and like
Speaker 2: more appealing or whatever. I just like to fucking feed
Speaker 2: my dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like anyway, their first action, the Young Lord's it's not
Speaker 2: long after their appearance in nineteen sixty nine. They call
Speaker 2: it the Garbage Offensive, and this is a reference. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is like they do a lot of really cool shit.
Speaker 1: This is legend.
Speaker 2: Yeah fuck yeah cool. It's a reference to the Tet
Speaker 2: Offensive and when the viet Cong turns some shit around
Speaker 2: a year earlier in the Vietnam War. So to tie
Speaker 2: it all into like we hate America and the Imperial government,
Speaker 2: you know. The the first thing they did was actually
Speaker 2: they just went around fucking talk to people. They walked
Speaker 2: around East Harlem, their own neighborhoods, and they asked people
Speaker 2: what was wrong, what was on their minds, like, and
Speaker 2: they decided that the first thing they should do was
Speaker 2: something about all the garbage that wasn't getting picked up.
Speaker 2: There's there were mountains of garbage at the time, Whole
Speaker 2: abandoned buildings full of garbage, sidewalks full of garbage, and
Speaker 2: This is because there's a bunch of complicated reasons, but
Speaker 2: mostly just classism and racism.
Speaker 1: The like.
Speaker 2: People didn't the garbage collectors just would ignore those neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: They didn't bother putting in enough garbage cans at the time,
Speaker 2: they didn't even use garbage bags in the garbage cans,
Speaker 2: so the whole garbage can to get picked up, and
Speaker 2: so garbage goes everywhere. And lots of reasons, but classessm
Speaker 2: and racism at the core of it. So they go
Speaker 2: to the sanitation department. They try. I love how like
Speaker 2: radicals like, You're always like they just started off blowing
Speaker 2: people up, and you're like, no, they started off by
Speaker 2: they went to the sanitation department and we're like, can
Speaker 2: we have some trash bags and brooms? And the sanitation
Speaker 2: department said, well, what if we give you a bunch
Speaker 2: of racial slurs instead?
Speaker 1: Wow, really throwing them a curveball.
Speaker 3: I thine, like, can you just give us some bags
Speaker 3: and brooms so you can clean our neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And they're like, no, we're gonna yell racist shit at
Speaker 2: you because we're to racists. Yeah, people, I feel like
Speaker 2: white people sometimes think that racism is more subtle than
Speaker 2: it is, you know. Yeah, so they stole a bunch
Speaker 2: of brooms from them getting called racist. That's as best
Speaker 2: as I can tell either way. About thirty five young
Speaker 2: lords started literally just keeping the streets of East Harlem
Speaker 2: clean while wearing their uniforms every Sunday. But this wasn't
Speaker 2: quite the This is like worth trying, but this still
Speaker 2: wasn't quite the move. They couldn't single handedly do it.
Speaker 2: There's just thirty five of them, and it's just sort
Speaker 2: of volunteerism. Doing that work put them in the public eye,
Speaker 2: and it put them in conversation with people who mostly
Speaker 2: assumed they were there with the government or some church. Okay,
Speaker 2: they got some recruits, but they didn't get a mass
Speaker 2: of them, and it also didn't clean the streets. It
Speaker 2: wasn't enough. So they stepped it up to doing the thing.
Speaker 2: That's the epic thing. Yeah, they gathered a ton of trash.
Speaker 2: If you have any like versions of the story, I'll
Speaker 2: love to hear them, because it's like I know about
Speaker 2: this from books. You know, they gathered it.
Speaker 1: Well from books?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Okay, they gathered a ton of
Speaker 2: trash from empty lots, including old mattresses and couches and such,
Speaker 2: took it over to Third Avenue, which is a you
Speaker 2: know avenue that was used by the rich to move
Speaker 2: across Manhattan, and dumped it into the street. And then
Speaker 2: they did this a bunch on various thoroughfairs, just over
Speaker 2: and over again. They did it daily for months.
Speaker 1: Heany, God, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, he's heard like the lore as if it
Speaker 3: was like this one event, which of course it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Ye think about it.
Speaker 2: There is one that is the one event, but all
Speaker 2: of this happens first to build up to it, right, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: for months they just dumped trash daily in the middle
Speaker 2: of fucking Third Ave or any other avenue that uh
Speaker 2: like law abiding white people or whatever you use.
Speaker 1: Like inconveniences rich people. Basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a more effective tactic than the
Speaker 2: volunteerism on almost every metric the city was for to
Speaker 2: deal with the garbage because it was blocking the streets
Speaker 2: that white people used. Hundreds of people started joining in,
Speaker 2: creating the kind of spaces where people get to know
Speaker 2: each other and hang out because the social fabric has
Speaker 2: been disrupted. Yeah, and the young lords would lead impromptu
Speaker 2: discussions and let people air out their grievances and these
Speaker 2: like temporary autonomous zones that were being created. Wow, and
Speaker 2: then when the cops came, they just take off their
Speaker 2: berets and take off and running and they never got caught. Plus,
Speaker 2: the other important metric which to judge actions is did
Speaker 2: you get to build barricades in the middle of the street,
Speaker 2: And the answer was yes, and it's always fun. On
Speaker 2: August seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine, they figured out how to
Speaker 2: have even more fun. What do you think is better
Speaker 2: than a barricade in the middle of a street?
Speaker 1: Setting the barricade on fire? Yes, osctly, So.
Speaker 2: They called for a mass action. Loads of people did
Speaker 2: this particular garbage action and then somehow it's spontaneously caught
Speaker 2: fire after some people from the neighborhood poured gas hut
Speaker 2: and lit it with a match. Damn, And the whole
Speaker 2: next day there's a six block radius of East Harlem
Speaker 2: that was barricaded and people were partying. And it's interesting too,
Speaker 2: right because you have this like the riots are like
Speaker 2: trashing their neighborhoods blah blah blah blah blah thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: one of the things they were doing is flipping over cars.
Speaker 2: And the thing is they were flipping over all the
Speaker 2: abandoned cars because the city used to have no means
Speaker 2: in place to deal with abandoned cars, so they just
Speaker 2: would wind up in poor neighborhoods. Yeah, yeah, totally and
Speaker 2: be like, well, let the fucking poor brown people deal
Speaker 2: with it, fuck them, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they were like, all right, let's flip over all
Speaker 2: these fucking abandoned cars that got abandoned here, you know.
Speaker 2: And so the cops declared it a riot, even though
Speaker 2: it seems like a block party to me, and they
Speaker 2: sent helicopters me. While the young lords are giving talks
Speaker 2: about how to tie sanitation issues into larger systemic problems,
Speaker 2: they had a press release with a list of demands,
Speaker 2: which included stuff like, put these are wild demands, these
Speaker 2: are absolute terrorists. Put trash cans on our streets and
Speaker 2: pick up the trash, and not have only white sanitation workers,
Speaker 2: and also give the sanitation workers a raise. Yeah they're cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and also no more of this weird shit where for
Speaker 2: a while, in order to get your trash picked up
Speaker 2: you had to bribe the workers. Oh wow, So that
Speaker 2: was their demands.
Speaker 3: May I chime in and is this when Quang Gonzalez
Speaker 3: was the press secretary.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. I kind of hardly didn't go
Speaker 2: with names on a lot of this, so please tell.
Speaker 3: Me, Well, Huang Gonzalez of democracy now was I know
Speaker 3: they're like head of press, like was the person that
Speaker 3: spoke to the press.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if he was around for this action
Speaker 1: if it was later on.
Speaker 2: You know what's funny is because of all the delays,
Speaker 2: I wrote this script several months ago, and I don't
Speaker 2: remember whether he's someone that someone told me about after
Speaker 2: I finished the script or if he's in here. So
Speaker 2: there's a chance because I do talk about some of
Speaker 2: the press stuff a little bit later. The answer is
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was there for the big famous stuff that
Speaker 1: we're going to get to as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah cool, coolah, But just incredible that they had like
Speaker 3: this organization and they were like, all right, we have
Speaker 3: our demands. They were also like very bold but also
Speaker 3: very reasonable, like not even reasonable, and just like, oh
Speaker 3: you're being reasonable. You're not asking for the oppressive forces,
Speaker 3: like for too much stuff. It's just like this would
Speaker 3: make our lives better. And also it's.
Speaker 2: Bold, yeah, totally yeah, the radical demand of what if
Speaker 2: there were garbage cans on the street and then the
Speaker 2: garbage can picker it like took it out? No it,
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: And and the fact that it's a radical demand just
Speaker 2: shows us so much about what's happening, you know, the
Speaker 2: all white sanitation workers. It's actually this funny conflict, Like
Speaker 2: I have a generally positive impression of unions, right, but
Speaker 2: unions are not always inherently good or often do bad things.
Speaker 2: And in this case, it was the Italian American Sanitation Union,
Speaker 2: which was very racist, okay, and was like holding control
Speaker 2: over who got to be a garbage or sanitation worker.
Speaker 2: They didn't win most of their demands in this particular
Speaker 2: go of it, but they won nonetheless. They won in
Speaker 2: two ways. First, they showed themselves in other people that
Speaker 2: collective direct action is an incredibly effective method of accomplishing change.
Speaker 2: They got rid of a ton of trash because they
Speaker 2: fucking just got rid of it. And two, they fundamentally
Speaker 2: changed how sanitation worked in New York City.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Sanitation became a hot topic issue in the mayoral race
Speaker 2: which was happening that year. And so each side was
Speaker 2: one upping the other about how they were going to
Speaker 2: get the trash pickup to be good in the city. Interesting,
Speaker 2: and the city changed how it did trash. This is
Speaker 2: when they started putting plastic bags into the trash cans,
Speaker 2: and dumping schedules were changed, mechanics were put on standby
Speaker 2: to fixed trucks. In three years, the city went from
Speaker 2: meeting seventy seven percent of its trash pickup per day
Speaker 2: to ninety seven point eight percent of the trash pickup
Speaker 2: per day.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: Direct action gets the fucking goods, Like seriously, and.
Speaker 3: Not to mention like what I've said before about like
Speaker 3: reaching out to older generations, like well, from what I've
Speaker 3: read about this event, a major thing was.
Speaker 1: That older folks were like, we trust you because you're
Speaker 1: actually listening to us, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it became a thing of like we we
Speaker 3: believe that you young, you know, like radical kids are
Speaker 3: actually caring about what we want as well.
Speaker 1: And I just think that's really powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is such a good point. And the fact
Speaker 2: that the first thing they did was a listening project.
Speaker 2: They went and they were like, yo, what's up. What
Speaker 2: makes your life harden. You know, what can we do
Speaker 2: something about instead of like, I feel like it's really
Speaker 2: easy as a radical to be like I care about this,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna go do.
Speaker 1: This, you know, yeah, or I think this would be
Speaker 1: good for you, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where it's real bad. Yeah yeah. So yeah, uh,
Speaker 2: they won, not completely. They changed the face of the
Speaker 2: city by a combination of organized and spontaneous direct action,
Speaker 2: which I think also rules right because it wasn't entirely spontaneous.
Speaker 2: They organized that event right, like, you know, And they
Speaker 2: also tripled or quadrupled size in a matter of weeks
Speaker 2: because they were getting shit fucking done.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 2: And what are they gonna do with all those people?
Speaker 2: Find out next Monday? That's my cliffhanger. Yeah, but what
Speaker 2: else people should find out about is you and what
Speaker 2: you've been working on and how people can find you.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a band.
Speaker 3: I play music and my band's called Horry for the
Speaker 3: riff Raff and we will be on tour the month
Speaker 3: of May on the West Coast and in July, and
Speaker 3: you can find me on Instagram. I don't really I
Speaker 3: lurk on Twitter, and yeah, I'll be around. I just
Speaker 3: and I'm working on some new music.
Speaker 1: So that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, wait, can I ask you a question about
Speaker 2: your music?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So your music has been primarily folk and then you
Speaker 2: put out a song called Hungry Ghosts.
Speaker 1: Is that it? Oh? Yes?
Speaker 2: Did a bunch of people like did all the white
Speaker 2: hifsters get mad at you over this?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I told me, oh no, Now I feel really guilty
Speaker 2: having brought it up, and please cut that entire thing out.
Speaker 2: You cut this out? Okay, fine, okay, fine, No.
Speaker 1: I can take it. I can take it.
Speaker 2: Okay. There's a dance song that Alinda has done. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's called Hungry ghost and it's this queer love music
Speaker 2: video about being kind of thirsty after a breakup. That's
Speaker 2: the best I can tell. Or maybe that was my
Speaker 2: interpretation because of where it is your interpretation, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: And the comments on YouTube at least when the song
Speaker 2: came out, I don't know what year came out. Time
Speaker 2: is No, they were mad that you had moved away
Speaker 2: from folk music.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing.
Speaker 1: I will say.
Speaker 3: Mostly I find that is older British gentlemen. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: it really makes me happy. Yeah, it's like the one
Speaker 3: time I am a troll. Like I definitely don't. I
Speaker 3: don't really find myself feeling very truly, but when it
Speaker 3: comes to that, I'm very.
Speaker 1: Like, yes, so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I like it certainly didn't affect your like
Speaker 2: you know, it was really fun. Yeah, like people were
Speaker 2: still very excited about your music. But I just had
Speaker 2: this moment. I was like, oh, is this the like
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan goes electric moment for a.
Speaker 1: Little Absolutely no. But now I'm back. I'm back to
Speaker 1: like the like whatever. I'm not definitely not in.
Speaker 3: A mainstream music world, but I feel like the music
Speaker 3: industry has beaten me down enough that I'm like, I
Speaker 3: just want my me and my guitar are going to
Speaker 3: hit the road.
Speaker 2: I don't want all this gear that's legit. Yeah okay,
Speaker 2: well wait, what's the song about to you? I'm the
Speaker 2: for the listeners who are still listening.
Speaker 3: I mean, most of my songs, like especially like kind
Speaker 3: of like songs like that. I was I don't know
Speaker 3: what I would call like heart not heartbroken song, Well yeah,
Speaker 3: heartbroken socks actually about my family TMI, okay, but a
Speaker 3: lot of that that song was a lot about like
Speaker 3: running away and being like and yeah, like literally, it's
Speaker 3: not even poetic.
Speaker 1: It's like I was like a ghost to my family.
Speaker 1: And I was also very hungry. Okay, okay, so yeah
Speaker 1: that is I love I Love breakup interpretation.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, yeah, it just seemed like a thirsty song,
Speaker 2: like like well, also the video, the video that said
Speaker 2: I think that's yeah, I didn't. I didn't pull that
Speaker 2: out of nowhere. Well, if you want to hear more
Speaker 2: about the Young Lords, you all can check in next
Speaker 2: Monday and next Wednesday when we talk even more about
Speaker 2: all the amazing shit they did, because we're just getting
Speaker 2: started and I will talk to you all soon.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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