WEBVTT - Part Four: The Young Lords: How Some Puerto Rican Socialists Changed Everything 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:04.640 Hello, I'm out of jokes to start episodes with. This 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:07.720 is cool people did cool stuff, which kind of sounds 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:10.360 like a joke name for a podcast anyway, but I 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:13.240 rather like it. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy with me 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:16.080 today on this Journey is a Linda Segata. 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.919 How are you doing good? I just said a snack? 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.040 Hell yeah, and you're an hour wiser than last time. 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:25.320 Yeah, totally. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:28.680 Our producer is Sophie. Sophie, how are you? 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:32.960 How are you? Yeah? 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:39.840 Compared to like toothpain recording, antibiotics, antibiotics recording is a breeze. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:46.040 Yeah, I feel that as somebody who also is on anbiotics. 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:54.200 Yeah. This podcast brought to you by a Max of Sillan. Yeah. 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:59.080 Fish antibiotics legal, but not for human This week I 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:00.960 couldn't hear out of my hey right here. 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.080 This week I mostly can. It's great. 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:05.480 Yeah. To be clear, I don't believe either of us 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.840 are in fishing antibiotics, and I do not recommend them. Nope, anyway, 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:11.279 that's not even for legal reasons. I just feel guilty 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.320 when I accidentally make a joke about bad advice. Our 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:19.760 audio engineers Ian Hi Ian, Everyone say Hi Ian. That 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.720 being including you listening to your headphones in a public place. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.800 I want you to say Hi, Ian. God hates a coward. 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:31.080 Say it all right, Ian. You're exempt from having to 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.880 say Hi Ian unless you want to. Our music was 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.560 written for us by un woman. And today we're talking 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.080 about the Young Lords, the Puerto Rican socialist organization that 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:41.880 is kicking ass and taking names in New York City 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.760 in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy, they've just taken over 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.000 a Methodist church and turned it into the People's Church 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:49.920 for eleven days, which I said thirteen last time because 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:51.880 I wasn't looking at the script and I was coming 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:53.600 up with numbers and I came up with the wrong one. 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.040 They got a lot done for eleven days. 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.640 I know, there's like multiple festivals of the Oppress that 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:01.960 they managed to throw in eleven days. 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:02.600 Totally. 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:05.960 Could you imagine, like I would take more than eleven 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:08.040 days to organize a festival the Oppressed? Right now? 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:10.480 Oh yeah, good year? 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:13.880 Yeah totally, Like all right, we're getting ready for twenty 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:15.560 twenty fives Festival the Oppressed. 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:16.440 Totally. 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:22.639 Everyone got to check their schedules. So this action got 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:27.200 them national attention and support and their membership soared especially 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.200 and it brought in again more women. More than six 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.600 hundred new members came on. And this is an official 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:36.799 membership organization as compared to some other things. Right, Okay. 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.000 They would take Puerto Rican people, and they would take 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.680 both non Puerto Rican black people and non Puerto Rican 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:47.600 LATINX folks from their neighborhoods. Overall, they skewed demographically after 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:52.840 Puerto Rican and English speaking at this point, no value judgment, 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.960 and that that's just what their demographics were. Yeah, I 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.360 think it. Whatever. They'd already opened a Newark, New Jersey 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.120 chapter by this point, and soon they opened some in 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:05.400 the South Bronx, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Boston, the Lower East Side, 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:10.280 and Philly. They lived communally. They ate free meals at 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:11.880 dining halls. They had a whole building. 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:13.480 Now oh wow. 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.880 Yeah, women and men lived together and organized together and 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.720 threw down together. And the women worked hard to fight 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.680 chauvinism in the movement. They would specifically, this is the 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.440 thing I didn't known to I researched this. They would 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.920 call people out as male Chauvenes's pigs. And it's one 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.200 of the first uses of that phrase, male Chauvenes's pig. 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.200 And something I hadn't realized is that the men men 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:39.840 are pigs. Rhetoric within feminism doesn't come out of calling 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:43.120 men animals. Like it's not directly calling them the pig, 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.560 the animal. It's that since the Black Panthers has started 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:56.840 calling cops pigs, they're calling men cops when the right Wow. 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:03.200 Yeah yeah, they're saying you're being a cop right now. Yeah, 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:07.480 Like that makes a lot more. It just like it 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:09.560 rings it rings well with me. 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.480 Yeah, be like you are the oppressor right now. You 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.719 are pressing, and it probably fucking stung more than being 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.360 like because when you call men pigs, you're like, oh, 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.200 you're a pig, You're you're gross and being overly sexual 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:25.960 or whatever. Men are often like, yeah, I am, that's 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:26.880 just the way we are. 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:30.279 Baby, totally right, broachet. 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.720 As compared to being like, you are acting like a 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:37.400 police officer, yeah, you know, which is not a nice 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.880 thing to be called. And that helps get men get 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.400 their shit together, as does a woman's caucus, as does 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.400 an action that did not come up from my research, 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.160 but you brought up Okay, but. 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.840 Then I couldn't I researched it online. I couldn't find 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:53.400 it online. 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:57.200 But I found a little bit claiming you did. Yeah, 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.200 but only a little bit, like only a single reference, 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:01.200 so you should say what you okay. 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:03.240 I land this when I went to the Bronx Museum 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.120 and they had an exhibit all about the Young Lords 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:12.000 and it was written in their paper that the women 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.280 had gotten together and they decided if their demands would 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:18.520 not be met where they were able to carry firearms. 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.279 Although you're saying that they didn't really care. 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:21.839 Well some people, so I know, I know, it's like 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.279 it's messy. I think that they must have sometimes or something, 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:25.200 but okay. 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:31.400 And be treated as comrades instead of servants, and you know, 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:35.159 like the way that traditionally their families taught them to 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.839 treat women. There would be a sex strike. And you 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.520 know this is also acting as if like the majority 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.640 were straight, but that men would not be able to 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.440 receive sex anymore from women until they got their shit together. 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:55.000 Yeah, probably effective. 0:05:55.080 --> 0:06:01.920 I think is really cool. Yeah, And I don't know 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.520 if it went down for a long time or if 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.120 it was put into a fact, but it was definitely 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:11.680 printed in the paper. It was definitely like warm, you've 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.560 been warmed. This is how it seemed in the paper. 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:17.000 So the thing I ran across when I when I 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:18.760 did more research after you told me this, is that 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.520 I ran across like one line that was like in 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:25.320 nineteen seventy the women had a sex strike. Okay, but 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.400 I I don't entirely know. And actually it's interesting. I 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.360 would trust well, I would trust Polente more than I 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.000 would trust a random article that I read, yeah something, 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.400 or even of history book. And so the thing about 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.440 firearms is really interesting to me because I there is 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:39.840 going to be a point in the script when they 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:42.360 kind of take up arms, right, and all these other 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:44.640 times they're like rolling around in nunchucks. But I bet 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:46.719 you that there were times in which they were armed 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.240 and that just wasn't like fitting the narrative of the 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.320 way that people want to talk about things. And like, 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:55.200 so I don't know, you know. 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.839 Or perhaps it was like education and how to use firearms. Yeah, 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.040 i'd have been the vibe. Like, so I learned that 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:04.600 from when I went to the museum. But a lot 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.279 of what I've learned is from a book called Palante 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:09.880 that I encourage people to get. It's I have here, 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.360 but anyone's going to see It's called voices and photographs 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:16.360 of the Young Lords, and it's a lot of interviews 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.240 and also like little you know essays that were written 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.800 in the newspaper. So cool. And one of the things 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.480 that I read was talking about how they believed that 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:31.440 how women members wanted to learn how to use firearms 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.640 and not be treated like they weren't warriors. 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:40.920 Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so so they're 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.160 doing all this after the church, their numbers were up. 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.440 Their numbers became about thirty five to forty percent women, 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.600 and there were numerous openly gay members, and gay members 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:54.120 had their own caucus as well. The Black Panthers paved 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:56.320 their way on that one, openly stating their allegiance with 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:58.920 the gay rights movement and specifically the Gay Liberation Front 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.440 that had grown up to the Stonewall Uprising, which yes, 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.480 you can hear about on our episode about the Stonewall Uprising. 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.160 And in fact, the Young Lords provided a personal guard 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:12.720 to Sylvia Rivera, the Transit, one of the trans heroes 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.240 from Stonewall, when she was facing death threats. And this is. 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:19.080 Also half Puerto Rican. 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:20.840 Oh yeah, it's right. 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.080 Just wanted to give her a shout out. 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.200 No, yeah, fucking totally and like, and so I will 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.080 say that many young lords refused the assignment because they 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:31.880 like were transphobic and didn't understand what the fuck was 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:34.599 up and they were like freaked out. There's still a 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.360 long way to go. But other ones accepted it and 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.480 were Sylvia Rivera's personal bodyguard were young lords, and that 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:48.520 fucking rules. Yeah, people with jobs gave up more than 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.240 half their salaries for the group. Because it sounds a 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:57.240 little bit culty at this point, no one My theory is, 0:08:57.240 --> 0:08:59.319 no one ever gets anything done without getting a little 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.520 bit close to the cult line. You shouldn't cross the 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:02.480 cult line, you know. 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:03.839 Ah, But. 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:07.760 If the cult line isn't even in sight, you might 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:09.800 not be creating a community. It's real messy. 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:11.520 Ah, interesting, Okay. 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.320 One of the cultier things that they did is they 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:18.920 did that MAOIs self criticism thing, where you're supposed to 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:20.800 like stand up and say all the stuff you did 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:22.920 wrong to the whole crowd. 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:24.880 Oh, I've never heard of this before. 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:27.920 It's it was a big part of like like the 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:29.840 cultural revolution in China, which I don't know as much 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:32.240 about as I would like to. This like MAOIs self 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.160 criticism thing, And what's interesting Actually, if you listen to 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:37.120 the podcast Behind the Bassards, they talk about a lot 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:38.560 of cults, and one of the things that comes up 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.559 a lot is not MAOIs self criticism, but is this 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.280 like stand up at a circle and admit why you're 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:48.680 like bad and fall apart from like the group's rules 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.760 or whatever. Is like a way you encourage group thinking, 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.280 and it is, from my point of view bad. 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:57.880 Yeah. 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.120 Yeah, And anyone who failed to do this was all 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.040 the liberal. This is something that like I feel like 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.600 liberals don't quite always realize, is that, like the left 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.360 wing also calls liberals liberals in a negative way, you know, 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.040 like every now and then I'll say something's like liberal 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:20.880 and people like fuck you, right winger, and I'm like what. Oh, 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.120 it's during this period of growth that you start seeing 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.360 the cracks that are later going to fuck it up. 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:29.760 At least by the convenient narrative that I'm drawing and 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.120 have read in other sources, the New York Lords were 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.679 given full autonomy by the quote Central Committee of Chicago, right, 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.000 because it still had started in Chicago, even it's bigger 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:41.400 in New York. But New York is pretty sure that 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.720 they should be the Central Committee and that the chapter 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:47.480 shouldn't shouldn't have full autonomy, that the New York chapter 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:49.600 should be in charge of all the other chapters, and 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.480 that more discipline was needed. And also the Chicago newspaper 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:55.760 wasn't coming out regularly enough. What are you all doing? 0:10:55.880 --> 0:11:01.840 You better get on that. So after starts getting kind 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:06.920 of controlling, m h. And then another thing to understand 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.960 about their politics, and I try to avoid, like, let's 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:15.679 talk about Marx, right, but along with the Black Panthers, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.120 the Young Lords were a break from traditional Marxism in 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.160 that they identified the lump and proletariat as the revolutionary subject, 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:24.439 which means that I have to break down really quickly 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.960 Marx's ideas about classes in which you have the proletariat, 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.559 who are industrial workers in the city, they all and 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.160 Marx thinks that these are the beasnis, They're the best. 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.960 Everyone else sucks according to Marx. Right, then you got 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.120 the bourgeoisie, a class whom no one who is alive 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:47.480 can spell correctly, and yeah they are I still bow urgy. 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:51.000 Oh my god, I thank you spell check. 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.200 Yeah. Yeah. It took me a very long time to 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:55.440 wrap my head around hierarchy. 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:59.600 More importantly, thanks talk to speech talk to text speech 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:01.080 apps for word. 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:07.080 Two kids fell, Oh that's clever. Yeah, bougeoisive. 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:09.960 Think about it. 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:14.400 The bourgeoisie are the owning class. They don't work for 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.360 a living. This is their distinguishing characteristic. Instead, they own 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.480 stuff for a living. Definition of capitalism in this case 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.719 being roughly the access to capital being how you make 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.280 money rather than work. Right. And then you've got two 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:31.160 other weird classes. You have the petty bourgeoisie, who are 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:33.280 like the small business owners. They're not running the show, 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:35.440 but their relationship to capital is different from that of 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.840 a worker. Marxists generally don't like them. And then you 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.800 have the lump and proletariat, who are objectively the coolest. 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.160 Marx does not agree by this with this. These are 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:48.360 the unemployed and the thieves and the beggars, and the 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:52.840 people whose work is illegal like sex workers, the criminal class, 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:59.280 and Marx doesn't like them, right, but the young lords 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:03.760 and the black panthers do. Personally. I like to think 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.160 that Marxist classes are like he's writing a role playing game. 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.959 Instead of paladins and wizards, you have petty bourgeoisie and 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.640 the lump and proletariat and shit and so from this 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:13.839 point of view, we clearly need everyone. Maybe not the 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.800 regular bourgeoisie, I don't know, but you just clearly you 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:20.439 can't have a party of only thieves. You're only wizards. 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:26.319 It's not as much fun. There's my class humanity statement 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:30.880 of Oh god. Anyway, the Black Panthers like the lump 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:34.040 and proletariat. The Young Lords like them. The New York 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:36.560 Young Lords claim to like them. But part of what 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:41.480 they're mad at Chicago about because the Chicago clearly comes 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.360 out of them. They are they come from the criminal class. 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.120 The Young Lord comes. This was not a bunch of 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:49.000 workers sitting around being like, man, I don't like how 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:50.560 the boss is treating me. You like how the boss 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.280 is treating me. It's a bunch of car thieves who 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:56.160 are like, let's stand up against racism and try and 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.600 get everyone some health care. Yeah, And the New York 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.560 Lords don't quite have quite the same background as relates 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.120 to that, and so part of why they're mad at 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.280 Chicago is that Chicago is still too criminal and gang 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.520 like and they're not good proper revolutionaries. So by May 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.000 nineteen seventy they sever ties from the Young Lord's organization 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.200 of Chicago and they become the Young Lord's Party. It 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.480 is very likely that the split was orchestrated by co 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:28.440 Intel Pro, the counterintelligence program of the FBI. Oh wow, 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:34.479 it was almost certainly encouraged by them. The disagreements existed, 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:39.240 but co Intel Pro existed to make those disagreements grow. 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:44.400 Right back in Chicago, Cha Cha is taking it hard. 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:47.440 He was close friends with Fred Hampton, who had just 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.200 been murdered, and now he's getting told he's too gangster 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.160 for the group. He turned from a gang into an organization. 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.800 But he keeps it civil and no fights breakout between 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:05.760 the cities. So it's a break but it's not a war, right, Okay. 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:10.280 But they've got all these political things brewing. There's all 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.800 of these fractures that are starting to form. It doesn't 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.360 stop them from doing really cool shit. One of the 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.280 cool things they do is they get into a fight 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:27.760 with a long standing friend of the podcast Tuberculosis. For 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:32.600 anyone who's just learning, now, what happened when I started 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.440 making this podcast is I started reading a lot more 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:39.800 history books, and I started learning that everyone dies of tuberculosis. 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:41.240 That's just how you die. 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:42.440 Everyone. 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.800 If you're in a history book, you either get killed 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:49.320 by the state or you get killed by tuberculosis. 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:56.560 You forgot the third or your lover. What there's tuberculosis 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:58.480 the government or your lover. 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:00.360 Oh yeah, yeah, totally. 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:02.280 That's the trifecta. There's no other way. 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:06.480 No, I can't see how hells I could die as 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:07.920 long as it's not some combo move. 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:13.080 Oh, you'd be living a really weird life. 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.640 That the infiltrators like coffee into handkerchiefs and. 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.240 Yeah, yeah, I don't know about that government thing that 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:24.160 seems that seems uh not not not for cause for you. 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:25.760 Yeah, no, I wouldn't be. 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:27.880 It would be very far from that. 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:30.880 My plan is to not be killed by any of 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.280 these things. 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:35.280 Yeah. 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:39.400 So tuberculosis or TB as it's called by its friend friends, 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:43.200 or consumption when it's out of the Goth night. We 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.520 talked about this in our Alan Hart episode. The first 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.680 ever known transman to receive gender affirming surgery saved millions 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:52.200 of lives by revolutionizing the way that public screening was 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:56.800 done for tuberculosis decades before today's story, specifically by using 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:02.000 X rays to screen ahead of time. What is TB. Well, 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.199 it's a bacterial infection. It's just around latently. Sometimes it 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:07.320 pops up with symptoms, and shit, it kills about half 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:09.960 of its victims if you actually get the symptoms. For 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.080 those keeping track at home, that's about a five percent 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.800 mortality rate overall, which is brutally high. Today we have 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:19.000 antibiotics and no one dies of it anymore. Just kidding. 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.840 It kills a lot of people still, mostly in other 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.399 parts of the world. It killed one point five million 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.120 people in twenty twenty. It is the number one deadliest 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:31.159 infectious disease after COVID nineteen. It's the number one preventable 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:38.560 infectious disease, preventable with vaccines, treatment with antibiotics, and screening, 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.000 things like that. So everyone who dies of it is 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.800 murdered by capitalism from my point of view, because you 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:50.520 don't have to die from it except for access to care. 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.000 So the young Lords they go to war against two 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:58.600 of the biggest enemies of the show, capitalism and fucking tuberculosis. 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.280 Let's go. Yeah, the real problem in the poorer areas 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.960 of New York City thanks to stale air and overcrowding 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.600 and lack of access to screening. So in addition to 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:11.600 door to door lead poisoning tests, they start testing people 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:15.199 for TB, which involves an X ray machine. So they 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.159 send a petition around and it gets them use of 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.439 one machine, but it's a stationary machine. They want a 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.200 mobile unit. They want like a van with an X 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:26.080 ray machine in it, like the X ray van that 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.520 goes around the city already, but is inaccessible to poor 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.520 people of color. One book I read says it was 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.720 inaccessible because it was it operated from twelve to six 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:37.880 pm and didn't accommodate working people's schedules. But the guy 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:42.080 who stole the van, I listened to an interview with him. Oh, 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.960 spoiler alert, steal the van. We'll get to that. Yeah. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:48.200 It's like I was like, did we skip chapter? 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:48.800 What's happening. 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.720 We'll get to that. The guy who steals the van 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:54.480 later in the story, he says in an interview that 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:56.880 it was inaccessible because it only went to white neighborhoods, 0:18:57.480 --> 0:18:59.000 And that feels a little bit more. 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.960 Truth, once again, giving a shout out to the thief 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:05.320 the thief class. 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:11.480 Yeah. Yeah, So on June seventeenth and nineteen seventy, they 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.680 steal the van, They unfurl a Puerto Rican flag on it, 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:18.560 and they drive it off. They tipped off the press 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:20.920 ahead of time to make sure everyone saw them steal 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:25.640 this van. People don't do like crime like they used 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:31.400 to for better and worse. Yeah, they parked it. They're 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.120 really subtle. They parked it across the street from their 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:40.520 office and then announced free testing for everyone. And I 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:42.760 think the texts who worked in the van were like 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:43.919 entirely fine with it. 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:47.640 They're just like, whow cool, this is the coolest thing 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:49.520 that's happened to me. Ever, I know. 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:55.920 They'd be like, I'm so bored and now I'm part 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:59.040 of some like crazy shit on the news and I 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:00.959 still just get to help people for a living here. 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:01.960 Yeah, totally. 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:07.080 Within hours of stealing the van, they won the director 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.400 of health of the area agreed to let them keep 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:12.639 the van and run it on the city's dime twelve 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:14.320 hours a day every day. 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:16.400 Wow. 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:22.359 The first day they tested hundreds of people. Yeah, and 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:25.800 around that time, well before we move them to the 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:31.440 South Bronx, we should move everyone to these killer deals 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:39.440 about stuff, job opportunities. You could go become an Irish 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:46.480 cup h so many options here. Listen to these options. 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.879 Don't press the forward fifteen seconds button that has no 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:56.640 influence on anything from my point of view. Here's some ads, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:03.760 and we're back from those enlightening ads. I try to 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:05.240 come up with something clever, but I got nothing. So 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:07.920 I'll just tell you about when they moved to the 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:13.920 South Bronx because there's yet another health epidemic for them 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.280 to deal with, because they really just fucking did it all. 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.440 Like I can't say. 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:27.280 Also, like the number of issues that this community was facing, 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:32.000 like as it just like really boggles my mind being like, wow, 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.200 I grew up in that city. Yeah, and like these 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:37.360 are all people like my parents' age, you know. 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:42.120 Yeah, your parents' age, Like people like talk about lead 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:43.920 poisoning in tuberculosis and. 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.679 Streets and for sure, Yeah, and a lot of like 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:51.560 how the Bronx was burning, you know, a lot of 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:56.440 like faulty electricity and just you know, like a lot 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:57.359 of issues like that. 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.240 For sure, is that what that was the Bronx learning 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:02.960 because of faulty electricity, there. 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:04.840 Was like a lot of safety hazards, but also a 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.280 lot of like some lords that were setting you know, 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.119 just like wedding, Yeah, their buildings burner being the reason 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:15.879 why their buildings were burning. Yeah, Yeah, So there was 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:20.040 a lot of my family definitely talked a lot about 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:21.000 these issues. 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:24.960