Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People to cool stuff your
Speaker 1: podcast about Wait a second, Sophie's not here. We can
Speaker 1: do anything we want. Hello, and welcome to Hollywood. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Hollywood. That's a real place and we care
Speaker 1: about the people there, Shreine, Do you think that's a
Speaker 1: good podcast? I feel like will be the first people
Speaker 1: to come up with that kind of podcast. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna be a big hit, smash hit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get some podcast money. Hell yeah U or Okay,
Speaker 1: actually maybe we should just we'll do that later. First,
Speaker 1: we'll do it. Cool people did cool stuff. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we had to get that out of the
Speaker 1: way first. Yeah, okay, great, we'll jump in. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about today's guest and topic. My guest
Speaker 1: today is a Linda Segata and the principal songwriter. I
Speaker 1: guess this is the maybe way to say it, but
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain of one of the best bands
Speaker 1: out there. Hooray for the riffraff. Helenda, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm on a wild journey of life, but
Speaker 1: I'm really happy to be here and I've missed you. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I keep finding my guests are like my old friends
Speaker 1: from back in the day in a nice way. Um
Speaker 1: and Linda and I know each other from New York
Speaker 1: many many years ago. Yeah, that's beautiful, Linda. I was
Speaker 1: going to describe your music, and then I realized, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to. Is there like a catchy one
Speaker 1: sentence version that you use? I guess like sometimes I
Speaker 1: say folk rock because I feel like people not when
Speaker 1: I say that, Okay, you know, I will go out,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Sorry, Oh there's there's a rock in it,
Speaker 1: but it's also folk. Yeah, I will say to anyone
Speaker 1: who I don't usually like folk rock as described, and
Speaker 1: I really like hooray for the riff raff, so if
Speaker 1: anyone good, yeah, everyone, would you call it? Also, one
Speaker 1: time somebody called it folk punk, and I was like, whoa.
Speaker 1: I felt like younger me was really excited. But me
Speaker 1: I used to distinguish between folk punk and punk's playing
Speaker 1: folk because folk punk is when you take the punk
Speaker 1: vocals and put them over folk instrumentation, and then punk's
Speaker 1: playing folk is when punks play folk music. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I like that one more. I gotta I want some
Speaker 1: I want stop playing shows. Because I was playing shows
Speaker 1: with an accordion and I told this other person I
Speaker 1: played with. I was like, oh, I don't usually like
Speaker 1: folk punk, but I relate like your set. And he
Speaker 1: got really offended and he was like, which is fair?
Speaker 1: It was a dumb thing for me to have said.
Speaker 1: And he was like, what do you call what you do?
Speaker 1: And then I stopped playing shows. I want to be
Speaker 1: folk power. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: We are not talking about folk punk today. Okay. Well, first,
Speaker 1: as people might have noticed, our our producer Sophie is
Speaker 1: not with us. Instead, we have Sharine at least partly,
Speaker 1: but otherwise we're flying solo. I believe in you. I
Speaker 1: thank you. That's I'll claim that I do too, so
Speaker 1: that everyone feels safe. Our audio engineers Ian high Ian,
Speaker 1: and our theme music was written for us by a woman.
Speaker 1: And our topic today, Elenda. People talk a lot about
Speaker 1: like getting shit done, but usually they don't get shit done.
Speaker 1: They talk about getting shit done. Today we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about some people who got shit done. This was the
Speaker 1: thing that I kept running over and over again, was
Speaker 1: just like getting shit done, be out of They got
Speaker 1: so much done that this is our second four partner.
Speaker 1: There's two weeks that we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: a street gang that turned into revolutionary socialists who fought
Speaker 1: for change, and they only got the tiniest portion of
Speaker 1: what they wanted, and they still got more than almost
Speaker 1: anyone I ever read about. In case anyone's wondering, anyone
Speaker 1: who's listening, if you were wondering, huh, I wonder if
Speaker 1: the reason that the trash gets picked up is because
Speaker 1: of people rioting. I wonder if the reason that people
Speaker 1: don't use lead paint anymore is because of militant demonstrators
Speaker 1: who were threatening to overthrow capitalism. And was it people
Speaker 1: committed to the destruction of capitalism who brought us the
Speaker 1: patient's Bill of Rights and the fact that some of
Speaker 1: times were treated okay at hospitals? The answers yes, because
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about the Young Lords. E Linda,
Speaker 1: have you heard of the Young Lords? I have learned.
Speaker 1: I have heard of the Young Lords. I was very
Speaker 1: deeply affected by learning about them some years ago, and
Speaker 1: it like really changed my music and it changed my life.
Speaker 1: That's cool. The the reason A Linda's the guest for
Speaker 1: this is that I started writing a script for someone else,
Speaker 1: and then um, I was name dropping A Linda and
Speaker 1: one of one of their songs in the script, and
Speaker 1: then I was like, e Linda should be the guest
Speaker 1: for this, and then A Linda said, yes, I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to learn to learn about them, you know, like
Speaker 1: I've had the emotional experience of learning some about the
Speaker 1: Young Lords, but I am ready to deep dive. Fuck yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna talk about this week and next
Speaker 1: week we're gonna talk about some of the amazing stuff
Speaker 1: done by the Puerto Rican radicals in the continental United States.
Speaker 1: And that means we should at least briefly talk about
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico itself. Puerto Rico is an American colony. The
Speaker 1: US doesn't like to use that word. They use the
Speaker 1: word unincorporated territory. Whoa, yeah, it means I've heard commonwealth
Speaker 1: my whole life. Oh okay, I think that which is well,
Speaker 1: I just think it's a very silly term when it's
Speaker 1: like there is no commonwealth. Yeah, well, the that's the
Speaker 1: white people in the United States have the commonwealth of
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. It was all extracted. Yeah yeah, so the
Speaker 1: US got this colony in eighteen ninety eight by the
Speaker 1: usual means of colony getting colonies through war, and in
Speaker 1: this case they sold it from Spain as the result
Speaker 1: of the Spanish American War. Spain, of course, had stolen
Speaker 1: it in the first place. They stole it from the
Speaker 1: indigenous people the island back in fifteen oh eight Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: so it becomes a colony of the US instead of Spain.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen seventeen, Puerto Ricans were suddenly granted
Speaker 1: US citizenship, which was so benevolent. It was just a
Speaker 1: strange coincidence that there was just in time for all
Speaker 1: the Puerto Rican meant to get drafted. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: So the US gave Puerto Ricans US a citizenship because
Speaker 1: they wanted to throw them into the meat grinder of
Speaker 1: World War One, and the entire Puerto Rican House of Delegates,
Speaker 1: like the local governance in Puerto Rico, voted against getting
Speaker 1: US citizenship because they were like, oh, whoa, yeah, that
Speaker 1: part actually a little bit surprised me because a lot
Speaker 1: of US statehood is a big part of a lot
Speaker 1: of Puerto Rican movement stuff. Now right, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. But they knew it was
Speaker 1: a fucking trick as far as I can tell, they
Speaker 1: were just like, yeah, why would we go off and
Speaker 1: do this. So Ever since, Puerto Rican folks have been
Speaker 1: fighting for and this depends on who you ask. Some
Speaker 1: people are fighting from independence from the US, some people
Speaker 1: are fighting for statehood. Either way, people are fighting. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious whether, like in your family, whether like
Speaker 1: there's a strong sense of statehood, independence, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: Like it really depends. It's like, I think there's definitely
Speaker 1: exhaustion that my family has. I think is pretty common
Speaker 1: to Puerto Ricans who you know, I don't really have
Speaker 1: a lot of family in the island anymore, and it
Speaker 1: seems like my family is very much like, well, how
Speaker 1: would the island survive if we weren't owned by the
Speaker 1: US at this point, like an exhaustion of this idea
Speaker 1: of independency even being possible. But then there are certain people, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like some more radically leaning people, and
Speaker 1: my family they're just like the point is to try,
Speaker 1: The point is to figure it out, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like it's like useful to understand and
Speaker 1: be sympathetic to both of those positions for me, as
Speaker 1: someone who's not Puerto Ricans, just being like, all right,
Speaker 1: like independence, the more radical thing sounds always cooler to me.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, I could get people just trying for
Speaker 1: what they can, you know. Yeah, And I feel that too,
Speaker 1: even being like a Puerto Rican person that wasn't brought
Speaker 1: up on the island. I'm like, what right do I
Speaker 1: have to tell people how to like to make a
Speaker 1: decision that really it affects them. It doesn't affect me,
Speaker 1: you know, it affects their daily life. So I definitely
Speaker 1: try to be aware of that, especially with like having
Speaker 1: a band and being sometimes the only Puerto Rican person
Speaker 1: that someone's ever talked to, right, you know, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: part four of this episode will be particularly interestingness relates
Speaker 1: to not the band part, but the mainland US Puerto Ricans,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that later. Everyone's got to wait
Speaker 1: a little bit. So the US they want Puerto Rico still,
Speaker 1: and it is part of the US exercising power across
Speaker 1: the globe. It's not like some benevolence thing that we
Speaker 1: have this fucking colony. The majority of US interventions in
Speaker 1: Latin America are staged on the island. Of Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. And since Puerto Rico is a colony, it
Speaker 1: means the US is out to extract whatever value it
Speaker 1: can from the island, which in nineteen seventeen met Grist
Speaker 1: for the mill. Post World War Two, it was something different,
Speaker 1: but something related. It was need workers. We need workers
Speaker 1: because so many of ours just died because we just
Speaker 1: fought World War two. So please everyone come over. And
Speaker 1: so between nineteen forty seven and nineteen seventy a third
Speaker 1: of the population of Puerto Rico moved to the United
Speaker 1: States looking for something like stability in a decent life. Disproportionately,
Speaker 1: this was youth who came, and ninety percent of them
Speaker 1: went at least to begin with the New York City.
Speaker 1: This massive gration started because of a US project called
Speaker 1: Operation Bootstrap, which was this massive spike in industrialization that
Speaker 1: displaced people even as it like put in power lines.
Speaker 1: So it was like kind of like, oh, we're doing
Speaker 1: all this nice stuff. We're bringing in power lines and
Speaker 1: industry and infrastructure, but it just fucked everything up. It
Speaker 1: was openly an attempt to stabilize the political situation in
Speaker 1: the colony and make it more useful for US. Interests,
Speaker 1: the sugar economy, which was also bad, but it was
Speaker 1: like what Spain was mostly up to, was replaced by industrialization,
Speaker 1: also bad, and US investment in capitalism, just like poured
Speaker 1: into Puerto Rico. So Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican folks led
Speaker 1: the fucking up of their country and moved to the US,
Speaker 1: where they were welcomed with open arms, economic opportunity, good
Speaker 1: living conditions, the American dream and no, no, wait no,
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of that. Puerto Rican immigrants was even
Speaker 1: immigrants the right word. I mean, you know, people coming
Speaker 1: from Puerto Rico. Yeah, yeah, met with violence, nativism, bigotry, racism, classism. Instead,
Speaker 1: Puerto Ricans in the US were immediately slandered as junkies
Speaker 1: and thugs and welfare dependents, the same as marginalized people
Speaker 1: always are. They're treated like illegal immigrants, which of course
Speaker 1: is not true, and obviously undocumented people should also be
Speaker 1: treated well in borders. But in this case, literally it's
Speaker 1: US since moving to another part of the US, and
Speaker 1: they'd come over basically at the behest of the US
Speaker 1: government to work. But the piece of shit racists didn't
Speaker 1: like thinking. Period. Yeah, this is actually when my family
Speaker 1: came over is like around nineteen forty seven. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: oh damn, so like kind of like first wave of
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Yeah, my dad came over when he
Speaker 1: was a kid, and he asked this story about being
Speaker 1: on a plane, that the chairs were actually like lawn chairs,
Speaker 1: and that my mother came with like her three kids
Speaker 1: because my grandfather was already over in New York working,
Speaker 1: and like it just being like okay, every you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were like some house that bolted down,
Speaker 1: but just like this totally crazy, yeah experience of like
Speaker 1: let's get as many of these people over as we can.
Speaker 1: You know, that's fucking I mean, it doesn't surprise me,
Speaker 1: but I just had never even imagined that kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I wonder how I thought. I never really thought
Speaker 1: about how folks came over, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Operation
Speaker 1: Bootstrap had another impact. It showed the world that the
Speaker 1: quote unquote Third world was open for business. And I
Speaker 1: think it was like one of the things that kind
Speaker 1: of started the industrial economy disappearing from the United States.
Speaker 1: Oh as industrialization has moved out to the colonies and
Speaker 1: to the sort of you know, in a neoliberal sense,
Speaker 1: you can kind of claim that most of the quote
Speaker 1: unquote developing world is colonies for the rich nations. You know,
Speaker 1: So there's a weird, awful downside to this. Millions of
Speaker 1: people are showing up for looking for work in the
Speaker 1: cities because they've been told to come over and get
Speaker 1: work in the cities, just as the US is like
Speaker 1: starting to eradicate industrialization within in the continental United States,
Speaker 1: and so there's not a lot of work. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, a study found that the unemployment or underemployment
Speaker 1: of Puerto Rican men in East Harlem or what's called
Speaker 1: Spanish Harlem or Elbadio was forty seven percent. Half the
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican families in New York lived worse than immigrant
Speaker 1: families in New York during the fucking Great Depression. So
Speaker 1: by nineteen sixty six, twenty percent of the students in
Speaker 1: New York City where Puerto Rican and thirty percent were black,
Speaker 1: which means it's the first time that white people weren't
Speaker 1: the majority in New York City in the schools. WHOA,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you knew this, but white
Speaker 1: people don't historically like that. They don't. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: a not a cool look. Yeah, Yeah, they haven't figured
Speaker 1: out that. They're like, they don't want to get treated
Speaker 1: like they've been treating people, you know. Yeah, So two
Speaker 1: thousand white parents picketed City Hall over school integration. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, almost half a million white students stayed
Speaker 1: home in a boycott protest organized by their racist fucking
Speaker 1: parents in New York City. Wow. Yeah, like half a
Speaker 1: million fucking kids didn't go to school and protest of
Speaker 1: their being people of color in their schools. And like
Speaker 1: white Northerners have this attitude that, like white Southerners are
Speaker 1: the only racist people. Seriously. Yeah. Wow. So we'll come
Speaker 1: back to New York later. Our story winds up in
Speaker 1: New York, but it starts in Chicago. Yeah. In Chicago,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, some white assholes fire bombed to Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican bar in an apartment, which led to a week
Speaker 1: of fighting, and it led to non white gangs forming
Speaker 1: for self defense. Specifically Puerto Rican, Mexican and Black gang
Speaker 1: started forming in Chicago in the nineteen fifties. And you've
Speaker 1: got a bunch of capitalists exploiting this racist fear. White
Speaker 1: people started fleeing Chicago in the fifties out to the suburbs,
Speaker 1: the classic white flight. The white people who stayed in
Speaker 1: Chicago were like really paranoid about black people driving down
Speaker 1: their property values or whatever. So these real estate assholes
Speaker 1: who created the racist panic in the first place, would
Speaker 1: get white people to sell at a loss and basically
Speaker 1: like stoke these fears in order to make money and
Speaker 1: flip houses. And it was kind of like Domino style,
Speaker 1: and so like the white flight was like both racist
Speaker 1: cowards and also racist capitalists. We're looking to exploit the
Speaker 1: fear of them racist capitalists, racist cowards, and that's the
Speaker 1: condition into which are very young heroes or lords as
Speaker 1: we might call them, and to our story. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: first we're going to talk about some other heroes, cap
Speaker 1: Botalism and products and services that support our show because
Speaker 1: we're ads sponsored, and now you can listen to those ads.
Speaker 1: And we're back and we are talking about the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Young Lords. They formed as a street gang
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine in Lincoln Park in Chicago. They
Speaker 1: were formed by seven kids. Six of them were Puerto Rican,
Speaker 1: one of them was Mexican. And this part I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I mean it when I say kids, how
Speaker 1: old do you thinks these kids were I mean I
Speaker 1: always imagined like mid twenties, but I know that's wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like half that some of them are like eleven what yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, well like actual children. Yeah, the kind of
Speaker 1: like main founder of the will get to this, Like
Speaker 1: one of our heroes that we're going to talk about,
Speaker 1: Jose Chachamenesh he was eleven years old in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine when he was a founding member of this gang.
Speaker 1: Yeah that actually, okay, that reminds me though. Have you
Speaker 1: heard there is a story about kids in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: talking about kids not going to school, about kids in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico like not going to school and protest of
Speaker 1: this time when they were trying to make when the
Speaker 1: US was trying to force like English to be the
Speaker 1: official language of the school system. Oh no, this is cool. No. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there is I don't know a lot about it,
Speaker 1: but there is like a history of Puerto Rican children
Speaker 1: being like yeah, fuck you, but we're not gonna go,
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of us. Sorry, go ahead, it's
Speaker 1: in the blood. Yeah, and the opposite of those half
Speaker 1: a million white kids who are like, we don't want
Speaker 1: to go to school because there might someone at schools
Speaker 1: speaking Spanish. I can't handle it. Yeah, God forbid. Wow
Speaker 1: eleven yeah, Jose Shacha Jimenez. He was a founding member.
Speaker 1: He's eleven years old. By the time he was fourteen,
Speaker 1: he was a pretty petty crook. He got caught a
Speaker 1: bunch going in and out of facilities all the time.
Speaker 1: His Catholic parents had come over from Puerto Rico with
Speaker 1: him when he was two. His mom passed when they
Speaker 1: moved to Chicago. His mom packed Christmas cards for a
Speaker 1: living and his dad worked in a meat packing plant.
Speaker 1: As the city redeveloped and tore down everything and like
Speaker 1: fucked over all the pool poor people. They moved nine
Speaker 1: times in the first six years they lived in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Oh wow yeah yeah. Where they wound up in Lincoln
Speaker 1: Park was like diverse quote quote unquote, but it was
Speaker 1: segregated block by block. His mom pulled a bunch of
Speaker 1: strings to get him put into a Catholic school because
Speaker 1: he'd been she'd been raised in a Catholic poorhouse and
Speaker 1: had connections. But this will be shocking to you, So
Speaker 1: the priests at this school not so cool. Um. They
Speaker 1: were all a bunch of racists. They used the N
Speaker 1: word constantly. They just fucking hated these like as best
Speaker 1: as I can tell, it was like white Catholics and
Speaker 1: they were like, fuck, why did And it's like, honey,
Speaker 1: that's on you. Your missionaries went and turned all these
Speaker 1: people of color into My family had so many stories
Speaker 1: about like nuns, like hitting them with rulers and ship like.
Speaker 1: Luckily I was able to grow up, not like we
Speaker 1: went to mass like for Christmas, but I was raised.
Speaker 1: So I was raised by a bunch of like hit
Speaker 1: bees basically that got hit by nuns. We're just yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm very lucky. Yeah that Yeah. My dad went
Speaker 1: to Catholic school, so I didn't have to exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is what he's getting raised. How he was
Speaker 1: getting raised. His dad had actually been in a gang himself,
Speaker 1: Lacha Vieja the Old Hatchet, which is the oldest known
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican street gang in at least Chicago. I'm unsure
Speaker 1: if there's older older Puerto Rican street gangs in the
Speaker 1: United States. I tried looking and like it would come
Speaker 1: back being like nineteen seventy and I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the one. Well cool name though, I know, right,
Speaker 1: and especially sick band name. Okay, but you're breaking my
Speaker 1: rule I have, Like if there's like Margaret's law, it's
Speaker 1: that everyone who says that would be a cool band
Speaker 1: name is wrong, but this actually would be a good
Speaker 1: band name. Like yeah, you, um, you broke the law,
Speaker 1: band jail you have to go to. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: especially because the old Hatchet was probably a bunch of teenagers, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the only like Puerto Rican street gang I know about
Speaker 1: is the Ghetto Brothers. Okay, I don't know about, but
Speaker 1: I think that was. I think that was later on. Okay,
Speaker 1: they eventually became a band. Oh yeah, so different than
Speaker 1: the Ghetto Boys. Yes, great, I was like, Okay, So
Speaker 1: the history I feel like it's worth pointing out if
Speaker 1: I'm talking about this street gang, right, and people have
Speaker 1: like various impressions about street gangs depending on where you
Speaker 1: live and all of these things, but it's like really
Speaker 1: worth understanding why people are forming a street gang. There
Speaker 1: is a long history of ethnic gangs in Chicago. This
Speaker 1: is not a nice history. It goes back into the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century when German and Irish youth crewed up
Speaker 1: not with each other, but with other German and the
Speaker 1: Germans or the Germans, the Irish, the Irish, because everyone's
Speaker 1: fucking bullshit in order to be shitty to more recent immigrants.
Speaker 1: That's where ethnic gangs come from in Chicago. And this
Speaker 1: tied very happily and easily into the city's politics. The
Speaker 1: city gave the gangs resources, and the kids would grow
Speaker 1: up and join the more formal political structure. They all
Speaker 1: became cops and firefighters. Oh wow, yeah, there's this this
Speaker 1: criminal a professor guy, his names John M. Haggardorn and
Speaker 1: his quote is the Irish gang in effect was reinvented
Speaker 1: as the Chicago Police Department. Oh wow. Yeah, corruption and
Speaker 1: Chicago go the long history together. Yeah. So the white
Speaker 1: ethnic gangs continue to be fucked up, whether before joining
Speaker 1: the cops or after joining the cops. And they did
Speaker 1: a bunch of racist shit time and time again as
Speaker 1: black labor moved into the city. And so I feel
Speaker 1: like this is important to understand when we talk about
Speaker 1: the development of non white gangs in the US more broadly, right,
Speaker 1: because like a huge part of racism is like being like,
Speaker 1: but the gangs or whatever, you know, totally and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: they came from defending themselves against you yeah for real,
Speaker 1: which isn't to say whatever. We'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: what they got up to, and you know it's complicated, right.
Speaker 1: So Chasha starts a gang when he's eleven because white
Speaker 1: gangs have been fucking with him for a year already,
Speaker 1: since he's ten years old. He's used to white gangs,
Speaker 1: like because the white kids in the area outnumbered everyone
Speaker 1: else seventeen to one at that point demographically. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he guess his nickname because racist kids keep saying cha
Speaker 1: cha cha every time they see him, oh wow, and
Speaker 1: he's like, all right, fuck it, that's my name. I'm
Speaker 1: cha cha And he just becomes a badass, you know.
Speaker 1: And it liked be like a scary name to run
Speaker 1: into someone who's like fucking with you. Definitely. It's like
Speaker 1: you go and like someone's like maybe picking a fight
Speaker 1: with you, and you're like what's your name and they're
Speaker 1: like Tiddley winks and you're like I gotta go. I
Speaker 1: hear my mom, Like you've seen some shit. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: met up at a junior high school, the Young Lords.
Speaker 1: Their founder was this darker skin Puerto Rican kid, Orlando
Speaker 1: da Villa, who was red as black and got even
Speaker 1: more shipped from people from which he learned to defend himself.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of curious you're on this part because
Speaker 1: it's like this is something I can like read about.
Speaker 1: But there's this, Yeah, there's this interesting writing about race
Speaker 1: relations into Puerto Rican immigrants. At the time, for most immigrants,
Speaker 1: the Puerto Rican ethnicity was far more important than their
Speaker 1: race is viewed by other people in the continental US.
Speaker 1: So like Chacha had green eyes and light skin, Orlando
Speaker 1: was red as black. But for the second generation American
Speaker 1: views like mainland American group views, crept in more and
Speaker 1: more Younger Puerto Ricans identified with black struggle, and their
Speaker 1: parents were largely trying to distinguish themselves from black struggle. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I have, like, especially in my family, it's
Speaker 1: like I have so much white privilege, you know, and
Speaker 1: I feel like, definitely I witnessed a lot of racism
Speaker 1: get just like crammed into my family's minds. I think,
Speaker 1: like what I've experienced is also like a lot of
Speaker 1: pride about like not being considered immigrants, right, even though
Speaker 1: they have this immigrant experience, it's like the classic American
Speaker 1: thing where it's like, well, we are one step closer
Speaker 1: to this pyramid, the top of the pyramid than people
Speaker 1: who are dealing with immigration status. We don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with that. Yeah, and racism and colorism definitely was
Speaker 1: something that I saw all the time, Okay, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Like one of the things I have
Speaker 1: the hardest time because again, I'm mostly just reading about
Speaker 1: this stuff, and everyone who's writing has different, you know,
Speaker 1: things that they're trying to say or not say, right,
Speaker 1: and like so like sometimes I read about like all
Speaker 1: of the awful inter fighting but horizontal conflict between Black
Speaker 1: New Yorkers and Puerto Rican New Yorkers, right, And then
Speaker 1: other places I read, I'll read about all of these
Speaker 1: like moments of solidarity and people will be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we all got along, and like, yeah, I have a feeling.
Speaker 1: Then there's both maybe, you know, I think so. I
Speaker 1: mean also, like I said, there was a generation like
Speaker 1: who was radicalized and then after you know, not to
Speaker 1: jump ahead, but then they experienced the fucking eighties and
Speaker 1: it's like such disillusionment, and then my generation comes. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's only now that I'm seeing kids like
Speaker 1: get radicalized in the same way, you know, I feel like,
Speaker 1: so I don't know, I think I think there is
Speaker 1: more like solidarity now, but I also feel like a
Speaker 1: white kid looking in right, you know. Also an interesting
Speaker 1: thing in New York at least is the fighting between
Speaker 1: Dominican and Puerto Rican Oh okay people. That was something
Speaker 1: I witnessed a lot because of like immigration status and
Speaker 1: also racism. Yeah for sure, Yeah, it's I love. Love
Speaker 1: is not the right word, but I'm so interested in
Speaker 1: all these things that like complicate the main stream conception
Speaker 1: of like the racial hierarchy, right, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that Puerto Rican immigrants would be coming from
Speaker 1: different ethnic backgrounds with or different racial backgrounds I guess
Speaker 1: you would say from Puerto Rico, whereas like to like
Speaker 1: the people who live in the US, maybe it was
Speaker 1: like whatever, you're all fucking Puerto Ricans. Fuck you, you you know,
Speaker 1: as compared to like white Puerto Ricans and black Puerto Ricans.
Speaker 1: And I don't know enough about race relations within Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: I've only read about them and how they relate to
Speaker 1: the mainland. Um. Yeah, i feel like I've definitely experienced, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I get this like platform and because I
Speaker 1: feel like I just make people feel more comfortable they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I understand you more like, yeah, I don't have to
Speaker 1: experience that racism. So I think certain Puerto Ricans that
Speaker 1: are super light skinned. It's I think, I know, like
Speaker 1: we get these you know, platforms and experience you know,
Speaker 1: these opportunities and shit, and j Lo becomes like the
Speaker 1: idea of what being Puerto Ricans instead of a super
Speaker 1: complex identity. Yeah. I had no idea that Jaylo was
Speaker 1: port Rican. But I also really, okay, this is the
Speaker 1: like main running in joke is that I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about pop culture. Oh my god, yeah, Ricky Martin
Speaker 1: and jay look about Ricky Martin. Yeah yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I grew up thinking that was what being Porto Rican was,
Speaker 1: so then to find out about the Young Lords is
Speaker 1: like a mind altering moment where I'm like, wait, what,
Speaker 1: We're like revolutionary fucking fighters. This is crazy. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: thought we were just like pop you know, like I
Speaker 1: was just raised with this idea of what it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that, well, I guess we'll get to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the death knell of everything in the eighties and all that, um,
Speaker 1: isn't the kind of sad thing about like cool people
Speaker 1: in history and you're like, well, if you tell the
Speaker 1: story long enough, but there's amazing stuff along the way,
Speaker 1: which is all any of us have as our lives anyway, right,
Speaker 1: like all of them. So they're a gang now to
Speaker 1: come back to Chicago nineteen fifties, and they immediately set
Speaker 1: out and they're like eleven into fourteen, and I think
Speaker 1: may some of them like sixteen or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: immediately set out to do gang shit. They're really into
Speaker 1: stealing cars you gotta have a nice car, and selling
Speaker 1: stolen car parts as good money. Cha Cha had white
Speaker 1: passing privilege, so he was the kid who would do
Speaker 1: the initial stealing. Also, probably the fact that he's like
Speaker 1: a white passing eleven year old is probably part of
Speaker 1: how he got away with us, you know, Oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the young lords immediately got to fighting anyone
Speaker 1: who fucked with them, and they immediately started getting arrested
Speaker 1: for weapons possession, assault, petty theft, and drugs. Most of
Speaker 1: the fighting they did this is like where they was.
Speaker 1: They would forcefully integrate places that were informally whites only.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Yeah, when older folks would get pushed around,
Speaker 1: like old older Puerto Rican folks and would get pushed
Speaker 1: around or slapped for being in the wrong place. There's
Speaker 1: like the Lake Shore Drive beach. The Young Lords would
Speaker 1: just show up and be like, no, that's cool, allowed
Speaker 1: to be here, Like wow, that beach in particular, they
Speaker 1: fought with broken bottles and knives for the right to
Speaker 1: swim there. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, all badasses, I know.
Speaker 1: I like my friend who turned me on too. I
Speaker 1: heard some about the Young Lords, but not like a ton, right,
Speaker 1: and my friends like, you really need to an episode
Speaker 1: on them. And it ties into there's like some stuff
Speaker 1: that keeps coming up over over and over again. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about tuberculosis in this episode for some reason.
Speaker 1: Tuberculosis this running theme throughout all these things, and it's
Speaker 1: going to come up, but not yet, okay, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so and the white gangs would fight back, right, you know,
Speaker 1: the I presume German, German and an Irish gangs would
Speaker 1: fight back and try and fight the Young Lords and
Speaker 1: be like, no, we wont our whites only beach or whatever.
Speaker 1: But eventually the white gangs were lented. And I'm under
Speaker 1: the impression this isn't less because the Young Lords always won,
Speaker 1: and more because they always fought and I think that
Speaker 1: this is how oppressive power works. You don't even need
Speaker 1: to all always win. You just need to keep fighting
Speaker 1: and they'll back off first because they have more to lose, right,
Speaker 1: they're more privileged. Wow, wouldn't a great lesson to like
Speaker 1: keep in mind. Yeah. Yeah. When Shasha was fifteen, he
Speaker 1: found himself increasingly in charge of the gang because he
Speaker 1: was willing to do the paperwork for the gang perwork entail.
Speaker 1: So he was the business manager, and he would raise
Speaker 1: money to get everyone in the gang black and purple
Speaker 1: sweaters and yeah, and they would throw soul dance parties
Speaker 1: and that's how they would raise the money. And so
Speaker 1: he was this fundraiser. Yeah, and he was like he
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid to throw down, but he was always also
Speaker 1: trying to figure out non violent solutions to most problems.
Speaker 1: He still fought a lot. He got arrested twenty times
Speaker 1: over the course of his young life, like only a
Speaker 1: couple of years. So I really like this, Like this
Speaker 1: is my favorite version of non violence, is the like,
Speaker 1: our preference is not violence, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: We're gonna swim at this beach non violently ideally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So then he's sixteen, and he might be
Speaker 1: fifteen or something. I get the year something happened and
Speaker 1: not the age of the person. So I do rough
Speaker 1: math and he gets sentenced to I don't remember. We
Speaker 1: get a caught for this time. He gets sentenced to
Speaker 1: go live in Puerto Rico for a year. The judge
Speaker 1: is like, WHOA, yeah, I didn't know this was a thing.
Speaker 1: It was an assault that would have had him in
Speaker 1: prison for years. And I think that the judge was
Speaker 1: just actually like, you, dumb fucking kid, go get out
Speaker 1: of here, you know, like wow. Yeah. So he goes
Speaker 1: to Puerto Rico and while he's there he tries to
Speaker 1: get up to all his usual shit. At one point
Speaker 1: he steals a horse to ride off to go hot
Speaker 1: wire a priest's car in order to go see a girl.
Speaker 1: He likes, wow, yeah exactly, I know. But they catch him,
Speaker 1: and they don't throw him in jail when he's in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. Instead, they chew him out in public, like
Speaker 1: I think, in like the town square. Basically a priest
Speaker 1: and then an older woman just like yell at him
Speaker 1: for being a fuck up in front of everyone. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, And this works. I mean, he doesn't like
Speaker 1: one eighty, but it's way more effective than getting sent
Speaker 1: to jail, and going to Puerto Rico is like a
Speaker 1: sea change. His two main sea change moments about how
Speaker 1: he becomes who he becomes, and going to Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: as one of them. He did come back in a
Speaker 1: week later go to jail for stealing a toaster, so
Speaker 1: he's not one eighty. New habits they take a little
Speaker 1: while to catch on, much like what also takes a
Speaker 1: wild catch on our products and services. And that's why
Speaker 1: you have to hear about them over and over again
Speaker 1: before they stick in your mind. And you know that.
Speaker 1: We've had really bad sponsors lately. The main bad one
Speaker 1: is Reagan Gold, So go buy gold. That'll teach them.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Oh we should have thought of. Now
Speaker 1: that we're back from a break, I want to go
Speaker 1: back to being sponsored by really nice stuff. Historically some
Speaker 1: of the things that we got sponsored by. For a
Speaker 1: long time, we were sponsored by the concept of Potatoes.
Speaker 1: We've also been sponsored well not officially, but our unofficial
Speaker 1: sponsors the concept of potatoes, and we've also been sponsored
Speaker 1: by like a nice comb. The Happy Sleeping Dogs is
Speaker 1: a good sponsor for the show. So I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you have any sponsors you'd like us. When Sophie is back,
Speaker 1: Sophie will get us sponsored by by whatever you want. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, lately, I've been really into baby elephants in general,
Speaker 1: especially baby elephants bathing. Okay, okay, so if that's if
Speaker 1: that's a possibility, we can do it. Sophie is really
Speaker 1: good at shit, and this show is brought to you
Speaker 1: by baby elephants bathing. Go wash videos of baby elephants
Speaker 1: and see them be cute, and that is substantially better
Speaker 1: than behind Gold. In nineteen sixty six in Chicago, you
Speaker 1: have the Division Street riots. Chicago declared Puerto Rican Week,
Speaker 1: which included the city's first Puerto Rican parade. Cops were there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the cops were super respect No, the cops were
Speaker 1: being cops. So they shot someone. They shot someone in
Speaker 1: the leg during the celebrations, and so crowd showed up,
Speaker 1: and then cops sicked a dog on someone and the
Speaker 1: crowd went wild, and the rioting went on for three days,
Speaker 1: destroying fifty white owned businesses that ran through a Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican neighborhood. And Shaha was sitting in jail during this,
Speaker 1: and he was just like for something else, maybe the toaster,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, And so he's just cheering it on, right,
Speaker 1: He's like, go, kids, go, this rules. You know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Other Young Lords are involved in the organizing in the
Speaker 1: wake of it for structural change, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: new groups pop up in the wake of this. And
Speaker 1: the most influential one, or the one that I keep
Speaker 1: writing about in the books that I was reading about
Speaker 1: this is the Latin American Defense Organization or Lado LATO,
Speaker 1: and they rule. They spread across the country. They bring
Speaker 1: together working class Latin Americans. And but the Young Lords
Speaker 1: they're not ready to be a socialist organization quite yet.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're starting to drift apart. Members grew up,
Speaker 1: they get married, they join the military. They could a
Speaker 1: prison for a long time because they keep doing crime.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, Cha Cha is in prison again.
Speaker 1: I think he's doing a six day stint for heroin possession.
Speaker 1: This is another thing no one likes talking about in
Speaker 1: all the history Everyone who's listening to heard me go
Speaker 1: on about this before. But like they always cut so
Speaker 1: much shit out of history books. They never talk about
Speaker 1: how a bunch of our heroes were drug users. How
Speaker 1: a bunch of our heroes were sex workers, A bunch
Speaker 1: of our heroes were like had specific political ideologies, like
Speaker 1: like there's all this stuff that gets cut out. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know much about Chato's drug use. I
Speaker 1: do know a lot about how the Young Lords dealt
Speaker 1: with heroin use in New York. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that later. Oh, really interesting him. That cool, It's really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I'm I kept whatever. I'm really excited about this.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows this. So he's doing a sixty day stint
Speaker 1: for heroin possession and in prison. This is his second
Speaker 1: Sea change moment. A bunch of shit that happens solidifies
Speaker 1: his future politics. First, he's in prison when m Okay
Speaker 1: is assassinated. Second, a bunch of Spanish speaking prisoners, including him,
Speaker 1: get thrown into solitary for basically no reason, and a
Speaker 1: guard tries to call him white in order to get
Speaker 1: black prisoners to beat him up to like race bait
Speaker 1: people against each other. But a black prisoner stood up
Speaker 1: for him, and that black prisoner said a few simple
Speaker 1: words that everyone needs to shout from time to time.
Speaker 1: Shut the fuck up, you pig wow, And so chatchas like, oh,
Speaker 1: cross racial solidarity is real, right, And while he's in solitary,
Speaker 1: he likes to read. And the Nation of Islam has
Speaker 1: prison is in prisons because they're bigger, rested a lot,
Speaker 1: and they would get themselves jobs in prison libraries in
Speaker 1: order to provide radical books to people, which is fucking rat.
Speaker 1: And so he starts reading Martin Luther King. He starts
Speaker 1: reading Malcolm X. He also started reading a book called
Speaker 1: The Seventh Story Mountain, written by a radical Catholic monk
Speaker 1: named Thomas Merton. Oh, gonna look that up immediately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was super social justice in his faith. He was
Speaker 1: really into interfaith understandings, Like all of his like theological
Speaker 1: books are about like why Catholicism isn't the only way,
Speaker 1: even though it's his way or whatever, how different people
Speaker 1: from different religions can get along and understand each other
Speaker 1: and like including not just like the monotheistic religions. But
Speaker 1: like he writes a lot about I didn't write this
Speaker 1: in my script, but I think it was Buddhism, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember. And he's really into writing fighting racism
Speaker 1: in war, and he has this quote, I really like
Speaker 1: the world is full of great criminals with enormous power,
Speaker 1: and they are in a death struggle with each other.
Speaker 1: It is a huge gang battle, using well meaning lawyers
Speaker 1: and policemen and clergymen as their front, controlling papers, means
Speaker 1: of communication, and enrolling everybody in their armies. Wow yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what is this sname again? His name is
Speaker 1: Thomas Murton. I haven't read his books yet, I am,
Speaker 1: but I really like this weird like, yeah, he reads
Speaker 1: m Okay, he reads Malcolmax, he reads Thomas Murton. And
Speaker 1: then he gets out of prison. He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: we need something like the Black Panthers. Good thing. I'm
Speaker 1: the leader of a gang. Nice what will he do?
Speaker 1: Who's to say? You certainly can't go read a book
Speaker 1: or some article on some website. You have to wait
Speaker 1: until Wednesday for part two of this epic four part
Speaker 1: series on the Young Lords. But first, before people wait
Speaker 1: until Wednesday, they should hear more about you and what
Speaker 1: you've been working on and how people can find you. Well.
Speaker 1: I actually am working on a new album, so that's
Speaker 1: really exciting. I just put out an album last year
Speaker 1: called Life on Earth. My band's called Hooray for the
Speaker 1: Riff Raff. And you can find me on all the
Speaker 1: social media's, even though Twitter scares the fuck out of me,
Speaker 1: so I don't really hang out there. I'm like trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to exist on the internet without
Speaker 1: it severely damaging me. I think we all are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Instagram, you know all those places you could probably
Speaker 1: see me on tour. You should do that definitely. When
Speaker 1: are you going on tour? I'll be on tour in
Speaker 1: May on the West Coast. I don't know when this
Speaker 1: will come out, come on in July for then. Oh cool.
Speaker 1: So I'll be on tour in May on the West
Speaker 1: Coast and in July i'll be like through the Midwest
Speaker 1: and some other places. Yeah. Yeah, And you seriously owe
Speaker 1: it to yourself to go check out Hurry for the
Speaker 1: riff Raff if you haven't heard it before, or if
Speaker 1: you came here to listen to this because you like Alinda.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and I hope you stick around for Wednesday.
Speaker 1: And you can follow me on the internet at Magpie
Speaker 1: Kill Joe on Twitter, which I also hate, but I'm there.
Speaker 1: You're so good at it though, thank you. All I
Speaker 1: do is get really sad about it at least once
Speaker 1: a week and Instagram at Margaret Killjoy, where I mostly
Speaker 1: post pictures of my dog as I go hyping really
Speaker 1: cute dog. Thanks, I like him and I will see
Speaker 1: everyone on Wednesday. Farewell. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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