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 going to
Speaker 2: revisit the Young Lord's.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about the group of radicals who
Speaker 3: completely changed the way that healthcare works in this country
Speaker 3: by taking direct action and doing all kinds of cool stuff.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to Inside Podcasting,
Speaker 2: the podcast where we give you all the tips and
Speaker 2: tricks you need to run a successful podcast. Our first
Speaker 2: tip I'm going to give it to you for free,
Speaker 2: is don't try and come up with a clever podcast
Speaker 2: introduction for every single episode, because it gets old and
Speaker 2: boring and then you find yourself doing introductions like this
Speaker 2: instead of saying, this is cool, well did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Mariya Kiljoy, which is much nicer and
Speaker 2: easier to say. You see. That's that's the first tip
Speaker 2: on this okay, so with me today is a Linda Segata.
Speaker 1: Allow.
Speaker 4: I'm good, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Yay. Usually I'm like, on this day, that's totally a
Speaker 2: different day than last time. But this time it is
Speaker 2: a different day than last It is.
Speaker 4: We're older, wiser, yeah, and last week.
Speaker 2: And I'm on more antibiotics than I was last week.
Speaker 2: But I have less tooth pain, so that is an advantage. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I did the last recording with like wisdom
Speaker 2: tooth infection.
Speaker 4: Oh wowsy Alec.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our producer is back. We're no longer running rudderless.
Speaker 2: We have Sophie Lichtman with us. Sophie, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Is that what happens when I'm not here?
Speaker 4: We were lost? It was my first time, but I
Speaker 4: was lost about you.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you, Linda.
Speaker 2: That was not your first rodeo.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm glad to be back and I excited excited
Speaker 1: to hear parts three and four.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay. Also our audio engineers Ian, thanks Ian for
Speaker 2: doing the thankless work. Our theme music was written for
Speaker 2: us by un Woman. This week we are picking up
Speaker 2: where we left off last week for our second ever
Speaker 2: four parter. Go back and listen to parts one and two.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with you? Why do you start on episode
Speaker 2: three of a four part You're probably the kind of
Speaker 2: person who can read comic books. I can't read comic
Speaker 2: books because I don't know where to start.
Speaker 4: Wow, really, you start wherever?
Speaker 1: I know?
Speaker 2: That's just the word for me to be fair bagpie.
Speaker 1: We just made a We just made an off mic
Speaker 1: argument for why you would start at the end of
Speaker 1: something instead of at the beginning, because you might find
Speaker 1: out somebody that you think is a hero is actually
Speaker 1: a really, really bad person in their personal life.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. I actually, for research purposes, should probably
Speaker 2: start all biographies about three quarters of the way through
Speaker 2: the book and read through the episode. Yeah yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: fair enough. Well that's not what's happening in this particular episode.
Speaker 2: They you know, no one's perfect, no group is perfect.
Speaker 2: But we're focusing on the stuff that the Young Lords did,
Speaker 2: and there was way too much good shit to just
Speaker 2: do in two episodes. So here we are. We are
Speaker 2: talking about the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican street gang
Speaker 2: turned activist organization who where we left off, is just
Speaker 2: rocking shit in New York City. They're setting trash on fire,
Speaker 2: but in a good way. I feel like there's like
Speaker 2: good and bad ways to set trash on fire, and
Speaker 2: they're all set to come into their own so let's
Speaker 2: watch them do it. So they've just burned a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of garbage and gotten the city to be like,
Speaker 2: maybe we need to do something about this garbage because
Speaker 2: these radicals keep setting it all on fire and blocking
Speaker 2: the roads. So they open up a storefront because now
Speaker 2: they're way more popular than they were, and they turned
Speaker 2: to organization. They started operating more like having autonomous working
Speaker 2: groups that work on different issues. And one of the
Speaker 2: autonomous working groups they set up is really interesting to me.
Speaker 2: They set up police watch organizations to go watch the police,
Speaker 2: right hu. And these were community led rather than just
Speaker 2: led by the young lords, which one else. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: I haven't because I haven't done a Panthers episode yet.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to contrast to the Panthers ideas of
Speaker 2: police watch and stuff. But if you're going to have
Speaker 2: a membership organization with a hierarchy, please do shit like this.
Speaker 2: It was an autonomous affiliate network of neighbor neighbors circles,
Speaker 2: and most of the volunteers were men and women. In
Speaker 2: their forties, not directly affiliated with the Lords. I think
Speaker 2: this was to basically have like cooler heads, like like
Speaker 2: people were a bit calmer and more trustworthy in this
Speaker 2: way or whatever, you know, and they focused on conflict
Speaker 2: de escalation. They also helped resist unlawful arrests WHOA. And
Speaker 2: their goal was to eventually make the police obsolete. I
Speaker 2: really like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I also really like this.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm like, why doesn't this just happen? Why
Speaker 2: don't people just make the police absolute? I mean, probably
Speaker 2: a lot of people who try to make the police
Speaker 2: obsolete by either going to jail or becoming worse than
Speaker 2: the cops. But like the partnersher tried to make camps obsolete.
Speaker 2: But he sucks anyway. They were unarmed, or at least
Speaker 2: they were not armed with firearms, which wasn't a moral
Speaker 2: decision but instead a strategic one within the context they
Speaker 2: were in. Actually, most of what the Young Lords are
Speaker 2: doing is unarmed compared to a lot of other organizations.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about what weapons they did use.
Speaker 2: Have you have you heard what weapon they're like signature
Speaker 2: weapon was. No, I'm not going to tell you yet.
Speaker 2: It's gonna come up later in the script. Okay, so good.
Speaker 2: I want you to think about what would be the
Speaker 2: coolest like non gun and that they could have.
Speaker 4: I know, right now I'm picturing like chain with the
Speaker 4: ball with the spikes on it.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Is it a battle axe?
Speaker 2: Nope, it's not a flail. It's not a battle axe.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: When I do my spinoff episode Great Medieval Weapons of
Speaker 2: History to explain the difference in morning stars and flails,
Speaker 2: and they like argument about whether or not the flail
Speaker 2: was actually historically used medieval. Okay, anyway, so they waited
Speaker 2: until they had buy in from the community before they
Speaker 2: even started this organization. They didn't just be like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're the new cops in town. We're going to start
Speaker 2: roaming the streets. They ended up with two hundred volunteers
Speaker 2: that patrolled a five block area around their storefront.
Speaker 4: Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, one hundred people is a lot
Speaker 4: of people.
Speaker 2: I know, and like, I want to know more about
Speaker 2: its organizational models. I mean, it's like my nerd shit
Speaker 2: as I want to figure out where they were hierarchical,
Speaker 2: where they weren't hierarchical, where they moved into different realms.
Speaker 2: But you know, they also launched a children's breakfast program
Speaker 2: working together with the Black Panthers. I think that and
Speaker 2: this is an inference from several sources, but I think
Speaker 2: that this is because the Panthers they're on the downswing
Speaker 2: because the Panther twenty one trial, right, So the Young
Speaker 2: Lords are stepping up and the Panthers are helping them
Speaker 2: do it. And the cops work really hard to discourage
Speaker 2: parents from letting their kids participate, saying basically like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're a gang. Don't let your kids fall into that gang.
Speaker 2: Keep your kids away from you know, the evil Young
Speaker 2: Lords or whatever. Yeah, it didn't work. Lots of people
Speaker 2: went working out of the storefront. The community just pours
Speaker 2: in support from all corners. There's local thieves who are like, hey,
Speaker 2: do you want some chairs? We still out of this VW.
Speaker 2: And that's where all the chairs in the office came from.
Speaker 2: Healthcare professionals donated medicine and volunteered, and there was an
Speaker 2: informal clinic run out of there on probably hanging out
Speaker 2: on the VW chairs that were stolen out of I mean,
Speaker 2: whoever's VW was was maybe mad, but you know, maybe
Speaker 2: they wanted to know a richer neighborhood to do it.
Speaker 4: Who knows bread sourcing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, from each, according to ability to steal, to each,
Speaker 2: according to need of stolen goods. They kept the whole
Speaker 2: block clean because that was like kind of their initial
Speaker 2: thing anyway, right that there's they'd like physically clean the streets,
Speaker 2: not metaphorically clean the streets, although we'll talk about some
Speaker 2: of their how they handled drug dealers in a little
Speaker 2: bit later. Because people loved them. Yeah, they set them
Speaker 2: ount of trash on fire. Everyone liked them. Fire makes friends, apparently.
Speaker 4: I know I would I would think there'd be more
Speaker 4: of a backlash. I'm pretty excited that people were like,
Speaker 4: way to go, guys, someone had to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I struggle to imagine that right now, in
Speaker 2: most places you could go burn a bunch of trash
Speaker 2: in the street and make do more than polarize people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I guess. I mean the need was so
Speaker 4: great that they, you know, that the community was just
Speaker 4: like something had to happen. We needed our trash to
Speaker 4: get picked up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. And I bet you it's like I
Speaker 2: bet you the first half was like half the people
Speaker 2: were like fuck yeah burning trash, this rules. Fuck the man,
Speaker 2: and the other half was like, I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: But then when it like worked and people started picking
Speaker 2: up the trash regularly, they were like, oh, all right,
Speaker 2: and so there are this much larger organization. Now some
Speaker 2: of them are still in high school. So the Young
Speaker 2: Lords managed to continue their name, but a lot of
Speaker 2: them dropped out of college and high school to work
Speaker 2: on this. There's a lot of ex college kids. This
Speaker 2: is a pattern we see across the late sixties early
Speaker 2: seventies movements, is that people go full time to work
Speaker 2: on this stuff. And the people who can go full
Speaker 2: time are people who are like, why would I want
Speaker 2: a degree when instead I can change the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As someone who made that decision myself, I have a
Speaker 2: particular affinity for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, No, everyone who finished their degrees, that's great. Fuck. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they start working alongside the welfare rights movement. They're just
Speaker 2: involved in everything. Because a fourteen year old young Lord
Speaker 2: got arrested at a welfare rights demonstration. As far as
Speaker 2: I I didn't put this in the script, but basically
Speaker 2: I think he was like walking home from somewhere and
Speaker 2: he saw a bunch of women like doing a sit
Speaker 2: in and were like. He was like, oh, I'm with them,
Speaker 2: and then sat down and got arrested or something like that,
Speaker 2: and he ends up in friend of the Pod the Tombs,
Speaker 2: which has been which is locked up basically everyone in
Speaker 2: the show who's lived in New York over the course
Speaker 2: of one hundred and fifty years, Like we do episodes
Speaker 2: about the nineteenth century, and all of the anarchists are
Speaker 2: getting sent to the tombs. Oh wow, and here we
Speaker 2: are in the nineteen sixties. People are getting sent to
Speaker 2: the Tombs. Have you ever been to the Tombs? I
Speaker 2: have no idea if you got arrested in New York
Speaker 2: I have not. Actually, okay, I never got it, but.
Speaker 4: The name since a chill down my spine. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: I feel like most guests, I'd be very nervous to
Speaker 2: be like, hey, you ever got arrest anyway, So the
Speaker 2: welfare movement of the late of the nineteen sixties deserves
Speaker 2: its own episode. At some point they shut down New
Speaker 2: York City a bunch of times. They were fierce as fuck.
Speaker 2: They were women of color lead and the New York
Speaker 2: Young Lords weren't exclusively men, and some of the founders
Speaker 2: were women. But this alliance stillp helps bring gender equity
Speaker 2: equality into the movement, Like more and more women are
Speaker 2: joining because they're focusing also on this particular thing. And
Speaker 2: this is something that they keep doing over and over again,
Speaker 2: is that they keep moving and working on issues that
Speaker 2: bring more and more women into the movement. And I
Speaker 2: think that's really cool. By October nineteen sixty nine, they
Speaker 2: put together a thirteen point program modeled on the Black Panthers,
Speaker 2: but growing from it as well. They use the word
Speaker 2: Latino in this, which is one of the first public
Speaker 2: uses of the word in this con text, and as
Speaker 2: far as I can tell, yeah, as a white person
Speaker 2: who just read this stuff, Basically later in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: Hispanic was added to the census, and so Latino became
Speaker 2: more of a word to be like fuck Spain, Like
Speaker 2: what the fuck we're not from Spain?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Oka, But this is before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, So I think that they're still already
Speaker 2: on the like fuck Spain, we're not from Spain totally.
Speaker 4: Yes, they were very much on that tip.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it also it talks about this this thirteen
Speaker 2: point program, it talks about cross racial solidarity between all
Speaker 2: oppressed people. It talks about internationalism, it talks about women's liberation.
Speaker 2: It doesn't always succeed at doing more than talking about
Speaker 2: these things, but we'll get to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I believe that at first it was like
Speaker 4: a ten point demand, right, and then I think I
Speaker 4: from what I remember reading, like the parts about battling
Speaker 4: muchismo and women's liberation were added because of pressure from
Speaker 4: women within the Young Lords.
Speaker 2: I believe you're right. I wrote a bunch of the
Speaker 2: script a little bit ago. Yeah, it got at the
Speaker 2: very least, it got rewritten to further emphasize these things.
Speaker 2: I think the women's liberation thing was I could be wrong.
Speaker 2: I think it was in there in the beginning, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't as strongly worded, and it was like near
Speaker 2: the end it was like the last point or the
Speaker 2: second less time totally, And so it got like bumped
Speaker 2: up to number three or four or something after after this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, because I do remember
Speaker 4: it being something about like much cheesebo needs to be
Speaker 4: used in a revolutionary way, and the women were like, Yo,
Speaker 4: that's not what we're talking about. Actually, that's not possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they did so much yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I mean I'm really excited about that part of it
Speaker 2: that they they did so much discussion about what is
Speaker 2: and isn't useful in terms of like they're basically having
Speaker 2: the conversation about masculinity versus toxic masculinity totally.
Speaker 4: And there are definite like conversations about gender and about
Speaker 4: how gender is a social construct like that was happening
Speaker 4: within the Young Lords and a lot of conversation learning
Speaker 4: from gay liberation movements. Like when I read about that,
Speaker 4: that's what really blew my mind and maybe be like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I'm so proud that these people are
Speaker 4: Puerto Rican.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, because we get presented this like
Speaker 2: because of the image of like well, actually, I mean
Speaker 2: mainstream society literally doesn't have an image of the Young Lords.
Speaker 2: Mainstream society ignores them, right or doesn't know about them.
Speaker 2: And but when we see like the mainstream image of
Speaker 2: radicals in the nineteen sixties, you might see a black
Speaker 2: man with a rifle, right and it and there's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with that image, but it's like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: I didn't know that the Black Panthers cifically teamed up
Speaker 2: with a queer Liberation Front until I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: they they've made explicit statements around this time, being like
Speaker 2: we're with the queers, you know, wow, And it's this
Speaker 2: like yeah, I mean there's still all kinds of like
Speaker 2: sexism in the Chismo, but people are so interested in
Speaker 2: like looking back and pretending like everything are these divorced movements. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember this. No, I'm just completely outscripted. I remember
Speaker 2: this conversation I had with this old union miner in
Speaker 2: West Virginia years ago who was like working against mountaintop removal. Oh,
Speaker 2: and I was talking to him and he was like,
Speaker 2: you know, a coal mining hippie in the sixties, and
Speaker 2: he's white, and he's like, yeah, in the sixties, we
Speaker 2: were out there protesting the war, and then on the
Speaker 2: other corners people protesting for gay rights, and then the
Speaker 2: other corners people protesting for black power. And we were like,
Speaker 2: why are we all on different corners? This is dumb.
Speaker 2: Let's stand on the same corner and then we're stronger.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh wow, yeah, yeah, makes me happy.
Speaker 2: It can be that simple, you know. And like, as
Speaker 2: you talked about and we're going to talk about more
Speaker 2: about it, and I'm be curious because I think you
Speaker 2: know more about this part of it than me. The
Speaker 2: women within this movement had to fight for this inclusion,
Speaker 2: you know. But yeah, so they put together a thirteen
Speaker 2: point program and it ends with we want a socialist society.
Speaker 2: So there's no like, you can't really pretend like they're reformists, right.
Speaker 2: They were really good at getting reforms, but that wasn't
Speaker 2: their goal.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They set up a bilingual newspaper, which they mimiographed themselves
Speaker 2: before eventually getting it produced all properly. It was one
Speaker 2: of the country's first bilingual newspapers. Oh wow. At its
Speaker 2: peak it had print runs of twenty four thousand copies.
Speaker 2: We fit every week, I believe. And it was called Polente,
Speaker 2: which I'll read. I'll read what is in a script
Speaker 2: really quick. Polente is slang that means onward, basically from
Speaker 2: PoTA Olente. There's a sick hooray for the riff rap
Speaker 2: song called Polente. Maybe you've heard of it, Alinda.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 4: It took me two years to write.
Speaker 2: Oh really it did.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Like, I don't know if anyone out there
Speaker 4: is hard on themselves, but you can probably relate to
Speaker 4: tasking yourself with I need to write a song that
Speaker 4: honors this movement and this, like you know of my ancestors,
Speaker 4: So I better write a really good song within like
Speaker 4: four to five minutes that encapsulates this, like how much
Speaker 4: it means to me. So it took me about two
Speaker 4: years to do that.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. The like like there's
Speaker 2: episodes I haven't done of cool people who did cool
Speaker 2: stuff yet because I'm like, I'm not ready. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: not ready to like cover. I mean I've done some
Speaker 2: that I kind of felt that way about Stonewall in
Speaker 2: the Spanish CVIL and some other things, right, but there's
Speaker 2: some that I'm just like, oh, how the hell am
Speaker 2: I gonna tell this? So that makes a lot of
Speaker 2: sense to me. It's a great song. Anyone who's listening
Speaker 2: should go and listen to this song.
Speaker 4: And great video. Also yeah, ye my friend Chris Mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually originally wrote the script for someone else,
Speaker 2: and then I use this part of the script to
Speaker 2: talk about how cool the song is, how people should
Speaker 2: check it out, and then I dragged you on as
Speaker 2: a guest. Nice, so they start putting out uh polente,
Speaker 2: Actually do you want to do? You have more of
Speaker 2: a I'm like it's slang that means onward. Yeah, is
Speaker 2: there more that you could say about what it means?
Speaker 4: It is true, it's just slang, you know, and it's
Speaker 4: funny within like, at least the experience of my family,
Speaker 4: you know, my dad, who was like a total like
Speaker 4: veteran turned hippie, would be like, oh, yeah, why aren't
Speaker 4: they like the Young Lords, you know, And then other
Speaker 4: people in my family would be like, that just means
Speaker 4: to literally go forward. There's like dance songs about that.
Speaker 4: Why are you I'll wrap up in this word, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's it's like a thing that I feel like
Speaker 4: for me, I was specifically drawn into that word because
Speaker 4: of the Young Lords. And maybe if you don't come
Speaker 4: from like a super like a nerdy background of researching them,
Speaker 4: you might just be like that means like keep a pushing,
Speaker 4: you know. But because of my mind being like totally
Speaker 4: blown by learning about them, I was like, this is
Speaker 4: the word. This is what I need to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, fuck yah. Speaking of what we need
Speaker 2: to do, we need to be sponsored the things that
Speaker 2: we hate in order to eat food and feed it,
Speaker 2: feed the food to the people that we like and ourselves.
Speaker 2: So it's been a particular week of like learning about
Speaker 2: a bunch of ads that have managed to slip in
Speaker 2: past our filters. Oh really, So if you're listening to
Speaker 2: this in Ireland and you get an ad for because
Speaker 2: I mean, a cop in Ireland, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 2: ahead and say I do not support this particular sponsor.
Speaker 4: Wow, that is just trolling. I know, that really trolling, you.
Speaker 2: Know, especially if it was like I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's Northern Ireland or whatever. Especially feels like a brit
Speaker 2: become a British cop in Ireland.
Speaker 1: I love to know what category they've slipped in under
Speaker 1: because we have like government blocked and like all those
Speaker 1: categories blocked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like all social club.
Speaker 1: A few years back, we had the Washington State Patrol
Speaker 1: running ads on one of our shows, or a couple
Speaker 1: of our shows, and we're like, what the fuck, Like
Speaker 1: we have all these categories blocked.
Speaker 2: They were under business.
Speaker 4: Oh wows more honest?
Speaker 1: You like, yes, yeah, yep, So don't enjoy these ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome to our life. Here you go, and we're back.
Speaker 2: And it'll be particularly funny because these ads change over time, right,
Speaker 2: they're not set when we record the episode they're set,
Speaker 2: I think when you listen to the episode. So what
Speaker 2: if in the future I start doing host red ads
Speaker 2: and I've gone on this long rant and then I
Speaker 2: come in and I'm like, do you like sandwich cookies? Well,
Speaker 2: do I have a sandwich cookie for you? The following
Speaker 2: brand of sandwich cookie is all natural and it is
Speaker 2: exactly what I need when I need sugar. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm not really doing a good job.
Speaker 1: I'm sorrying.
Speaker 4: Really happening. I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: Famous vegan snack the Oreo.
Speaker 4: No, it's vegan.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's why the newman O's thing is like
Speaker 2: not actually a rip off, because having the more organic
Speaker 2: version is fine. But it's like people are like New Minos.
Speaker 2: They are the vegan Oreos, and you're like, as are Oreos.
Speaker 4: I haven't thought of at New Mino in a long time.
Speaker 1: When I got some, you taught me all about the
Speaker 1: gloriousness that is the Oreo Magpie. You literally could do
Speaker 1: a sponsorship for Oreo if they were by an evil corporation.
Speaker 2: I know this is the problem, Like anyway, the incredible
Speaker 2: tension of everyone needing jobs in order to continue to live,
Speaker 2: and I like this I have the best job of
Speaker 2: anyone I know. I feel like Olinda, you might also
Speaker 2: identify with having a pretty decent job.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but what most jobs. I'm going to turn
Speaker 2: this into a proper segue. Wow, what most jobs? But
Speaker 2: my job actually doesn't offer me not because is healthcare. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're gonna talk about healthcare. Now that's my segue. I'm
Speaker 2: really good at my job. The medical situation for people
Speaker 2: of color in the nineteen sixties New York was not good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, devastating that that's a better word. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: White medical students used black and Puerto Rican hospitals for
Speaker 2: training before they moved to work on You know people
Speaker 2: that society actually cared about. Lincoln Hospital, the only hospital
Speaker 2: at the time in the South Bronx, was called the
Speaker 2: butcher Shop. People would go in there to get a
Speaker 2: leg amputated and come out with the wrong leg amputated.
Speaker 4: Holy shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no triage in the waiting room of
Speaker 2: the er. The paint in the children's ward was lead.
Speaker 2: We'll talk more about lead pain. Here's a nice euphemism.
Speaker 2: People got enrolled into medical studies without their consent. That
Speaker 2: is the nicest way of phrasing that I can possibly
Speaker 2: imagine seriously is a it's bad. It's like a really
Speaker 2: bad thing. So the Young Lords single handedly, No wait,
Speaker 2: they show up as one player and a larger coalition
Speaker 2: of groups fighting for health rights, the East Harlem Health Council,
Speaker 2: the e h HC. This is actually before they moved
Speaker 2: to the South Bronx. We're going to come back and
Speaker 2: talk about Lincoln Hospital a little bit later, okay, But
Speaker 2: so this is the when they're still more in East Harlem.
Speaker 2: They're protesting inside and outside of hospitals about the abuses
Speaker 2: happening there. And a ton of the medical providers at
Speaker 2: these hospitals were involved in organizing with the EHHC, just
Speaker 2: usually not the administration, but the actual doctors and the
Speaker 2: ha other you know, nursing staff and administrative staff and stuff.
Speaker 2: Administrative staff, I don't know what you call the people
Speaker 2: who aren't the bosses but are still administering things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got nothing, yeah, administrative staff, yeah, middle management yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think it's like again, like you have these
Speaker 2: like people who are like we're crazy socialists, who we're
Speaker 2: crazy yaw in uniforms and patrol like to keep the
Speaker 2: cops off of our block. And the doctors are like, wait,
Speaker 2: but are you trying to help people? And they're like yeah,
Speaker 2: and they're like all right, great, we're trying to help
Speaker 2: people too. How do we help people? You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2: The Young Lords they sat down with some doctors at
Speaker 2: Metropolitan Hospital in Harlem and they drafted a ten point
Speaker 2: health program because of course it had to be a
Speaker 2: ten point health program because they only have two naming
Speaker 2: conventions in the Young Lord which is one is the
Speaker 2: ten point or whatever number point program and the other
Speaker 2: one is the something offensive like the garbage offensive. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's now. I love a good naming convention and there
Speaker 2: have been great ones throughout history. I just so I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to drag them. They just they have two
Speaker 2: of them in it. In the ten point program, they
Speaker 2: advocate for direct democratic control of the hospital by a
Speaker 2: combination of its medical staff, it's workers, and the residents
Speaker 2: of the neighborhood. No fucking notes, Like.
Speaker 4: Seriously, that sounds great, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do we do it? Also in the ten
Speaker 2: point program was like healthcare should be free? What the fuck?
Speaker 2: Then they formed yet another organization, the Health Revolutionary Unity
Speaker 2: movement or Hrum Hrum. I think hrum and it might
Speaker 2: seem sort of odd that they may and join a
Speaker 2: million organizations, but it's actually kind of an effective decentralization
Speaker 2: technique that I think this is my own bias coming
Speaker 2: into it. When they are more effectively decentralized is when
Speaker 2: they are accomplishing more. From my point of view, that's
Speaker 2: my reading of this history. They're avoiding putting themselves directly
Speaker 2: into power. They're keeping power with the people, which is
Speaker 2: their stated goal. And I'm under the impression that they
Speaker 2: were also learning a lot about what wasn't working with
Speaker 2: the Black Panthers, who also were looking at their own
Speaker 2: weaknesses and trying to them up. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2: It's also important because while this is a story about
Speaker 2: how the Young Lord's won sanitation, detox facilities, a patient's
Speaker 2: bill of rights, it's also a story about how the
Speaker 2: young Lords, in conjunction with a huge, intersecting swath of
Speaker 2: revolutionaries and like medical professionals and stuff, do so. An
Speaker 2: awful lot of this health care activism was inspired by
Speaker 2: the Cuban Revolution. A bunch of doctors and young lords
Speaker 2: has secreted themselves to Cuba at one point or another
Speaker 2: to see how to create a functioning health care system. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not a I'm not like a big state socialism girl,
Speaker 2: but I'm also not a big capitalism girl, and socialist
Speaker 2: Cuba produced a better healthcare system than the United States
Speaker 2: has ever managed to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So on December fifth, nineteen sixty nine, they joined to
Speaker 2: sit in at the hospital they're protesting the construction of
Speaker 2: an emergency room. That I could not figure out what
Speaker 2: was wrong in the emergency room was being done in
Speaker 2: a bad way.
Speaker 4: Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's so many different times they all take over churches
Speaker 2: and hospitals and shit that it was like hard. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a good problem for your movement to have be
Speaker 2: like and keep track of everything they did, because they
Speaker 2: did everything constantly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I believe them that the er was being done in
Speaker 2: a bad way and that it was worth protesting. I
Speaker 2: have no everything else they've been right on about. So
Speaker 2: they didn't win a dramatic change in the construction of
Speaker 2: the er, but they want a sort of a side
Speaker 2: demand okay, and that the hospital would now pay for
Speaker 2: one of their doctors to come volunteer at their storefront
Speaker 2: clinic offer immunizations. Yeah, and then there was something else
Speaker 2: that they wanted to work on. They just like literally
Speaker 2: worked on everything. They were focused on lead poisoning. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you knew this, but lead is really bad.
Speaker 4: For you, yes, especially for children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is why you shouldn't paint the children's
Speaker 2: wing of the hospital in lead. Apparently it's like sweet
Speaker 2: if you eat it, and that's why kids eat it.
Speaker 2: Sophie is looking distressed by this.
Speaker 4: It's trajac.
Speaker 2: So lead poisoning.
Speaker 1: It's poisoning the original like fruit flavored vape things I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's lead in the current vape. Well, we get
Speaker 2: sued if I make this claim allegedly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're saying you don't know, but you might know.
Speaker 1: But it might be, but it might not be, and
Speaker 1: that's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not in the UK. We can't get sued
Speaker 2: for libel. There's probably not.
Speaker 1: Like this podcaster is in the UK bagpot, but.
Speaker 2: I'm not in the ego. Oh, I see, interesting, the
Speaker 2: delicate balance we all walk, Okay, I genuinely have no
Speaker 2: All I know is that vapes are unregular, right are
Speaker 2: they still unregulated? I don't know about this.
Speaker 1: I don't get pretty unregulated. But lead paint tastes sweet,
Speaker 1: and that's why kids.
Speaker 2: That is all right, I'm looking it up.
Speaker 1: It really sped with my day. It's Monday and I'm
Speaker 1: already like what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, lead paint has a sweet taste, which encourages children
Speaker 2: to put paint chips in their mouths and chew on
Speaker 2: surfaces like window sills, says University of Rochester, the top
Speaker 2: Google result when I google lead paint.
Speaker 1: I bet animals are drawn to it as well.
Speaker 2: M that's why animals attack.
Speaker 1: I thanks you violent, thanks thanks for bombing me out.
Speaker 2: Magpie, You're welcome. That's the point of this ship. Wait
Speaker 2: this well, let me talk about how they've stopped it.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a great thing. They stopped this shit. Tell
Speaker 2: me all right, So lead fucks you up. It fucks
Speaker 2: up your brain, It fucks up your kidneys, It can
Speaker 2: kill you. Children in poor urban areas were chok full
Speaker 2: of lead. The paint had been discontinued in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: but no one was checking poor houses housing areas to
Speaker 2: make sure that, like landlords were getting rid of the
Speaker 2: lead paint and shit. New York City late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: twenty five to thirty five thousand kids were getting fucked
Speaker 2: up by lead poisoning every year. Wow, and that's just
Speaker 2: the ones who were like it was bad enough or
Speaker 2: got noticed in that way. Right. Of course, one kid,
Speaker 2: he was two years old, his name was Gregory Franklin.
Speaker 2: He was killed by lead paint and basically since he
Speaker 2: had been born, his parents had been fighting with their
Speaker 2: landlord to deal with the lead paint in their house
Speaker 2: to no success, and then they lost their child. So
Speaker 2: the Young Lords spring into action. They what they needed
Speaker 2: was a lead offensive. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: It's so good, especially lead offensive because it sounds like
Speaker 2: it's going to be about machine guns. But they're still
Speaker 2: unarmed except for with that particular tool that we're going
Speaker 2: to get to you later.
Speaker 4: OHCT.
Speaker 2: The city had access to a ton of free lead
Speaker 2: poisoning kits, but they weren't distributing them, or at least
Speaker 2: they weren't distributed him in these areas. So during the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine mayor all election, the Young Lords announced
Speaker 2: they were going to do free door to door testing
Speaker 2: with these kits, which the city hadn't promised them. They
Speaker 2: didn't call up the city and be like, hey, can
Speaker 2: we get some kids, and then say hey, we're going
Speaker 2: to do testing. They just announced the city is going
Speaker 2: to give us kits call and we are going to
Speaker 2: do testing. And the government was like no. So then
Speaker 2: medical personnel and the Young Lords did a sit in
Speaker 2: at the Department of Health and they walked out that
Speaker 2: particular day with two hundred kids and I believe started
Speaker 2: just getting kids from the city.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, direct action gets the fucking goods. And they went
Speaker 2: door to door doing testing for lead. And it was
Speaker 2: two groups. It was the Young Lords and then h
Speaker 2: Rum the Health Movement and they the larger coalition that
Speaker 2: they're part of. And so they tracked who they who
Speaker 2: needed treatment, and the doctors with them made referrals. So
Speaker 2: they go around and be like Young Lords and doctors
Speaker 2: working together. Over thirty percent of the kids that they
Speaker 2: tested tested positive for let exposure. And so then they
Speaker 2: would sit down and talk with people about their rights
Speaker 2: and about how to go about and try and get
Speaker 2: justice and try and get health health needs taken care of.
Speaker 2: And they did this once a week. One source says
Speaker 2: they did every Saturday. One source they says they did
Speaker 2: it every Tuesday, because why would history agree with itself.
Speaker 2: I mean the answer is because it was a bunch
Speaker 2: of humans, and humans don't remember shit from forty years ago,
Speaker 2: very clearly. Yeah yeah yeah at the time.
Speaker 4: Way, yeah, they were doing it once a week and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, get I mean to cut you off. I'm
Speaker 2: sorry saying oh yeah, that's all.
Speaker 4: That's all I was saying. It's a great It's like
Speaker 4: an incredible thing to do with your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like even it's like it's like volunteerism or whatever, right,
Speaker 2: but it's like fucking direct action. You're going around and
Speaker 2: helping people and like you're getting to know your neighbors
Speaker 2: and like they's just like not a downside, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And so they publicized what they found and it became
Speaker 2: a scandal for the city who had refused to take
Speaker 2: had refused to give them the tests, you know. So
Speaker 2: within within months, the city changed its housing codes, stepped
Speaker 2: up testing, founded the Bureau of Lead Poisoning Control. I
Speaker 2: think basically because they were like, if you tell the city, like,
Speaker 2: if you don't take care of people, the socialists will
Speaker 2: the cities Like, maybe we should take care of the people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: much like you will be taken care of by Uh,
Speaker 2: let's go with a positive sponsor again, old stand by turtles.
Speaker 2: Turtles are really cute. You want to be sponsored by
Speaker 2: the cute little turtles that.
Speaker 4: Live free, that live free like in the wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why not, Like we're just we're thinking about good
Speaker 2: sponsors to do little ads for.
Speaker 4: I'm a fan of turtles. I love how they live
Speaker 4: for a very long time. Yeah, you should probably listen
Speaker 4: to them more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, respect your elder turtles. Yeah that is this is
Speaker 2: an ad for respecting your elder turtlesh you should listen
Speaker 2: to the Methuselah turtles in your life and then whatever
Speaker 2: else these other ads are. We didn't approve of their
Speaker 2: an accident. I hope it's all turtle ads. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 2: My favorite turtle fact I learned is that box turtles
Speaker 2: stay within a mile or so of where they were
Speaker 2: born their whole life. Oh wow, that was wanted from
Speaker 2: that ad. Just now about turtles that we are heard?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah I didn't. I didn't hear that. Just local
Speaker 4: little guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, keep it local like a yeah, all right, so
Speaker 2: let's talk about and they take over church, I mean
Speaker 2: around that time they keep working on survival programs too,
Speaker 2: which is what they call the like you know, breakfast
Speaker 2: program and stuff like that. Right, but they wanted to
Speaker 2: do more and they needed another base of operations. And
Speaker 2: also their friend and the Black panther Fred Hampton, had
Speaker 2: just been murdered in Chicago by the police. So wow,
Speaker 2: they were looking for a place that they could operate
Speaker 2: that the police probably wouldn't storm in a hail of gunfire. Okay,
Speaker 2: So they wanted a.
Speaker 4: Church reliant by the way, I know, and I feel
Speaker 4: like I always wondered why the church And that's like
Speaker 4: a very great point. Yeah, practical point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it also is that Like, Okay, so their Marxist
Speaker 2: Leninist organization right ostensibly and practically, but they're clearly doing
Speaker 2: their own thing. They're things their own way and in
Speaker 2: their own context. So they're not an atheist organization like
Speaker 2: Marxist Lenism is like supposed to be. Right, some of
Speaker 2: them are atheists, some of them or not. The Christian
Speaker 2: Church was criticized regularly by the Young Lords for being
Speaker 2: an instrument of colonization, completely accurate, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: they used Christ as a man of the people a
Speaker 2: lot in their propaganda.
Speaker 4: Oh I like it, I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had posters. I really want one. They had
Speaker 2: posters of Jesus with an AK forty seven slung around
Speaker 2: his shoulder.
Speaker 4: Wait, what do we get that? I'm like immediately on
Speaker 4: the ubay.
Speaker 2: I know, anybody who's listening, if you have access to
Speaker 2: these posters, please send them to me and Alinda seriously.
Speaker 2: And I think that some of the radical Catholics are
Speaker 2: rolling with them at this point. You can hear more
Speaker 2: about the passifist radical Catholics in our episode the passifist
Speaker 2: Radical The ones who are rolling with the Young Lords
Speaker 2: probably aren't pacist, but I'm not sure. You can hear
Speaker 2: more about them in our episode about the Burglars versus
Speaker 2: the FBI that came out recently. So the Young Lords
Speaker 2: they're looking for this new base and they go to
Speaker 2: a Spanish church in Harlem and they're like, hey, can
Speaker 2: me use your space? But the priest at East Harlem's
Speaker 2: first Spanish United Methodist church didn't want to let them
Speaker 2: feed kids there. He was a refugee from Castor's Cuba
Speaker 2: and he was not super lefty. It's a way that
Speaker 2: one could say that. So they went four more times
Speaker 2: to Sunday Mass, and they would participate in mass, I believe, respectfully,
Speaker 2: but then they would also like speak up and be like,
Speaker 2: let us feed kids here. Each time the priest was like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. So then they go, I think
Speaker 2: it's time number five, but I'm not entirely sure, And
Speaker 2: a young lord tries to speak at the service, and
Speaker 2: an undercover cop pops up to arrest him because the
Speaker 2: priest had set up a sting to arrest the young
Speaker 2: lord's during mass. So yick, I know, so a brawl
Speaker 2: broke out. Because a brawl broke out between cops and
Speaker 2: lords in the house of the lord, Thirteen young lords,
Speaker 2: eight men and five women were arrested and five more hospitalized.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Religious civil rights leaders came out against the
Speaker 2: church for having set up a sting to arrest the
Speaker 2: lord the lords at mass. So the young Lords gave up,
Speaker 2: went home, disbanded their organism. No, it stiffened the resolve
Speaker 2: to use the church, and it also turned more of
Speaker 2: the congregation into supporters of the young lord's request to
Speaker 2: use the space. The congregation of the church was fairly split,
Speaker 2: and more of the younger congregants were like fuck yeah,
Speaker 2: the Young Lord's rule, and more of the older congregants
Speaker 2: were like, the Young Lord's drool totally how they phrased it.
Speaker 2: And so the next Sunday, five hundred supporters for the
Speaker 2: Young Lords waited outside. The Young Lords met with the
Speaker 2: church board, who started off the conversation by saying racist
Speaker 2: shit against Puerto Ricans. That's the other like background context
Speaker 2: to a lot of this, right, It's not just like
Speaker 2: people being like I have slightly more conservative economic values
Speaker 2: than you, and I don't think it's a good way
Speaker 2: to help people grow up. No, they're like you, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna say it how they would say it. You
Speaker 2: lazy Puerto Ricans have no work ethic and that's why
Speaker 2: you're all poor and you blow all your welfare money
Speaker 2: on beer. These are some of the my paraphrasing of
Speaker 2: what they've said, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Also that it was disrespectful for the Afro Puerto Ricans
Speaker 2: to have to wear their hair and Afros was another thing.
Speaker 2: The priests were like, we don't like your haircut.
Speaker 4: Wow, way did go out of your Like you're laying
Speaker 4: by the way, literally, no one's asking you about people's hair.
Speaker 4: But cool, you're supposed to be talking about Jesus and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Famous, if no one asked you. Famous hates people
Speaker 2: for their haircut. Jesus maybe he doesn't like frosted tips.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I've never asked him about tins. But
Speaker 2: so for two more weeks they keep going to Sunday
Speaker 2: mass So this is like two months now, right. Then
Speaker 2: the third week after they've been beaten by cops, it's
Speaker 2: December twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, they go to a
Speaker 2: Sunday service and then they nail the doors shut, lock
Speaker 2: themselves inside, and they basically take the university takeover strategy
Speaker 2: to the community. And if you remember, this isn't the
Speaker 2: first time the Young Lads, the Young Lords in Chicago
Speaker 2: took over a church as well, right, but it certainly
Speaker 2: gets presented that they're drawing more from their experiences during
Speaker 2: the Columbia University takeover, which is when Columbia University students
Speaker 2: led by led by black students took over much of
Speaker 2: the university, which if you want to hear more about,
Speaker 2: listen to our episode about Up against the Wall Motherfuckers,
Speaker 2: the which I think we just called up against the
Speaker 2: Wall in the title because we're not allowed to cuss
Speaker 2: on the title.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: I like that this entire podcast has turned into an
Speaker 1: ad for other episodes of our podcast.
Speaker 2: I like to see it as weaving the web of history,
Speaker 2: but it's also yeah, it's also just yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: if you want more context. They didn't take hostages. They
Speaker 2: let anyone out who wanted to leave. They held a
Speaker 2: press conference and they said that their demand was the
Speaker 2: ability to run a food program out of the church.
Speaker 2: And they couched it all in religious language, but without lying.
Speaker 2: They were like, they weren't like, oh, Christianity's perfect in
Speaker 2: every way and they're doing it wrong. They're like, look,
Speaker 2: Christianity became a religion of colonization, but Jesus himself was
Speaker 2: a man of the people. Because that's their line, right,
Speaker 2: and they echo liberation theology stuff which you can hear
Speaker 2: more about in our episodes about Chico Mendez in the
Speaker 2: Fight for the Rainforest. Now, I'm just gonna do it
Speaker 2: to make Sophie shake her head. The mayor, this is
Speaker 2: like one of my favorite details of this whole thing.
Speaker 2: So the mayor has a Puerto Rican aid, like a
Speaker 2: guy who's his point of contact with the Puerto Rican community. Okay,
Speaker 2: his name is Arnie Segata.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, wait, like my I utilizing that's my uncle.
Speaker 2: Wait is it your uncle?
Speaker 4: No? I have no idea who Ernie is. But Arnie
Speaker 4: related Arnie, Arnie, we're related though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Arnie Segata, it's spelled the same way. I had
Speaker 2: to just double check. I had to look up your
Speaker 2: own I had to look up your last name. I
Speaker 2: remember I was spelling it right in my head because
Speaker 2: I'm like not very good at the double rold ours thing,
Speaker 2: and so I was like, oh, maybe anyway, so your
Speaker 2: uncle Arnie.
Speaker 4: Oh god does he suck? I'm worried about.
Speaker 2: No, he's great.
Speaker 4: Oh good, good, good, you come from Arnie. Let's go,
Speaker 4: let's go.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: So he started off not great because he's the mayor's guy.
Speaker 2: He gets sent he's the token guy. You guess he
Speaker 2: used to quell unrest in Puerto Rican neighborhoods. He was
Speaker 2: probably on the ground during the trash burning being like
Speaker 2: everyone cal him down. So the Mayor's like, here, go in,
Speaker 2: and he has this like backpack telephone, this like radio
Speaker 2: like military fucking telephone, you know.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Forty minutes later, the Mayor's office is like radios and
Speaker 2: it's like, what the fuck, where are you? What's happening?
Speaker 2: And Arnie is like, I think they're right, and I'm
Speaker 2: staying with them. Oh God, and he gets fired and
Speaker 2: he stays Arnie, Yeah.
Speaker 4: My man, I gotta kind of like look this guy
Speaker 4: up on the internet right now.
Speaker 2: So they renamed the place the People's Church, and the
Speaker 2: community pours in to discuss what to do about all
Speaker 2: kinds of shit like evictions to lack of interpretation services
Speaker 2: at school meetings, and it was called the Church Offensive.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: I really hope that at some point a young lord
Speaker 2: became a youth pastor, sat down backwards on a folding
Speaker 2: chair and said, you know who else had a ten
Speaker 2: point program and then talked about the ten Commandments. That's
Speaker 2: what I hope. So they ran a medical clinic there
Speaker 2: because of course they did, staffed by all their doctor comrades,
Speaker 2: and they ran their breakfast program plus free community meals
Speaker 2: every evening for everyone, and so it's like all of
Speaker 2: these different people from the community coming and bringing in
Speaker 2: food and sharing it with everyone. It's fucking utopian, like
Speaker 2: just frankly, yeah, yeah. They taught classes on Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: and black history. They set up a loud speaker facing
Speaker 2: the street that played speeches for Malcolm X and shit
Speaker 2: alongside Puerto Rican music.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: The Young Lords generally didn't carry weapons, and when they
Speaker 2: needed security they Okay, I want you you both get
Speaker 2: a guess again. So if you can't look at the script,
Speaker 2: I'm not guess what their weapon was. The flail wasn't correct,
Speaker 2: the battle axe was incorrect. I'll give you a hint. Turtles,
Speaker 2: what do.
Speaker 4: You a shell? Like? Wait, how there's there's like they're
Speaker 4: out throwing shells.
Speaker 2: No, they have nun chucks.
Speaker 1: Ah, oh my, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sorry, So they carry nunchucks as theirs their weapons of choice,
Speaker 2: which is I mean, like frankly like, it's a scary
Speaker 2: weapon to carry, but it's like not a you know,
Speaker 2: it's not a like kill you weapon.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But if someone walks up to me and they're like
Speaker 2: kind of scary anyway and they have a breton and
Speaker 2: they're carrying nunchucks, like I don't want to fuck with them.
Speaker 4: Absolutely not. This is like also the most New York
Speaker 4: thing ever, by the way, Oh yeah, because you know
Speaker 4: it's just like I mean, it just is in the
Speaker 4: way that it's this like.
Speaker 2: Cross cultural like oh my god, you're right.
Speaker 4: Moment, you know. I mean, I'm sure this was coming
Speaker 4: out of like at the time Kung Fu movies were huge. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, like this is just oh really yeah, it's
Speaker 4: just the most New York image in my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Totally also very warriors energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally totally. Which is I mean, that's their roots, right,
Speaker 2: It's like they're a crazy gang that wants to realize
Speaker 2: that there's more of them than there are cops in
Speaker 2: this town. So white supporters use their whiteness to pass
Speaker 2: through police lines and deliver supplies.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: And the young lords made sure that no one did
Speaker 2: any desecrating of the church, and they kept the altar
Speaker 2: and everything intact. They actually even kept Sunday services and
Speaker 2: like the regular congregation was able to come in and
Speaker 2: use the church on Sunday even during their occupation, although
Speaker 2: only the younger congregants came. Right, the people don't like
Speaker 2: them aren't going to show up, and they held festivals
Speaker 2: of the oppressed with Puerto Rican music, with poets and
Speaker 2: musicians and writers and artists. I read something that claimed
Speaker 2: this is the kind of thing that I feel like
Speaker 2: a lot of places might claim origin to that the
Speaker 2: spoken word poetry jam, like the whole concept of the
Speaker 2: spoken word poetry jam, yeah, was developed here. I believe it,
Speaker 2: and if so, this is one of the foundations of
Speaker 2: hip hop.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also where the poet Pedro Pietry gave his first
Speaker 2: public reading of his poem Puerto Rican Obituary.
Speaker 4: Which is featured in my song Ballante. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 4: incredible footage of him reading it, I think for the
Speaker 4: first time on YouTube that you guys should check out
Speaker 4: because it's very moving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a even if you're like not a
Speaker 2: poetry girl, you should go and listen to this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very much street poetry. You're not going to cringe.
Speaker 4: It's not like Predicatre Louie Slam yet, you know, it's
Speaker 4: very I remember reading that that poem for the first
Speaker 4: time when I was in high school in an anthology
Speaker 4: of called like the Outlaws Anthology of Poetry or something,
Speaker 4: and reading that poem really was the first time I
Speaker 4: ever saw pernercan NICs be like so talked about in
Speaker 4: such a real way, in a way that was like
Speaker 4: a Mickey Mouse way.
Speaker 2: You know, I believe you, but tell me more, what's
Speaker 2: the Mickey Mouse way?
Speaker 4: Like the way that we were portrayed in media when
Speaker 4: I was growing up, which was very like docile and
Speaker 4: fun and like it was very j lo very Ricky Martin.
Speaker 4: That was like what I grew up with. And also
Speaker 4: like literally West Side Story being something that's like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: you can see us featured in such recent movie as
Speaker 4: this West Side Story, and it's like nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 4: why is this the last reference that I have? Yeah,
Speaker 4: So it was just very much you know, I was
Speaker 4: hanging out in the Lower east Side and Tomkins Square
Speaker 4: Park and stuff and for the first time being like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, the problems that I'm seeing in society
Speaker 4: now were happening then, and people like me, we're talking
Speaker 4: about it and we're experiencing it, and this is like
Speaker 4: a poem that's expressing that angst, you know. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: it was a very powerful moment for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The first time I heard it was in your song.
Speaker 2: And then when I like I was reading about this,
Speaker 2: I was like oh, because I was just all yeah,
Speaker 2: and all the connections. So I want to quote about
Speaker 2: this takeover just to keep telling met how fucking cool
Speaker 2: it is. From the best book on this history that
Speaker 2: I found was called The Young Lord is called The
Speaker 2: Young Lords by Johanna Fernandez. Cool quote. Immediately, local grandmothers
Speaker 2: began delivering pots of food to the Puerto Rican radicals
Speaker 2: through church windows, while a feelanx of National Lawyer's Guild
Speaker 2: attorneys on site and then the church's periphery filed court
Speaker 2: injunctions and reminded judges and police of the barricaded radicals
Speaker 2: constitutionally protected right to protest teetering between sacrilege and righteousness.
Speaker 2: The Young Lord's unfolding drama was captured by TV cameras
Speaker 2: parked in the out parked in and outside of the
Speaker 2: House of Warship. And yeah, because of the National Lawyer's Guild.
Speaker 2: Shout out to the National Lawyer's Guild who were also
Speaker 2: still around and doing amazing things, the fight to evict
Speaker 2: them was held in the courts rather than just like
Speaker 2: storming the place. Because you hear about this and you're
Speaker 2: kind of like, well, why didn't they just like storm it, right,
Speaker 2: And the answer is, oh, yeah, they took it to court.
Speaker 2: And their strategy, which is probably never gonna win or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: their strategy was basically a Methodist church is mandated to
Speaker 2: help people, and that's what we're doing. And this stalled
Speaker 2: their eviction, but not for all that long. I think
Speaker 2: it's thirteen days. Maybe in the end. On January seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, the occupants gave themselves up into police custody
Speaker 2: walking out of the church. Some of them were singing,
Speaker 2: some of them had their fists raised in silence. When
Speaker 2: presented before a judge, each one corrected the judge the
Speaker 2: judge's pronunciation of their name, saying their own names in
Speaker 2: Spanish instead of English, which is such a good fuck
Speaker 2: you don't They didn't win the use of the church.
Speaker 2: The church promised to run a daycare center and a
Speaker 2: drug detoc center, but it never did. But they they
Speaker 2: won yet again. The government's shamed into action. Just as importantly,
Speaker 2: their power is growing, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: what they did with their growing power on Wednesday in
Speaker 2: the final part of this four part epic.
Speaker 4: I want it to end.
Speaker 2: Well, when we come back, we're going to see them
Speaker 2: overthrow capitalism and no, I'm just kidding it cointel repression
Speaker 2: and internal conflict fuel by authoritarian structure and going to
Speaker 2: fuck them up. But their legacy will live on and
Speaker 2: when we come back, they're going to take over a
Speaker 2: fucking hospital.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, was gonn say Linded? Do you know what
Speaker 1: else is based? You're pluggables? My what you're pluggables? Anything
Speaker 1: that you.
Speaker 4: Well, you can find me on all of the social media's,
Speaker 4: uh some of them terrify me more than others. But
Speaker 4: I'm on Instagram as hooray for the riff raff that
Speaker 4: spelled with a U h u r r a y
Speaker 4: for the riff raff on Twitter and all the other ones,
Speaker 4: and I'll be on tour this summer on the West
Speaker 4: Coast and also through the Midwest in July.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, magpie, anything you want to plug.
Speaker 2: My other podcasts, Live Like the World Is Dying has
Speaker 2: gone weekly, So if you're like, how am I going
Speaker 2: to make it till Monday? You can listen to me
Speaker 2: or one of my other co hosts on Friday by
Speaker 2: listening to Live Like the World Is Dying. And I'm
Speaker 2: on social media even though I hate it are so
Speaker 2: if you want to participate in either everyone feeling bad
Speaker 2: about themselves been trying to perform coolness, you can see
Speaker 2: me on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy or if you want
Speaker 2: to have bad faith arguments with people making bad faith
Speaker 2: arguments about you and watch the Left of Hour itself.
Speaker 2: You can find me on Twitter at Magpie Killjoy. Sophie,
Speaker 2: what do you got? What do you want to plug?
Speaker 1: Ah? My beautiful friend Jimmy Loftus has a book coming
Speaker 1: out and it is available for pre order right now.
Speaker 1: It is called Raw Dog. If you go to any
Speaker 1: of Jamie's social media's you can find a link to
Speaker 1: pre order or request it at your local library.
Speaker 2: It's probably worth pointing out that it's about hot dogs.
Speaker 2: Oh yep, we'll see you Wednesday. They Hello, I'm out
Speaker 2: of jokes to start episodes with. This is cool People
Speaker 2: did cool stuff, which kind of sounds like a joke
Speaker 2: name for a podcast anyway, but I rather like it.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kilday with me today on this
Speaker 2: Journey is a Linda Segata.
Speaker 4: How are you doing good? I just said a snack?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, and you're an hour wiser than last time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Our producer is Sophie. Sophie, how are you?
Speaker 4: How are you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Compared to like toothpain recording, antibiotics antibiotics recording is a breeze.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel that as somebody who also is on anbiotics. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This podcast brought to you by a Max of Sillan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fish antibiotics legal but not for human This.
Speaker 1: Week I couldn't hear out of my right ear.
Speaker 2: This week I mostly can.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: To be clear, I don't believe either of us are
Speaker 2: in fish antibiotics, and I do not recommend them anyway.
Speaker 2: That's not even for legal reasons. I just feel guilty
Speaker 2: when I accidentally make a joke about bad advice. Our
Speaker 2: audio engineers Ian Hi Ian. Everyone say hi Ian, that
Speaker 2: being including you listening to your headphones in a public place.
Speaker 2: I want you to say hi Ian. God hates a coward.
Speaker 2: Say it all right. Ian. You're exempt from having to
Speaker 2: say hi Ian unless you want to. Our music was
Speaker 2: written for us by young woman, and today we're talking
Speaker 2: about the Young Lords, the Puerto Rican socialist organization that
Speaker 2: is kicking ass and taking names in New York City.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy, they've just taken over
Speaker 2: a Methodist church and turned it into the People's Church
Speaker 2: for eleven days, which I said thirteen last time because
Speaker 2: I wasn't looking at the script and I was coming
Speaker 2: up with numbers and I came up with the wrong one.
Speaker 4: They got a lot done for eleven days.
Speaker 2: I know, there's like multiple festivals of the oppressed that
Speaker 2: they managed to throw on eleven days.
Speaker 4: Totally.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine, like I would take more than eleven
Speaker 2: days to organize a festival the oppressed right now?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally, Like all right, we're getting ready for
Speaker 2: twenty twenty fives festivally oppressed.
Speaker 4: Totally.
Speaker 2: Everyone got to check their schedules. So this action got
Speaker 2: them national attention and support, and their membership soared especially
Speaker 2: and it brought in again more women. More than six
Speaker 2: hundred new members came on. And this is an official
Speaker 2: membership organization as compared to some other things. Right, Okay,
Speaker 2: they would take Puerto Rican people, and they would take
Speaker 2: both non Puerto Rican black people and non Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: LATINX folks from their neighborhoods. Overall, they skewed demographically Afro
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican and English speaking at this point, so value
Speaker 2: judgment and that that's just what their demographics were. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it. Whatever. They'd already opened a Newark, New
Speaker 2: Jersey chapter by this point, and soon they opened some
Speaker 2: in the South Bronx Bridgeport, Connecticut, Boston, the Lower East Side,
Speaker 2: and Philly. They lived communally. They ate free meal at
Speaker 2: dining halls. They had a whole building. Now oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: women and men live together and organized together and threw
Speaker 2: down together. And the women worked hard to fight chauvinism
Speaker 2: in the movement. They would specifically, this is the thing
Speaker 2: I didn't know to I researched this. They would call
Speaker 2: people out as male Chauvenes's pigs. And it's one of
Speaker 2: the first uses of that phrase, male Chauvenes's pig. And
Speaker 2: something I hadn't realized is that the men men are pigs.
Speaker 2: Rhetoric within feminism doesn't come out of calling men animals.
Speaker 2: Like it's not directly calling them the pig, the animal.
Speaker 2: It's that since the Black Panthers has started calling cops pigs,
Speaker 2: they're calling men cops, right wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they're saying you're being a cop right now? Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like that makes a lot more. It's just like it
Speaker 4: rings it rings well with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, be like, you are the oppressor right now, you
Speaker 2: are passing, and it probably fucking stung more. Than being
Speaker 2: like because when you call men pigs, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're a pig, You're you're gross and being overly sexual
Speaker 2: or whatever. Men are often like, yeah, I am, that's
Speaker 2: just the way we are.
Speaker 5: Baby, totally right, broachew.
Speaker 2: As compared to being like you are acting like a
Speaker 2: police officer, yeah, you know, which is not a nice
Speaker 2: thing to be called. And that helps get men get
Speaker 2: their shit together, as does a woman's caucus, as does
Speaker 2: an action that did not come up with my research,
Speaker 2: but you brought up Okay, but.
Speaker 4: Then I couldn't. I researched it online. I couldn't find
Speaker 4: it online.
Speaker 2: But I found a little bit claiming you did. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but only a little bit, like only a single reference,
Speaker 2: So you should say what you learned, Okay.
Speaker 4: I land this when I went to the Bronx Museum
Speaker 4: and they had an exhibit all about the Young Lords,
Speaker 4: and it was written in the paper that the women
Speaker 4: had gotten together and they decided if their demands would
Speaker 4: not be met where they were able to carry firearms.
Speaker 4: Although you're saying that they didn't really care well.
Speaker 2: Some people, so I know, I know, it's like it's messy.
Speaker 2: I think that they must have sometimes or something, but okay.
Speaker 4: And be treated as comrades instead of servants, and you know,
Speaker 4: like the way that traditionally their families taught them to
Speaker 4: treat women. There would be a sex strike. And you
Speaker 4: know this is also acting as if like the majority
Speaker 4: were straight, but that men would not be able to
Speaker 4: receive sex anymore from women until they got their shit together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably effective, I think is really cool.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I don't know if if it went down
Speaker 6: for a long time or if it was put into effect,
Speaker 6: but it was definitely printed in the paper.
Speaker 4: It was definitely like warm, You've been warmed, is how
Speaker 4: it seemed in the paper.
Speaker 2: So the thing I ran across when I when I
Speaker 2: did more research after you told me this is that
Speaker 2: I ran across like one line that was like, in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy the women had a sex strike. Okay, but
Speaker 2: I I don't entirely know. And actually it's interesting. I
Speaker 2: would trust well, I would trust Polente more than I
Speaker 2: would trust a random article that I read, yeah something,
Speaker 2: or even of history book. And so the thing about
Speaker 2: firearms is really interesting me because I there is going
Speaker 2: to be a point in the script when they kind
Speaker 2: of take up arms, right and all these other times
Speaker 2: they're like rolling around in nun trucks. But I bet
Speaker 2: you that there were times in which they were armed
Speaker 2: and that just wasn't like fitting the narrative of the
Speaker 2: way that people want to talk about things, and like,
Speaker 2: so I don't know, you know.
Speaker 4: Or perhaps it was like education and how to use firearms. Yeah,
Speaker 4: might have been the vibe. Like, so I learned that
Speaker 4: from when I went to the museum. But a lot
Speaker 4: of what I've learned is from a book called Ballante
Speaker 4: that I encourage people to get. It's I have here,
Speaker 4: no one's going to see. It's called Voices and Photographs
Speaker 4: of the Young Lords, and it's a lot of interviews
Speaker 4: and also like little you know, essays that were written
Speaker 4: in the newspaper. So cool. And one of the things
Speaker 4: that I read was talking about how they believed that
Speaker 4: how women members wanted to learn how to use firearms
Speaker 4: and not be treated like they weren't warriors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Yeah, So so they're
Speaker 2: doing all this after the church, their numbers were up.
Speaker 2: Their numbers became about thirty five to forty percent women,
Speaker 2: and there were numerous openly gay members, and gay members
Speaker 2: had their own Caucus as well. The Black Panthers paved
Speaker 2: their way on that one, openly stating their allegiance with
Speaker 2: the gay rights movement and specifically the Gay Liberation Front
Speaker 2: that had grown out of the Stonewall Uprising, which yes,
Speaker 2: you can hear about on our episode about the Stonewall Uprising.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the Young Lords provided a personal to
Speaker 2: Sylvia Rivera, the transit, one of the trans heroes from Stonewall,
Speaker 2: when she was facing death threats. And this is.
Speaker 4: Also half Puerto Rican. Oh yeah, it's right, just wanted
Speaker 4: to give her a shout out.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, fucking totally and like and so I will
Speaker 2: say that many Young Lords refused the assignment because they
Speaker 2: like were transphobic and didn't understand what the fuck was
Speaker 2: up and they were like freaked out, there's still a
Speaker 2: long way to go. But other ones accepted it and
Speaker 2: were Sylvia Rivera's personal bodyguard, were Young Lords, and that
Speaker 2: fucking rules. Yeah, people with jobs gave up more than
Speaker 2: half their salaries for the group. Because it sounds a
Speaker 2: little bit culty at this point, No one. My theory is,
Speaker 2: no one ever gets anything done without getting a little
Speaker 2: bit close to the cult line. You shouldn't cross the
Speaker 2: cult line, you know. But if the cult line isn't
Speaker 2: even in sight, you might not be creating a community.
Speaker 2: It's real messy.
Speaker 4: Ah, interesting, Okay.
Speaker 2: One of the cultier things that they did is they
Speaker 2: did that maoist self criticism thing where you're supposed to
Speaker 2: like stand up and say all the stuff you did
Speaker 2: wrong to the whole crowd.
Speaker 4: Oh, I've never heard of this before.
Speaker 2: It's it was a big part of like like the
Speaker 2: cultural revolution in China, which I don't know as much
Speaker 2: about as I would like to this like MAOIs self
Speaker 2: criticism thing. And what's interesting actually, if you listen to
Speaker 2: the podcast Behind the Bastards, they talk about a lot
Speaker 2: of cults and one of the things that comes up
Speaker 2: a lot is not MAOIs self criticism. But is this
Speaker 2: like stand up at a circle and admit why you're
Speaker 2: like bad and fall apart from like the group's rules
Speaker 2: or whatever. Is like a way you encourage group thinking,
Speaker 2: and it is, from my point of view bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And anyone who failed to do this was called
Speaker 2: a liberal. This is something that like I feel like
Speaker 2: liberals don't quite always realize, is that, like the left
Speaker 2: wing also calls liberals liberals in a negative way, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like every now and then I'll say something's like liberal
Speaker 2: and people like fuck you, right winger, and I'm like, what. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's during this period of growth that you start seeing
Speaker 2: the cracks that are later going to fuck it up,
Speaker 2: at least by the convenient narrative that I'm drawing and
Speaker 2: have read in other sources. The New York Lords were
Speaker 2: given full autonomy by the quote Central Committee of Chicago, right,
Speaker 2: because it still had started in Chicago, even it's bigger
Speaker 2: in New York. But New York is pretty sure that
Speaker 2: they should be the central committee, and that the chapter
Speaker 2: shouldn't shouldn't have full autonomy, that the New York Chapter
Speaker 2: should be in charge of all the other chapters, and
Speaker 2: that more discipline was needed. And also the Chicago newspaper
Speaker 2: wasn't coming out regularly enough. What are you all doing?
Speaker 2: You better get on that. H So the New York
Speaker 2: Chapter starts getting kind of controlling, and then another thing
Speaker 2: to understand about their politics, and I try to avoid, like,
Speaker 2: let's talk about Marx right, But along with the Black Panthers,
Speaker 2: the Young Lords were a break from traditional Marxism in
Speaker 2: that they identified the lump and proletariat as the revolutionary subject,
Speaker 2: which means that I have to break down really quickly
Speaker 2: Marx's ideas about classes, in which you have the proletariat,
Speaker 2: who are industrial workers in the city. They all and
Speaker 2: Marx thinks that these are the beasneys, They're the best.
Speaker 2: Everyone else sucks according to Marx. Right, then you got
Speaker 2: the bourgeoisie, a class whom no one who is alive
Speaker 2: can spell correctly. And yeah they are I still bow ergy.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I thank you spell track.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it took me a very long time to
Speaker 2: wrap my head around hierarchy.
Speaker 1: More importantly, thanks talk to speek, talk to text speech
Speaker 1: apps for words you kids spell. Oh that's clever, bouge
Speaker 1: wisi even think about it.
Speaker 2: The bourgeoisie are the owning class. They don't work for
Speaker 2: a living. This is their distinguishing characteristic. Instead, they own
Speaker 2: stuff for a living. Definition of capitalism in this case
Speaker 2: being roughly the access to capital being how you make
Speaker 2: money rather than work. Right. And then you've got two
Speaker 2: other weird classes. You have the petty bourgeoisie, who are
Speaker 2: like the small business owners. They're not running the show,
Speaker 2: but their relationship to capital is different from that of
Speaker 2: a worker. Marxists generally don't like them, and then you
Speaker 2: have the lump and proletariat, who are objectively the coolest.
Speaker 2: Marx does not agree by this. With this, these are
Speaker 2: the unemployed and the thieves and the beggars, and the
Speaker 2: people whose work is illegal, like sex workers, the criminal class,
Speaker 2: and Marx doesn't like them, right, But the Young Lords
Speaker 2: and the Black Panthers do. Personally. I like to think
Speaker 2: that Marx's classes are like he's writing a role playing game.
Speaker 2: Instead of paladins and wizards, you have petty bourgeoisie and
Speaker 2: the lump and proletariat. And so from this point of view,
Speaker 2: we clearly need everyone. Maybe not the regular boujeoissa, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but you just clearly you can't have a
Speaker 2: party of only thieves. You are only wizards. Not as
Speaker 2: much fun. There's my class humanity statement of Oh god. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the Black Panthers like that lump and proletariat. The Young
Speaker 2: Lords like them. The New York Young Lords claim to
Speaker 2: like them. But part of what they're mad at Chicago
Speaker 2: about because the Chicago clearly comes out of them. They
Speaker 2: are they come from the criminal class. The Young Lord comes.
Speaker 2: This was not a bunch of workers sitting around being like, man,
Speaker 2: I don't like how the boss is treating me. You
Speaker 2: like how the boss is treating me. It's a bunch
Speaker 2: of car thieves who are like, let's stand up against
Speaker 2: racism and try and get everyone some healthcare. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: the New York lords don't quite have it quite the
Speaker 2: same background as relates to that, and so part of
Speaker 2: why they're mad at Chicago is that Chicago is still
Speaker 2: too criminal and gang like and they're not good proper revolutionaries.
Speaker 2: So by May nineteen seventy, they sever ties from the
Speaker 2: Young Lord's Organization of Chicago and they become the Young
Speaker 2: Lord's Party. It is very likely that the split was
Speaker 2: orchestrated by co Intel Pro, the counterintelligence program of the FBI.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it was almost certainly encouraged by them. The
Speaker 2: disagreements existed, but co Intel Pro existed to make those
Speaker 2: disagreements grow right back in Chicago. Cha Cha is taking
Speaker 2: it hard. He was close friends with Fred Hampton, who
Speaker 2: had just been murdered, and now he's getting told he's
Speaker 2: two gangster for the group. He turned from a gang
Speaker 2: into an organization. But he keeps it civil. And no
Speaker 2: fights breakout between the cities. So it's a break but
Speaker 2: it's not a war, right, Okay. But they've got all
Speaker 2: these political things brewing, there's all of these fractures that
Speaker 2: are starting to form. It doesn't stop them from doing
Speaker 2: really cool shit. One of the cool things they do
Speaker 2: is they get into a fight with a long standing
Speaker 2: friend of the podcast Tuberculosis. For anyone who's just learning, now,
Speaker 2: what happened when I started making this podcast is I
Speaker 2: started reading a lot more history books, and I started
Speaker 2: learning that everyone dies of tuberculosis. That's just how you
Speaker 2: die everyone. If you're in a history book, you either
Speaker 2: get killed by the state or you get killed by tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: You forgot the third or your lover. What there's tuberculosis
Speaker 1: the government or your lover.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: That's the trifecta. There's no other way.
Speaker 2: No, I can't see how healse I could die as
Speaker 2: long as it's not some combo move.
Speaker 1: Oh, you'd be living a really weird life.
Speaker 2: That is. The infiltrators like corossing into handkerchiefs.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, I don't know about that government thing.
Speaker 1: That seems that seems uh not not not for cause
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I wouldn't be. You would be very far
Speaker 2: from that. My plan is to not be killed by
Speaker 2: any of these things.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, tuberculosis or TB as it's called by its friend friends,
Speaker 2: or consumption when it's out of the goth night. We
Speaker 2: talked about this in our Aled Heart episode. The first
Speaker 2: ever known transmand to receive gender affirming surgery save millions
Speaker 2: of lives by revolutionizing the way that public screening was
Speaker 2: done for tuberculosis decades before today's story, specifically by using
Speaker 2: X rays to screen ahead of time. What is TB. Well,
Speaker 2: it's a bacterial infection. It's just around latently. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: pops up with symptoms and shit, it kills about half
Speaker 2: of its victims if you actually get the symptoms those
Speaker 2: keeping track at home, that's about a five percent mortality
Speaker 2: rate overall, which is brutally high. Today we have antibiotics
Speaker 2: and no one dies of it anymore. Just kidding, it
Speaker 2: kills a lot of people still, mostly in other parts
Speaker 2: of the world. It killed one point five million people
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. It is the number one deadliest infectious
Speaker 2: disease after COVID nineteen. It's the number one preventable infectious disease,
Speaker 2: preventable with vaccines, treatment with antibiotics, and screening, things like that.
Speaker 2: So everyone who dies of it is murdered by capitalism
Speaker 2: from my point of view, because you don't have to
Speaker 2: die from it except for access to care. So the
Speaker 2: Young Lords they go to war against two of the
Speaker 2: biggest enemies of the show, capitalism and fucking tuberculosis. Let's go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the real problem in the poor areas of New York
Speaker 2: City thanks to stale air and overcrowding and lack of
Speaker 2: access to screening. So in addition to door to door
Speaker 2: lead poisoning to they start testing people for TB, which
Speaker 2: involves an X ray machine. So they send a petition
Speaker 2: around and it gets them use of one machine, but
Speaker 2: it's a stationary machine. They want a mobile unit. They
Speaker 2: want like a van with an X ray machine in it,
Speaker 2: like the X ray van that goes around the city already,
Speaker 2: but is inaccessible to poor people of color. One book
Speaker 2: I read says it was inaccessible because it was it
Speaker 2: operated from twelve to six pm and didn't accommodate working
Speaker 2: people's schedules. But the guy who stole the van, I
Speaker 2: listened to an interview with him. Oh, spoiler alert, steal
Speaker 2: the van. We'll get to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was like I was like, did we skip chapter?
Speaker 1: What's happening.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that. The guy who steals the van
Speaker 2: Later in the story, he says in an interview that
Speaker 2: it was inaccessible because it only went to white neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: and that feels a little bit more truthful.
Speaker 4: Once again, giving a shout out to the thief the
Speaker 4: thief class.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on June seventeenth and nineteen seventy, they steal
Speaker 2: the van. They unfurl a Puerto Rican flag on it,
Speaker 2: and they drive it off. They tipped off the press
Speaker 2: ahead of time to make sure everyone saw them steal
Speaker 2: this van. People don't do like crime like they used
Speaker 2: to for better and worse. Yeah, they parked it. They
Speaker 2: were really subtle. They parked it across the street from
Speaker 2: their office and then announced free testing for everyone. And
Speaker 2: I think the techs who worked in the van were
Speaker 2: like entirely fine with it.
Speaker 4: They're just like, whow cool, this is the coolest thing
Speaker 4: that's happened to me.
Speaker 2: Ever, I know, like I'm so bored and now I'm
Speaker 2: part of some like crazy shit on the news and
Speaker 2: I still just get to help people for a living here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Within hours of stealing the van they won, the director
Speaker 2: of health of the area agreed to let them keep
Speaker 2: the van and run it on the city's dime twelve
Speaker 2: hours a day every day. Wow. The first day they
Speaker 2: tested hundreds of people. Yeah, and around that time, well,
Speaker 2: before we move them to the South Bronx, we should
Speaker 2: move everyone to these killer deals about stuff, job opportunities.
Speaker 2: You could go become an Irish cup. So many options here.
Speaker 2: Listen to these options. Don't press the forward fifteen seconds button.
Speaker 2: That has no influence on anything from my point of view.
Speaker 2: Here's some ads, and we're back from those enlightening ads.
Speaker 2: I try to come up with something clever, but I
Speaker 2: got nothing. So I'll just tell you about when they
Speaker 2: moved to the South Bronx because there's yet another health
Speaker 2: epidemic for them to deal with, because they really just
Speaker 2: fucking did it all. Like I can't say.
Speaker 4: Also, like the number of issues that this community was facing,
Speaker 4: like as it just like really boggles my mind, being like, wow,
Speaker 4: I grew up in that city. Yeah, and like these
Speaker 4: are all people like my parents' age, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your parents' age, Like people like talk about lead
Speaker 2: poisoning and tuberculosis and.
Speaker 4: Streets and for sure, Yeah, and a lot of like
Speaker 4: how the Bronx was burning, you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: like faulty electricity and just you know, like a lot
Speaker 4: of issues like that.
Speaker 2: For sure, is that what that was? The Bronx burning
Speaker 2: because of faulty electricity.
Speaker 4: There was like a lot of safety hazards, but also
Speaker 4: a lot of like some lords that were setting you know,
Speaker 4: just like letting, yeah, their buildings burner being the reason
Speaker 4: why their buildings were burning.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there was a lot of My family definitely
Speaker 4: talked a lot about these issues.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know whether you want to say this
Speaker 2: in error. Is your family from East Harlem or is
Speaker 2: it from South Bronx or is.
Speaker 4: It somewhere They're actually from Chelsea? Ok Yeah, they grew
Speaker 4: up in the Chelsea projects. Okay, you know they were
Speaker 4: born My dad was born and my aunt was born
Speaker 4: in Puerto Rico, but came over when they were very young.
Speaker 4: My grandfather came over and was like working at first
Speaker 4: and then was able to pay for everybody to come cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I hadn't as a white outsider in New
Speaker 2: York City. I hadn't realized the degree to which Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican identity shaped the city in all different parts of
Speaker 2: the city, you know, and like the Lower east Side
Speaker 2: like doesn't even really necessarily come out much in the story,
Speaker 2: even though they had a Young Lord's had a chapter
Speaker 2: in Lower Eastie, even though that was a Puerto Rican neighborhood,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah at this point, which heavily influences all
Speaker 2: of the like hippie culture stuff that was happening in
Speaker 2: that area.
Speaker 4: Oh totally. Yeah. Like talking to my dad when I
Speaker 4: would mention like hanging out on the Lower Eastside or
Speaker 4: Tompkins Group Park or squatting or anything, you know, to him,
Speaker 4: it was just like, oh, yeah, me and my friends
Speaker 4: like did all that shit, but we were cooler.
Speaker 2: Thanks, probably he was right, like just like yeah, but.
Speaker 4: You know, you think about the New Yereekan, the new
Speaker 4: Arekan Poets Cafe, like that's in the Lower east Side still.
Speaker 4: I don't know how, but I'm so glad that it's
Speaker 4: still with us, and that was born out of this movement,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is New York in a name of an identity
Speaker 2: for New York Puerto Ricans.
Speaker 4: Is that the yes, So a lot of the people
Speaker 4: that you're talking about, who are you know, joining the
Speaker 4: young lords at this point, who don't speak Spanish for example,
Speaker 4: Like that would be a really great I representation of
Speaker 4: like a New Eurekan, although of course there are New
Speaker 4: Eurekans that do, but it's like a very specific like
Speaker 4: doesn't have extremely strong ties to the island. Like even
Speaker 4: my dad, who was born in Puerto Rico, felt like
Speaker 4: he wasn't Puerto Rican enough. And then also he was
Speaker 4: an outsider in his own city. Okay, so it's like
Speaker 4: they you know, this idea that you don't quite fit
Speaker 4: into anything because you're always a little bit of an outsider.
Speaker 4: So New Eurekan was born.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2: I feel like the diasporic identity is like this thing
Speaker 2: that often grows in New York or at least I
Speaker 2: know that, like the diasporic identity of like Jews or
Speaker 2: Jewish people like grew in New York City in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways as an identity that was separate from
Speaker 2: anything else. It was like, this is the diasporas, like
Speaker 2: who we are. I don't know whether deasporas are ran
Speaker 2: that people use in this context or not.
Speaker 4: Oh definitely, okay, yeah, yeah. And also there's a lot
Speaker 4: of like longing for like you know, when you talked
Speaker 4: about how the Young Words were teaching Puerto Rican history,
Speaker 4: like that was something that was I mean, to this day,
Speaker 4: it's so hidden from anybody who is Puerto Rican or
Speaker 4: New Eurekan, Like just this feeling that you come from
Speaker 4: a place that is so foreign to you and you
Speaker 4: want to learn about it, but it's been hidden or
Speaker 4: kept away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like because America has this like public
Speaker 2: school systems has this like one monolithic educational idea of
Speaker 2: what we teach people, you know, and it's just like,
Speaker 2: rather than teach people Puerto Rican history, we teach people
Speaker 2: about like Paul Revere whatever the fuck, you know. Like yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's just interesting because like a really high percentage
Speaker 2: of people who live in the United States are not
Speaker 2: descended from the Revolutionary War fighters, you know, yeah, or
Speaker 2: have at least other just whatever. Anyway, Yeah, I'm I
Speaker 2: guess I should start a podcast where I talk about
Speaker 2: history that hasn't talked about as much. So we want
Speaker 2: to help me do that.
Speaker 1: This entire podcast is just propaganda, and it's you just
Speaker 1: advertising for your own show, on your own show. Incredible.
Speaker 2: Self promotion is awesome. I haven't worked the name of
Speaker 2: my book and any of these scripts. No, I'm very
Speaker 2: proud of that. Okay, so they've just stolen a van.
Speaker 2: That makes it very like that much happened. They just
Speaker 2: changed the way.
Speaker 4: I just love how much they like play chicken with
Speaker 4: the city. It's like, yeah, of course, we could go
Speaker 4: to jail for a really long time for a grand
Speaker 4: theft auto or something, or maybe well, Jessica, give us
Speaker 4: what we want.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I can't imagine any of this working.
Speaker 2: Then it keeps working.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So they go to South Bronx, or rather
Speaker 5: a branch opens in the South Bronx, and I don't
Speaker 5: know how many individuals are specifically moving right, And there's
Speaker 5: a problem that needs to be dealt with in South Bronx.
Speaker 2: Heroin. The state wasn't doing a very good job of
Speaker 2: helping people who are addicted. Instead, it criminalized people. The
Speaker 2: South Bronx and Spring nineteen seventy had the highest heroin
Speaker 2: addiction rate in the world. Fifteen percent of people who
Speaker 2: lived there were addicted to heroin, according to one number
Speaker 2: I heard. Other numbers that I heard included the South
Speaker 2: Bronx had a mortality rate fifty percent higher than the
Speaker 2: rest of the country, syphilis and gonorrhea six and four
Speaker 2: times the national average, and overdose was the leading cause
Speaker 2: of death among adolescents and young adults.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, And.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of thing that we see reflected
Speaker 2: more later in the opioid crisis on all like wider scale. Right. So,
Speaker 2: the first thing that the young Lords did, They're like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're gonna deal with heroin addiction. That's what
Speaker 2: our community needs. That's what we're gonna do. They got
Speaker 2: an apartment, they cleaned it up nice, and they started
Speaker 2: screening drug users for commitment to sobriety. And then two
Speaker 2: young lords would keep watch over They just set up
Speaker 2: a detox center just or a cold Turkey center. Really,
Speaker 2: this is their first first attempt. Two young lords would
Speaker 2: keep watch over the detoxing people for twenty four hours
Speaker 2: a day and help them quit cold turkey. Then each
Speaker 2: person in recovery was assigned a mentor who was available
Speaker 2: to them twenty four hours a day for the next
Speaker 2: six months. Yeah, they also robbed drug dealers and scared
Speaker 2: them off the block, which got the mafia mad at them,
Speaker 2: but they somehow had enough power that they didn't get
Speaker 2: any No one got killed as a result of this
Speaker 2: that I'm aware of.
Speaker 4: This is so wild to me. Yeah, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I keeps waiting for, like, when is some I'm gonna
Speaker 4: ge assassinated by one of the many powerful forces who
Speaker 4: don't want change to happen.
Speaker 2: I I am not aware of it happening. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: like and I one of the things that often underlies
Speaker 2: a lot of history that doesn't get left in, like,
Speaker 2: is people working with the mafia or like all these
Speaker 2: different radicals, like working with different power structures, right, And
Speaker 2: that's like often left out because it's not as like
Speaker 2: sexy or it's criminal or whatever. Right, So probably they're
Speaker 2: doing something that is making the mafia not attack them.
Speaker 2: But I believe the mafia is mad at them, So
Speaker 2: I believe that that something is not working with the mafia. Okay,
Speaker 2: if I were to guess, and I expect I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: it probably is just literally like we are scary and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of us, and we are tied in
Speaker 2: with the panthers, and we are tied in with them
Speaker 2: up against the Wall motherfuckers and Leah, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 2: city is full of angry revolutionaries. That's my best guess.
Speaker 2: But I don't yeah, you know, I know it. Around
Speaker 2: the same time, for example, the up against wall motherfuckers
Speaker 2: are like scaring off mafia hits by having more guns
Speaker 2: than the people trying to kill them, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so they're robbing drug dealers and scaring them off the block,
Speaker 2: which is also really hard to morally understand in a
Speaker 2: situation that predates the War on drugs, right because right now,
Speaker 2: during the War on drugs, when people talk about like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're gonna like go fuck up all the drug dealers,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, you're gonna go fuck up drug users
Speaker 2: who are like fucked by society. Congratulations, You're the same
Speaker 2: as the fucking War on drugs. Yeah, but when we're
Speaker 2: not in that context, I don't fucking know. This is
Speaker 2: like straight up, I don't know, you know. Yeah, But
Speaker 2: the cold Turkey approach wasn't gonna work with everyone. The
Speaker 2: medical problems that people are facing were bigger than just heroin,
Speaker 2: so they needed something more. They needed something bigger, like
Speaker 2: like a hospital. The South Bronx had won hospital. Lincoln
Speaker 2: Hospital was built in eighteen ninety eight, the same year
Speaker 2: that the US stole Puerto Rico from the Spanish. This
Speaker 2: is the place that I was saying, gets called the
Speaker 2: butcher shop. It's the wrong leg amputated whoops shop with
Speaker 2: lead paint for the children to eat. And it's the
Speaker 2: kind of place where the er doesn't do triage. There's
Speaker 2: no translators on staff, no accommodations for non English speaking patients.
Speaker 2: But the best part, and this is not sarcasm, the
Speaker 2: actual good part was that some reformers had set up
Speaker 2: a fairly groundbreaking mental health clinic there that emphasized talk
Speaker 2: therapy and actually hearing patients out. Oh wow, so it's
Speaker 2: kind of a battleground spot already in March nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: before the Lords arrived. The Lords did a lot, and
Speaker 2: they deserve it a ton of the credit. But by
Speaker 2: tying into existing infrastructures and working with other groups, in
Speaker 2: March nineteen sixty nine, the mental health clinic had taken
Speaker 2: itself over. The workers, mostly people of color, had seized
Speaker 2: the building and kicked out the director and his upper staff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the doctors, including white doctors, which is most of them
Speaker 2: this is the late sixties, supported the action and kept
Speaker 2: working and they held it for three days, and the
Speaker 2: Black Panthers ran security and brought supporters. This is before
Speaker 2: the Panther twenty one trial took the wind out of
Speaker 2: the New York City Panthers.
Speaker 4: Just would like to say that I am really loving
Speaker 4: these stories of like doctors standing with their staff and
Speaker 4: like standing up to administration and their bosses. It's really
Speaker 4: I encourage all the doctors out there who might be
Speaker 4: listening to do that. Yeah, as we really need it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this particular takeover was broken when the city. I
Speaker 2: don't even think the mystery is the hospital. The city
Speaker 2: was like any doctors who practice here will lose their licenses.
Speaker 2: But the action did get a bunch of workers have
Speaker 2: been fired, and it got the fired workers on fired
Speaker 2: and the director was transferred out, So it was like
Speaker 2: successful to some degree. Right by nineteen seventy, some of
Speaker 2: the workers there were young lords themselves, and some of
Speaker 2: these workers set up a complaint table for workers and
Speaker 2: patients in the er. Twelve hours a day, they were
Speaker 2: there at this table. On weekends they were there twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day Wow. And they kept getting kicked
Speaker 2: out and they kept coming right back in. There's like
Speaker 2: interviews you can hear about like the people like kind
Speaker 2: of being friends with the security guards. It's like I'm
Speaker 2: kicking you out again, and they're like I'm going to
Speaker 2: be right back in and like all right, have fun,
Speaker 2: you know. So they set up this complaint table. They
Speaker 2: get two thousand complaints in a month, wow, and they
Speaker 2: just start acting on them like all the ones that
Speaker 2: they can. They just direct action, get the goods, install
Speaker 2: privacy screens in the bathrooms. They move trash off the
Speaker 2: street outside and into the director's office because this is
Speaker 2: what you do with trash.
Speaker 4: WHOA.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The medical staff who were part of this organization,
Speaker 2: I think this is atrun, but I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 2: one hundred percent certain the larger organization that's doing this.
Speaker 2: The medical staff just start doing triage in the er,
Speaker 2: like when they're not at work. They're just like, were triaging.
Speaker 2: Fuck this an er needs triage, which I did not
Speaker 2: learn this word until I was an adult. Triage is
Speaker 2: when you determine which patients are the most injured and
Speaker 2: who needs medical care most immediately. So they put pressure
Speaker 2: on administration for better care for the workers, but there
Speaker 2: was a wall. They couldn't get anything systemic fixed. They
Speaker 2: could only like band aids. People are like, oh, it's
Speaker 2: just a band aid. Like band aids are great, they
Speaker 2: stop bleeding, you can keep infection out like, but they
Speaker 2: don't address systemic issues. So they did what they had
Speaker 2: to do with a really interesting security culture method. On
Speaker 2: July thirteenth, nineteen seventy, one hundred and fifty young lords
Speaker 2: met in an apartment and locked themselves in so that
Speaker 2: no infiltrators could get out and give anyone a heads
Speaker 2: up because they knew they were infiltrated. It's the fucking
Speaker 2: it's nineteen seventy, you know, a huh, And so not
Speaker 2: all of them knew the plan going in. They all
Speaker 2: get told the plan, but they can't call out. At
Speaker 2: three point thirty am, they pile into a U haul
Speaker 2: and a bunch of cars. They backed up to the
Speaker 2: hospital loading dock. They opened the doors. They stormed the
Speaker 2: hospital with nun chucks.
Speaker 4: Oh this episode brought to you by nonsense dunchucks. I
Speaker 4: know how cool they are. I know.
Speaker 2: For some reason, most retellies leave the nunchucks out. That's
Speaker 2: a mistake Ely on nunchuck radicals. You get it, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll tell my one nunchuck story please.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm like twenty two or something, and I'm like living
Speaker 2: in the basement of this house with some hipsters and
Speaker 2: they have this party and I'm avoiding it. I'm hanging
Speaker 2: out in the basement and at one point someone comes down.
Speaker 2: At this time, I'm like, all I'm doing is like
Speaker 2: studying martial arts and trying to stop a war and
Speaker 2: all that shit. And they come down and they're like, Magpie,
Speaker 2: this guy won't leave and he's harassing people. He's like
Speaker 2: harassing this woman. You have to kick him out. And
Speaker 2: I'm like okay, And so I'm like in my sleeping
Speaker 2: dress and I just like walk upstairs with the pair
Speaker 2: of nunchucks and I'm like the weird kid an address
Speaker 2: from the basement who hasn't been at the party, and
Speaker 2: I just like walk up. I think I have a
Speaker 2: beard at the time, and I'm just like, hey, you
Speaker 2: better leave, and the guy's like I'm already gone, and
Speaker 2: he runs away. I don't know how to use nunchucks.
Speaker 2: I do not know how to use nunchucks. At this
Speaker 2: point in my life. I just have them.
Speaker 4: I mean it's definitely a power move of like who's
Speaker 4: going to assume that you don't know how to use them?
Speaker 4: You know, like if you're pulling them out just visually,
Speaker 4: you'd be like that person knows how to use those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like bluffing is a very effective as we.
Speaker 4: Learn from the young lords. Like sometimes you just try it.
Speaker 2: Storm a hospital with nunchucks. What go wrong? Yeah, So
Speaker 2: they secure the entrances, they barricade shit. They still let
Speaker 2: workers and patients in and out of the building, just
Speaker 2: they're controlling it. They set up screening clinics for tuberculosis
Speaker 2: and lead poisoning, anemia. They set up a daycare in
Speaker 2: a classroom because one of their whole things is that
Speaker 2: they believe that kids should get childcare while they're sole
Speaker 2: caretaker is in the hospital. It's wild, I know. They
Speaker 2: hung up a banner welcome to the People's Hospital in
Speaker 2: a Puerto Rican flag. They hadn't tipped off the hospital
Speaker 2: workers or it wouldn't have worked right, But the hospital
Speaker 2: workers were down. The physicians backed them. They hated working
Speaker 2: for the butcher's shop because they became doctors to help people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: even the chief administrator was like, well, I mean they
Speaker 2: kind of got a point, like, wow, no one likes
Speaker 2: working at the butcher shop, you know, except like Sweeney
Speaker 2: Todd or whatever. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: We really like.
Speaker 2: You did that one for you apparently. So they called
Speaker 2: for a press conference. It was so perfectly time. So
Speaker 2: they call for a press conference and they explain themselves
Speaker 2: to the press and they give their demands, which is
Speaker 2: like door to door health care, better pay for workers,
Speaker 2: daycare for patients and workers, hurry up and build a
Speaker 2: new hospital. I did not find a name for this action.
Speaker 2: I assume it was the Lincoln Offensive for the Hospital offensive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: They held it for about twelve hours. The negotiations of
Speaker 2: the police were going very badly. Undercovers were trying to
Speaker 2: infiltrate into the hospital, so they left and rather than
Speaker 2: letting themselves get mass arrested, they put on white coats
Speaker 2: and slipped out with the doctors, covered by supporters from
Speaker 2: inside and outside. Yeah. Oh, and once the cops realized
Speaker 2: they'd been duped, they combed the area for the lords,
Speaker 2: but people in the neighborhoods took them in. Only two
Speaker 2: participants out of one hundred and fifty two hundred participants
Speaker 2: got fucking caught. Wow, good fucking odds. I would take
Speaker 2: those odds seriously. Nothing changed immediately. Then three days later,
Speaker 2: a patient named Carmen Rodriguez died during an abortion at
Speaker 2: the hospital. The resident, a student doctor, didn't look at
Speaker 2: her chart in her pre existing conditions and performed the
Speaker 2: wrong kind of abortion, and then when she responded badly,
Speaker 2: doubled down on mistreating her, and a few days later
Speaker 2: July nineteenth, nineteen seventy, she died of negligence.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, this is something I've read about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's fucking heartbreaking, Like I don't know, just
Speaker 2: especially doubling down and sit especially like I mean, there's.
Speaker 4: Also just a really painful history of sterilization of Puerto
Speaker 4: Rican women, and just it was a part of what
Speaker 4: like the women of the Young Lords would talk about
Speaker 4: in when they would talk about the women's movement and
Speaker 4: women's liberation, as they would make a very clear distinction
Speaker 4: between upper class women's liberation and how like the Young
Speaker 4: Lord women of course, you know, stood for abortion rights,
Speaker 4: but they also were like, we have to be very
Speaker 4: clear about our experience of you know, being forcefully sterilized
Speaker 4: like a lot of women getting sterilized in who worked
Speaker 4: in factories and just without their knowledge.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's just a part of the history, and
Speaker 4: it's just such a recent history, you know of Puerto
Speaker 4: Rican women.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, It's something that I didn't really understand i
Speaker 2: first started doing some of this research about like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's doing well now I feel self conscious about it.
Speaker 2: But I did an EPISO about the Jaine Collective Okay,
Speaker 2: Sophie that you can go listen to.
Speaker 4: It's so fun.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I didn't realize going
Speaker 2: into that research was how I had only read about
Speaker 2: the you know, the panthers and black liberationists had very
Speaker 2: complicated relationships with abortion rights because the pel oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they're like, we're trying to avoid a cultural genocide.
Speaker 2: You have to like, freedom to reproduce was what more
Speaker 2: of them were fighting for as compared to more white
Speaker 2: women were fighting for freedom to control to not reproduce,
Speaker 2: and any logical look at it is what we want.
Speaker 2: Bodily autonomy.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, you know, but childcare like goes into it
Speaker 4: as well, because from what I read, like women and
Speaker 4: the young lords would talk about how working class people
Speaker 4: deserve to be able to have children, and that include
Speaker 4: that means that we will need to set up community childcare,
Speaker 4: you know, because that is the only way that we
Speaker 4: can that if you're not incredibly wealthy. They were just
Speaker 4: saying it shouldn't be a barrier to be to starting
Speaker 4: a family, yeah, which you know. Yeah, so it's just
Speaker 4: it's a really yeah, it's this painful part of it
Speaker 4: just really moves me that there was so much like
Speaker 4: mind blowing growth and like just what these people are experiencing,
Speaker 4: you know, like so quickly within a generation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, well that's an awkward place that I have
Speaker 2: to stick an ad transition, but I do. So here's
Speaker 2: some ads and we're back and yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 2: how Carmen Rodriguez died at the hospital three days after
Speaker 2: the takeover. And so this led to the most enduring
Speaker 2: and wide reaching legacy of the Young Lord's Hrum. The
Speaker 2: radical group of medical professionals that the Young Lords are
Speaker 2: part of. They draft a new document and they call
Speaker 2: it the Patient's Bill of Rights, and it says you
Speaker 2: deserve to be treated respectfully, to have your treatment explained,
Speaker 2: that you can refuse treatment, that you can see your chart,
Speaker 2: that people deserve door to door preventative care, that people
Speaker 2: can pick their doctors, that you should get free food
Speaker 2: with your care, that there should be daycare, and that
Speaker 2: healthcare should be free. This is obviously not I know
Speaker 2: you look at that and you're like that, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: in like, this is not the patient's bill of rights
Speaker 2: we have today in the US. Specifically, the stuff part
Speaker 2: didn't really survive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, still working on that.
Speaker 2: But some of this other stuff I have always taken
Speaker 2: for granted. I mean I didn't. I don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about my own family history too much, but it's
Speaker 2: like it makes sense to me that, of course you
Speaker 2: get to have your treatment explained. Of course you can
Speaker 2: refuse treatment. Of course you can see your chart, like,
Speaker 2: of course you can pick your doctor. Why would I
Speaker 2: mean again, complications around financial barriers, but it of course
Speaker 2: you can refuse treatment. It's like such a clear example
Speaker 2: of that that looking back, you're like, what do you
Speaker 2: mean why would anyone ever have thought it was okay
Speaker 2: to sterilize someone without their consent? Like, y, how is
Speaker 2: that not that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: That's called something else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they start pushing for this bill of rights,
Speaker 2: and one thing that I find so fascinating about this
Speaker 2: story is that, you know, the Young Lords aren't reformists.
Speaker 2: They believe in a socialist revolution. But by not coming
Speaker 2: to the table to beg for scraps, but by demanding everything,
Speaker 2: they accomplished more reform than reformists tend to, which I
Speaker 2: would say, keep in mind, reformists, you should pretend to
Speaker 2: be socialist revolutionaries if you want reform.
Speaker 4: Take Italian bake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they do this, but they're still they haven't
Speaker 2: gotten their health. Their their harm reduction clinic, which they
Speaker 2: haven't called that yet but leads to that kind of framing.
Speaker 2: So they have a better idea than their cold Turkey clinic. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 2: The other day, it was bad. It just didn't work
Speaker 2: for everyone. They got link In to sponsor a drug
Speaker 2: detoc center. They succeeded by asking nicely, just kidding. On
Speaker 2: November sixth, nineteen seventy, they occupied the sixth floor of
Speaker 2: one of the buildings of the hospital and set it
Speaker 2: up with the help of doctors, into a detox facility.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Fifteen, yeah, exactly, Yeah. Fifteen people were arrested. So then
Speaker 2: other one other people came back the next day and
Speaker 2: they set it up again, and this time it's stuck.
Speaker 2: This gets called the first harm Reduction Clinic, and they
Speaker 2: used a novel approach in which addiction was seen as
Speaker 2: a social problem and not as individual weakness. Oh. Soon
Speaker 2: they're treating six hundred people a week at this clinic
Speaker 2: and it and it starts as a methodone clinic and
Speaker 2: becomes an acupuncture clinic, and it lasted for eight years.
Speaker 2: It outlasts the Young Lords, and it ends up staffed
Speaker 2: by many people who'd been through the treatment themselves.
Speaker 4: And so this is the beginning of not a.
Speaker 2: Acupuncture Please explain.
Speaker 4: Okay, I do not know what na na DA stands for.
Speaker 4: I will just say.
Speaker 2: That not a detox No wait, never right, Sorry.
Speaker 4: It's something that I've It's like ear acupuncture that I've
Speaker 4: received when I was like, you know, like they used
Speaker 4: to do it at the drop in center when I
Speaker 4: was like a young, homeless teenager, and it's I didn't
Speaker 4: know that this was created by the Young Lords or
Speaker 4: that this just you know, the treatment was like formed
Speaker 4: with the Young Lords and it was like, how do
Speaker 4: we bring accessible, effective acupuncture to working people or lower
Speaker 4: class people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am I believe that that is the case.
Speaker 2: That this is. These are the pioneers of doing that
Speaker 2: in the United States.
Speaker 4: So cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they just fucking did everything. I actually didn't
Speaker 2: end up writing into the script more about how the
Speaker 2: patient's Bill of Rights developed out of what they did.
Speaker 2: There's so much that I didn't get to, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like a yeah, I didn't get to follow these
Speaker 2: threads as far as I want, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So let's kind of talk about their decline. Unfortunately, but
Speaker 2: they have so much lasting impact. So whatever, if you
Speaker 2: write high for two years then burn out and change
Speaker 2: everything along the way, so fucking goes.
Speaker 4: And we can learn from him them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So these two years are kind of the high
Speaker 2: point of the Young Lords. Co intel pro is fucking
Speaker 2: with them really hard. They found an easy target in
Speaker 2: the culture of obsessive discipline and self criticism and central authority.
Speaker 2: That was I think building and growing. But I could
Speaker 2: be wrong. I could be the read of stuff I'm reading.
Speaker 2: One of the central leaders Felipe Luciano, he's practically the
Speaker 2: face of the group. He was demoted after cheating on
Speaker 2: his wife, who was one of the other leaders. They
Speaker 2: had set really strict rules about who could talk to
Speaker 2: the press, and so a co intel Pro agent pretended
Speaker 2: to be one of the Bronx leaders speaking to the press, like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm this guy and I'm speaking to the press. And
Speaker 2: then so then the other leaders are so mad that
Speaker 2: this guy spoke to the press even though they have
Speaker 2: strict rules about who can speak to the press, and
Speaker 2: he wasn't on the approved.
Speaker 4: List because I wasn't him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's in trouble. And oh and the thing
Speaker 2: that he supposedly spoke to the press about was about
Speaker 2: how Philippe had been demoted because he was a male
Speaker 2: chauvinist with unclear politics. So they're like stirring up the shit, right, which.
Speaker 4: Is like on his Wikipedia page because I looked it up.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I thought he's a male Chovenis who was Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like the quote. So it's interesting to know, yeah,
Speaker 4: where this is coming from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like, and he overall co intel Pro
Speaker 2: likes to find existing cracks and expand them.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But so you can look at that two ways.
Speaker 2: We could be like, well, we're vulnerable to federal infiltration
Speaker 2: if we have sexists, which is true. You can also
Speaker 2: look at at as we're vulnerable to fed we're vulnerable
Speaker 2: to this shit if we're so quick to who well,
Speaker 2: now get into murky waters. But like you know, we're
Speaker 2: so quick to get mad at everyone about these things,
Speaker 2: and we have so many controls about all of these things,
Speaker 2: you know, And so it's like demoting a leader because
Speaker 2: he's sexist is not bad. But the way it was
Speaker 2: handled was manipulated by the FEDS. Most likely within a
Speaker 2: month he left the organization that he'd started or had
Speaker 2: a hand in starting. Yeah, things start to get darker.
Speaker 2: On October seventeenth, nineteen seventy, the Young Lord j Roldin
Speaker 2: he's found it hanging in a cell in the Tombs,
Speaker 2: and he's one of eight quote suicides that year in
Speaker 2: the Tombs, one of whom had somehow fractured his own
Speaker 2: skull while hanging himself, if you believe the police, which
Speaker 2: I don't. So when Julio died, a thousand people came
Speaker 2: to his viewing At his funeral march the onlookers chanted
Speaker 2: in his chant rules Fuego, fuego, fuego, Los Yankees kiet
Speaker 2: and fuego fire, fire fire, The Yankees want some fire whoa,
Speaker 2: which is hard as fuck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, They're like oh you want you want some buckets?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it's at this point in the narratives that I've
Speaker 2: read that they pick up the gun more literally. Okay,
Speaker 2: the funeral stops for a second viewing at that Methodist
Speaker 2: church they'd once occupied with nothing but non trucks and
Speaker 2: community support. They go into the church, they open the casket.
Speaker 2: Alongside his body is an arsenal of guns in the casket. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how they hit it. Yeah, that's how they got
Speaker 2: into the church.
Speaker 1: Whoa.
Speaker 2: They stuffed his casket full of full of weapons and
Speaker 2: they use it to occupy the church. Their first and
Speaker 2: foremost demand was an independent investigation into Julio Roldon's death.
Speaker 2: The other demands were let us set up a legal
Speaker 2: defense center here, and also the city needs to let
Speaker 2: clergymen visit people in prison and investigate prison conditions. So
Speaker 2: a diverse group of clergy took the demand to the city.
Speaker 2: The city was like, yeah, fuck you. So then eighteen
Speaker 2: clergy members joined the armed occupation because they were like,
Speaker 2: he's not listening to us. You're the only way to
Speaker 2: get anything fucking done.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I started this off by being like, oh, they're
Speaker 2: getting this darker as during the decline. I feel like
Speaker 2: I almost I feel kind of bad using this as
Speaker 2: like because it's an escalation, but it's not. I am
Speaker 2: not putting moral judgment on this particular choice and escalation.
Speaker 2: Yeah right. They weren't trying to go down in a
Speaker 2: blaze of glory, and they started negotiations. Older women from
Speaker 2: the neighborhood secreted out the guns and pieces basically like
Speaker 2: because they were like, we're going fucking down. We don't
Speaker 2: want to all get murdered, So like, yeah, piece by piece,
Speaker 2: all the guns get disappeared. Negotiations picked up. The city
Speaker 2: gave in and started an independent investigation into the death
Speaker 2: of Julio Rolden, and the independent report was clear Julio
Speaker 2: did hang himself, and at least according this investigation, in
Speaker 2: twenty seven pages, some excerpted in The New York Times,
Speaker 2: it said basically, in a paraphrase, he killed himself because
Speaker 2: the tombs is a fucking nightmare pit that drives people
Speaker 2: to suicide. And mainstream news articles basically were saying, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: sometimes suicide is murder. This is such a case. You
Speaker 2: put someone in this terrible of a situation, you are
Speaker 2: killing them, even if Julio most likely hanged himself. I
Speaker 2: bet that one who cracked his own scald didn't fucking
Speaker 2: hang himself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that doesn't sound like a.
Speaker 2: They held the church for two months until December nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy is a year after the last time they held
Speaker 2: the church, you know. And they did their thing there.
Speaker 2: They fed people, they offered free legal help. Radical priests
Speaker 2: started showing up and doing stuff there, but the organization
Speaker 2: started to decline. After this, they followed a familiar course.
Speaker 2: To quote author Johanna Fernandez, the movements were on the
Speaker 2: path of decline. Others saw mounting state repression as a
Speaker 2: reason to embrace the to self defense within their relatively
Speaker 2: small groups, which they confuse with the defense of the
Speaker 2: masses in their communities. Amid the disorientation and siege mentality
Speaker 2: produced by state repression, radicals became somewhat isolated from their communities.
Speaker 2: They began to see themselves as enlightened actors. Before long,
Speaker 2: they began to substitute the painstaking task of grassroots mobilization
Speaker 2: with heroic acts of sacrifice taken on behalf of quote
Speaker 2: the people. The central leadership had a closed retreat just
Speaker 2: for itself to figure out what's going wrong, why things
Speaker 2: are getting bad, and they decide that the answer is
Speaker 2: that they need to centralize more power. They decided at
Speaker 2: the retreat that the social services move was the wrong
Speaker 2: one and instead they should focus on leading a revolution
Speaker 2: to free Puerto Rico, and basically are like, if you're
Speaker 2: real revolutionaries, this is what you care about, not this volunteerism,
Speaker 2: which means we're shifting over to fundraising and now that's
Speaker 2: what we're going to do here in the United States
Speaker 2: as fundraise and relocate organizers to Puerto Rico. And the
Speaker 2: rank and file of the Young Lords aren't really excited
Speaker 2: about this, And actually, I think some of it probably
Speaker 2: has to do with some of what you're talking about,
Speaker 2: like New Eyorekan identity and it's just from the island.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very I mean, I'm sure some of them had
Speaker 4: connection to the island, you know, but definitely strange move
Speaker 4: to go far away and then try to free people
Speaker 4: over there who could probably if they're going to free themselves,
Speaker 4: they should probably free themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So their membership starts to decline. It didn't
Speaker 2: help that they got really paranoid about co intel pro,
Speaker 2: which is not their fault. That is literally the purpose
Speaker 2: of co intel pro totally and they started to purge
Speaker 2: people without evidence, especially people who were critical of this
Speaker 2: new change in focus. So they dropped from one thousand
Speaker 2: members to two hundred members and not very long at all.
Speaker 2: They were not well received in Puerto Rico. They showed
Speaker 2: up in fatigues and berets, and this didn't go over
Speaker 2: as a powerful symbol of working class and see, it
Speaker 2: just confused people. The Nationalist Party that they showed up
Speaker 2: to help didn't really like them. Most of the independence
Speaker 2: movements at the time there were rich and white, oh wow.
Speaker 2: And they also white within the Puerto Rican context, probably
Speaker 2: in the United States context well the mainland. And also
Speaker 2: they were like buds, you can't just show up out
Speaker 2: of nowhere and tell us you're going to free us.
Speaker 2: And they were outsiders. They knew how to organize in
Speaker 2: New York City really well. On the island, they met
Speaker 2: with little success. They did do stuffy it was earnest.
Speaker 2: By June nineteen seventy one, two of the three New
Speaker 2: York City offices shut their doors. They switched ideological focuses again,
Speaker 2: and this time they switched to a workerist attitude, meaning
Speaker 2: the lump and proletariat, the thieves and stuff. They're no
Speaker 2: longer the shit, so now we're all on the workers.
Speaker 2: But there's a problem here. Being a young lord was
Speaker 2: a full time twenty four to seven commitment, which means
Speaker 2: workers hadn't joined. It was the unemployed or the soon
Speaker 2: to be unemployed. Students, youth, and criminals were primarily who
Speaker 2: the young Lord's recruited from. So they didn't get workers.
Speaker 2: They just lost lumpin. So they went out and tried
Speaker 2: to get jobs in industry to go organize people, which
Speaker 2: kind of went over, like showing up in Puerto Rico. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they got more rigid and dogmatic, and they spiraled. They
Speaker 2: tried to solve it in nineteen seventy two by having
Speaker 2: a forty day course of Marxist study in which they
Speaker 2: discussed in red marks for six hours a day and
Speaker 2: tried to out revolutionary each other. This further alienated them
Speaker 2: from everyone. No, I know, I know, and it's like,
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's another read of this, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 4: Also dealing with immense pressure and like yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 4: it's so easy for us to be like and contal
Speaker 4: prow was happening It's like they didn't know Conte Pearl
Speaker 4: isn't a thing that people knew, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, they had just learned but ah, oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 4: With the paranoia and yeah.
Speaker 2: So they tried to solve their further alienation from everyone
Speaker 2: by centralizing the authority from a central leadership to a
Speaker 2: central leader, a woman named Gloria Fontanas, and then they
Speaker 2: kicked out all the people who had gone to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: Because the people who had gone to Puerto Rico were like, hey,
Speaker 2: this isn't working, we shouldn't do this, but central leadership
Speaker 2: was like, Nope, you've got to stay the course. Some
Speaker 2: of the leadership flew down there and barged in and
Speaker 2: yelled at everyone for betraying the movement by betraying their authority,
Speaker 2: and called them the enemies of the people. The Young
Speaker 2: Lord's Party changed their name to Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization,
Speaker 2: which isn't so catchy. They demoted their central leader for
Speaker 2: being too petty bourgeoisie. And that's kind of the tail
Speaker 2: spin of the New York chapter. As far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, Chicago kept going and individuals from all of
Speaker 2: this right and like people still doing things as young
Speaker 2: Lords did a lot of stuff Chicago, in particular, their
Speaker 2: moment seemed kind of gone, and I don't know enough
Speaker 2: to do the rest of it real justice. A lot
Speaker 2: of Chicago Young Lords sort of move into the electoral sphere,
Speaker 2: are involved in getting I think, I want to say
Speaker 2: Chicago's first black mayor elected. Oh wow, like ten years
Speaker 2: later or so, it's not in the scripts around the
Speaker 2: numbers in front of me. A ton of them stayed
Speaker 2: really radical and keep kept doing good work. I don't
Speaker 2: really want to linger on their fall. I want to
Speaker 2: stay with most of what they did, but I will
Speaker 2: mention one of the young lords, one of their lawyers
Speaker 2: who helped them out a lot. He went on to
Speaker 2: become a famous man.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I know you're talking about.
Speaker 2: The Republican Fox News host.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, her.
Speaker 2: Name, his name is Heraldo Rivera.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I mean taking my fucking head. I
Speaker 4: prefer to remember Huan Gonzales instead. Yeah, oh, co step
Speaker 4: democracy now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, and fucking and your
Speaker 2: uncle who fucking quit. Yeah yeah, he's not actually related.
Speaker 4: Well we're going to see about that. Okay, okay, I'm
Speaker 4: scared of DNA websites. So I don't do that, but
Speaker 4: I'll do some I'll do some googling, yeah and find him,
Speaker 4: write him a random email.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no. And it's like every some cliche. I
Speaker 2: learned a long time ago that like every story is
Speaker 2: a tragedy if you don't know when to end it,
Speaker 2: you know, because like all of us die, right, everything passes.
Speaker 2: But god damn, they got so much done.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And also there are so many of these members
Speaker 4: who even if they didn't get famous or something, you know,
Speaker 4: there was still like incredible community activists and yeah, you
Speaker 4: know are doing or making an amazing art. One woman
Speaker 4: made a really great documentary called That's Really Great on YouTube.
Speaker 4: So yeah, they're still out there and there's still total badasses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so fucking good. I listened to a bunch
Speaker 2: of different interviews where yeah, you can still listen to
Speaker 2: interviews where like the guy who stole the van, who's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we stole the van, and like the woman who like
Speaker 2: staffed the table in the host in Lincoln Hospital and
Speaker 2: just was like every day I'm gonna sit in the
Speaker 2: butcher shop and let people tell me what's wrong here,
Speaker 2: you know, like still alive like still fucking yeah. Well
Speaker 2: that's uh, that's the Young Lord's. That's the first four
Speaker 2: partter I ever wrote. The second one we recorded, but
Speaker 2: I don't know any any other final.
Speaker 4: Well, no, I think we said it all. I guess,
Speaker 4: you know. For me, what I really took away from
Speaker 4: learning about the Young Lords is just is how important
Speaker 4: it was for them and it is for us to
Speaker 4: listen to the folks that live around us, to listen
Speaker 4: to people who you know, if you're someone like me
Speaker 4: who's an artist, I think it's really important for me
Speaker 4: to listen to people who have to fucking work every
Speaker 4: day and or are much older than me, or you know.
Speaker 4: I think that was something that I really inspired me
Speaker 4: about them is their ability in the beginning to listen
Speaker 4: to their community about what they wanted and needed, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: And just like create a fucking to do list and
Speaker 2: just started checking boxes off seriously. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And also the Berets were cool, let's just say it.
Speaker 2: And first organized by a fifteen year old who was like,
Speaker 2: I need fucking I need to like throw a bunch
Speaker 2: of dance shows to like make money to get us
Speaker 2: all cool black and for the whim. Yeah, well, if
Speaker 2: people want to listen to you. I will say everyone
Speaker 2: should go listen to song Polente. You should look it
Speaker 2: up on YouTube so you can watch the video. P
Speaker 2: A l e n t E. I don't know where
Speaker 2: the g A l a n t e a n
Speaker 2: t E. Yeah, apologize.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a great music video directed by my friend
Speaker 4: Chris Murk, who's an incredible director. My dad is in it,
Speaker 4: which is really cool to see him pop up in there,
Speaker 4: and a lot of there's the Pedro Pietri uh an
Speaker 4: excerpt from his his poem Puerto Rican Obituary. And I
Speaker 4: encourage anybody to just like go down the rabbit hole
Speaker 4: of like how much amazing stuff was created from this movement,
Speaker 4: like the new Arekan Poets Cafe and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's your new album called?
Speaker 4: Well, my new album. I just finished recording it, so
Speaker 4: I'm not going to reveal the name yet.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sorry I timed this past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, it's okay. Uh, it's going to come out.
Speaker 4: I hope it comes out sometime next year. I haven't
Speaker 4: gotten the rough mixes back yet, so I'm going kind
Speaker 4: of crazy because I want to hear what I did.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is what you're about to tour on.
Speaker 4: No, I'm still touring on my last record. My last
Speaker 4: record is called Life on Earth. It came out last February.
Speaker 4: And I'll be out there playing music like on the
Speaker 4: West Coast in May cool, and then in July. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be playing Portland cool. In July, I'll
Speaker 4: be playing all around link the Midwest and stuff sick. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So come see us, buy some merch, help us out where.
Speaker 4: It's tough out there, hanging in there.
Speaker 2: Hasn't been a good couple of years for career musicians.
Speaker 2: Is that what we're saying?
Speaker 4: Oh my god? Yeah, I get like, you know, a
Speaker 4: glimmer of a penny anytime you listen to me on Spotify,
Speaker 4: So head over to band camp. I encourage everyone to
Speaker 4: get music off band camp on band Camp Fridays. It
Speaker 4: really helps us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I try and buy albums and then I do
Speaker 2: a lot of my listening on Spotify, but I like
Speaker 2: it's nice to also buy it, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, totally, Yeah, it all helps.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, what else can I pitch? I'm going to kickstart
Speaker 2: a tabletop role playing game this summer.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: I've been working on a stabletop role playing game called
Speaker 2: The Number City for like ten fucking years, and I'm
Speaker 2: working with a really good crew of people. If you
Speaker 2: want to play Gangs Versus the Goding tabletop role playing game,
Speaker 2: you should check that out once it gets kickstarted. I
Speaker 2: think I don't want to. I know what dates. I
Speaker 2: think we're going to kickstart it, but I don't want
Speaker 2: to say it. I don't want to be wrong. And
Speaker 2: then I'm going to be another tabletop role playing game
Speaker 2: I'm writing for oh that was not announced yet. Ah,
Speaker 2: stupid things with things and controlling information. That's what I got.
Speaker 2: And also my most recent book is Escape from Insult Island,
Speaker 2: and if you want quick adventure, read it's a very
Speaker 2: short book. If you have a I get a lot
Speaker 2: of messages from people who are like, I don't read
Speaker 2: much because I don't have the attention span for it anymore.
Speaker 2: But I can read your books. Takes only a couple
Speaker 2: hours to read it Escape from Insul Island, And he'd
Speaker 2: be like, I read a whole last book because it's
Speaker 2: about one hundred pages long. Uh. And you can also
Speaker 2: get my friend Jamie's book called raw dogged Rall Dog,
Speaker 2: Oh God Dog, Okay, you can get Jamie's book, which
Speaker 2: is about hot dogs. I don't know what you're talking about, Margaret,
Speaker 2: there's no double euphemism there. I'm fucking literally blushing. I
Speaker 2: think we got to end the episode. It's over, We're done.
Speaker 2: You did it.
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