#palante

Cleo Silvers – Danny Argote, Think Lincoln [from «Palante», Vol. 2, No. 6, July 3, 1970], from Health and Hospitals, ch. 9 in The Young Lords. A Reader, Edited by Darrel Enck-Wanzer, Foreword by Iris Morales and Denise Oliver-Velez, New York University Press, New York, NY, and London, 2010, pp. 194-196 (The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives pdf here, Marxists Internet Archive pdf here)

june 5 1970

liberación o muerte young lords party

se espera

y si no llega

Palante, July 17, 1970.

Newspaper of the Young Lords Party. NYU has a brilliant collection of complete issue scans of Palante.

More on the 50th anniversary of the Young Lords here.

Hurray For The Riff Raff - Pa’lante

I’m currently in Puerto Rico and this music video perfectly describes my emotions.

The video takes place in New York City (where I am from), and Puerto Rico, where both my parents were born and raised. 

After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, I fell into a hole. Depression doesn’t necessarily describe the emotions I felt, it was more of a mix between sadness, anger, despair, and yearning. 

A month ago I quit my job and came to Puerto Rico. I was told what to expect but nothing could prepare me for the realization that my country is really dying.

In some places it looks as if the hurricane hit last month instead of last year. Americans and foreigners are exploiting the disaster to buy property and gentrify essentially the entire island which will further displace Puerto Ricans. With locals leaving and Americans buying the property, I fear that, in the future, Puerto Ricans will no longer have any land to call theirs. This is a dilemma very few other ethnicities can truly understand and it causes me a great amount of pain to even think about it.

There is no easy solution to fix the mess we are in but I decided that I want to be here. Currently I have no more money. I spent it on a two week class to brush up on my Spanish. I will return to NYC later this week and come back in July with my school to help rebuild homes. After that I don’t know what the future has in store for me.