| Description |
xvi, 256 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Note |
"First published in a cloth edition by St. Martin's Press in 2003"--T.p. verso. |
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Includes index. |
| Summary |
One of the founding members of The Young Lords describes his role in creating the Puerto Rican activist group in this engaging memoir set in New York City's Bronx and Harlem. In 1969, inspired by the "world of revolution" erupting around them, Melendez and several of his friends decided to create an organization that would fight, sometimes literally, for the rights and improvement of the Latino community. Their first "offensive" gives a fair overview of their preferred tactics: to protest the city's systematic neglect of sanitation in Harlem, the Young Lords spent an afternoon sweeping together a five-foot tall roadblock of trash-then, in front of a crowd of community members, they set the garbage pile on fire. No one was injured; police and journalists arrived; the Young Lords had orchestrated a lead news story. Detailed accounts of similar "actions" and "offensives" form the backbone of this book, explaining how the Young Lords helped convince City Hall to ban the use of poisonous lead paint, took over churches and hospitals to demand better social services and bolstered many Latinos' pride. Melendez also describes his role in creating the group's clandestine, armed division, which became public in 1970, when the Young Lords publicly discarded their commitment to unarmed action. (Melendez left the group in 1971 after its new director, Gloria Gonzales Frontaenz, renamed it the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers party and reorganized it into a Maoist-inspired political party.) Though many readers may object to Melendez's "direct action" tactics ("rather than Mahatma Gandhi, my role models are...Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Don Pedro"), his fast-paced blend of personal memoir and political tell-all forms a valuable, if biased, contribution to Puerto Rican history. |
| Subject |
Young Lords (Organization) -- History.
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Puerto Ricans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Politics and government -- 20th century.
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Puerto Ricans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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Puerto Ricans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
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Political activists -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
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New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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New York (N.Y.) -- Ethnic relations.
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New York (N.Y.) -- Biography.
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| ISBN |
081353559X paperback alkaline paper |
|
9780813535593 paperback alkaline paper |
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