Telesur.png The Young Lords are Back! Leader Says Unity Needed Now More Than Ever Naomi Cohen, Telesur, Venezuela, 14 July 2016 Jose "Cha Cha" Jimenez, founder of the revived Young Lords in Chicago, told teleSUR that today's activists must study their history. In order to win the fight against police brutality, activists must link up with the movements they inherited, said Jose "Cha Cha" Jimenez, founder of the Young Lords Party and co-founder of the Rainbow Coalition in Chicago, in an interview with teleSUR. Jimenez first joined the Young Lords when it was a street gang-a term that he finds racist, since the white equivalent would be a "social club," but that he is proud of because it shows his organizing reached the most oppressed. Young Lords 1970.jpg The Young Lords fought for Puerto Rican self-determination, for the liberation of all Latin American and colonized nations and for an end to the gentrification of Lincoln Park in Chicago. Their daily reality was forced displacement and police brutality against Puerto Ricans. Fred Hampton, the leader of the national revolutionary Black Panther Party in Chicago, approached the Young Lords after one of their more high-profile actions, fearing for the group's safety. An alliance blossomed. The Young Lords borrowed the Panthers' 10-point program-with a few culturally-specific amendments like "Down with machismo and male chauvinism"-and Jimenez said that the Panthers shared with him historical analyses of Puerto Rico he had never heard before. 50 Years of Lords-Panther Unity Speaking to teleSUR before attending the 50th anniversary of the coalition between the left-wing Young Patriots and the Black Panthers, Jimenez said that their symbolism and unity was not a matter of being "politically correct," but rather was necessary to collectively resist fascism and violent repression from police and intelligence agencies. Rather than alienating their members, Jimenez and his partners in arms at the Rainbow Coalition-that also included the Patriot Party, the American Indian Movement, the White Panther Party, I Wor Kuen and the Brown Berets-embraced their common mission to "educate the liberal people in the community" and emphasize that "it was a class struggle and it was a struggle against racism." While continuing to organize around community-specific issues together, the coalition united against the Vietnam War, against the criminalization of the poor and against police repression. "Today, it's difficult to fathom the unity that we had, the internal unity," said Jimenez, who attributed their discipline to their origins in gangs. The Young Lords, alone and accompanied, had to fend off attempts by the U.S. government to split them apart. The FBI's covert COINTELPRO program, Chicago's then-Mayor Richard Daley, the Gang Intelligence Unit and the Red Squad all tried to infiltrate the movements to pit members against each other and, effectively, break them up. "Today, it's called the Patriot Act," said Jimenez. "They don't need that many agents anymore; they have computers. They can ... spy on millions of people at one time." When he tried to call the main phone line of Occupy Wall Street, he said, he was sure the phone was tapped because he couldn't get through. Several documented cases of FBI infiltration of Occupy Wall Street and of targeting Black Lives Matter activists have already come out, and more are expected to come. To successfully resist "divide and conquer" tactics, activists today must study the history of their predecessors to understand the mindset and scope of state intelligence, said Jimenez. Assassinations and arrests are a part of that history. Not "former" "There is no former nothing," he said. "The movement is the same movement that was in the 60s." He is now dedicated to compiling a Young Lords archive so that, after being "wiped off the map," reorganizing and being destroyed again, their fight can continue. "We need that connection, we need that unity. That's how we're gonna win," said Jimenez. He added a few words of caution: "We're not gonna win if we're gonna be Superman and against collectivism. It's about the people, about collectivism." From: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Leader-of-60s-Latino-Group-Says-Uni ty-Needed-Now-More-Than-Ever-20160713-0036.html __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 13806 (20160715) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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