Friday, September 23, 2022
The Young Lords were founded this day in history in 1968, led by a Chicago street activist named Cha Cha Jiménez, who organized the group to fight local gentrification, police brutality, and racism. He pioneered the use of the Lords’ signature purple berets (perhaps inspired by the Sharks’ colors in West Side Story) and semi-military code of conduct. Some major events that marked their activism: the Garbage Offensive, in which they forced the Sanitation Department to clean the streets in Spanish Harlem; their two takeovers of the neighborhood’s Methodist church; and a couple of brief occupations of Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx.
- Zinn Education Project Sept. 23, 1968: Young Lords Founded
- New York Times video How We Occupied a Hospital and Changed Public Health Care
- Democracy Now video report From Garbage Offensives to Occupying Churches, Actions of the Young Lords Continue to Inspire