Cultural Event Critique

Professor Gonzalez

November 24, 2015

November 30, 2015

The Young Lord in New York held by El Museo del Barrio By Steffany Estevez

Steffany Estevez
LAT 125
Cultural Event critique
November 30, 2015 El Museo Del Barrio hosted an event of The Young Lords in New York in which explores the legacy of the Young Lords in East Harlem, the Bronx and the Lower East Side, focusing on specific political events that the Young Lords organized in these locations. I attended to this event on November 24, 2015, presented by the museum. El Museo’s exhibition draws from works in the museum’s own collection including copies of the Young Lords weekly newspaper,” Palante”. It also explores the legacy of the Young Lords and the relationship between art and activism. Images by photographer Hiram Maristany that feature the Young Lords’ Garbage Offensive, their takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church of East Harlem (later renamed by the Young Lords as The People’s Church), their free morning breakfast program, the rerouting of a TB-testing truck and the funeral of Julio Roldán everything was highlighted in the exhibition. The Young Lords founded in Chicago in September 1968, the Young Lords Organization later developed a chapter in New York City in July 1969 when various groups came together in the interest of neighborhood improvement and Puerto Rican self-determination. The New York chapter was led by a group of students and young people working together, including Felipe Luciano, Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman, Juan González, Juan “Fi” Ortiz, David Pérez and Miguel Melendez. Juan Gonzalez underscored the need to speak with the people of the neighborhood to begin their activist work: “We must go to them…to the masses. They may know something we don’t. So, first, we must go to the people of El Barrio.” Walking through the streets of East Harlem, the young group asked local residents about their biggest concerns in the neighborhood and the answer was nearly unanimous: garbage. The City’s Department of Sanitation rarely came to pick up garbage in East Harlem. So they took action towards was affecting their neighborhood. In the exhibition these were the main focus about the activists group first it was the so-called “garbage offensive” occurred in response to the overflow of refuse in the streets of El Barrio—otherwise known as East Harlem. The trash in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods had been sorely neglected and inefficient, as compared to the clean streets in the white neighborhoods of New York. The residents of the El Barrio joined together and cleaned up the streets. They asked the local Department of Sanitation for brooms, and were denied, so they took the brooms themselves and used them to sweep all the garbage into a giant pile. They put this pile in the middle of a major street at the edge of the neighborhood to block traffic and draw attention to the garbage problem. It was the first of many initiatives by the Young Lords. The garbage offensive was the first protest against the daily injustice suffered by the Puerto Rican people of New York. I also saw how they established their churches.many of the churches in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods of New York were fully functional buildings that were only used one day of the week to serve the community. The Young Lords occupied several churches, transforming them into housing for free breakfast programs and daycare. The first church the party occupied was known as The First Spanish Methodist Church (renamed La Iglesia de la Gente), and—though the occupation only lasted eleven days—it garnered national attention by the press and brought the Puerto Rican empowerment movement to the forefront. Another program that I can mention is how the museum portraits a photo of how the Young Lords organized a free daycare for working mothers and fathers who could not afford day care for their children on their meager salaries. This program was a great success, and benefited those members of the community who had to work full time jobs in order to support their families as well as, among the various concerns of the Young Lords was the poor health coverage offered to the average Puerto Rican living in New York. Many of the community members had not received the most basic tests—including life-saving tests for lead poisoning and tuberculosis. The Young Lords organized door-to-door led poisoning testing, and—when they learned the city owned a TB-testing x-ray truck that had never reached the Puerto Rican neighborhoods—the Young Lords commandeered the truck and brought it in for use by their neighborhood. Something that I have to point is also the breakfast program in which they house in many occupants of their churches. Overall, I felt that this exhibition was self-explanatory and interesting. Some facts, is that this group helped socially and politically during that time. I was pleasantly surprise how a group of “gangs” were doing so much great things for others instead of killing or diminishing them. I also felt some kind of support in how they presented ; it gives some motion to the puertorican community in New York. On the other hand, I felt very welcomed by the people of the museum.