Denise Oliver-Velez Quotes

One other thing I really want to bring up is that, in September, 900,000 people on the island are due to lose their medical coverage. And that’s going to be—we’re talking about 4,000 people who died in the hurricane. Imagine 900,000 people, where a lot of them are elderly and they’re not going to be able to get their insulin. Children won’t get their asthma medications. I mean, the number of deaths is going to be phenomenal. And I don’t want to see us go, “Oh, this is so terrible. Look at all the dead people in Puerto Rico. Let’s maybe do something now.” So people are raising these issues ahora, now, in Puerto Rico and also in the diaspora.

Capitalism is a system that forces us to climb over our brothers and sisters' back to get to the top. It is like a race, in which the prize is survival....We fight against each other to live, and we are divided into groups that fight against each other. These groups are formed out of artificial division of race and sex, and social groupings....Many of these divisions that exist are a result of colonization...As a result of the oppression suffered for generations and generations, first under Spain and then under the amerikkkans, we all develop a "colonized mentality"

if there is no unity within an organization as long as there is a disparity between men and women in the struggle, there will not be that ability to strive for change in the world.

We should be proud of our Afro-Indio culture. We must fight against racism because it is a tool used to divide us.

It is important for us to know the history of Puerto Rican and Black women who fought for freedom of our peoples. We are not taught about them because even today people believe that women had no role in history. People still believe that women are only supposed to stay at home, cooking and sewing and raising children. These are the same things that were said to Sojourner Truth over a hundred years ago and they are still being said now. Women who speak out against injustice and fight for revolution are accused of acting like men, and we must understand that revolution is the job of men and women, brothers and sisters. We must learn from great women like Lolita Lebron, Carmen Perez, Antonia Martinez, Kathleen Cleaver and Ericka Huggins. This is what Point 10 of the YOUNG LORDS PARTY 13-Point Program and Platform means when it says "We want equality for women; machismo must be revolutionary and not oppressive."

all of our people are prostitutes for the American capitalists.

We are fighting against an enemy, the Yankee, and the Puerto Rican lombrices. The one major thing that holds us back in our fight to liberate Puerto Rico and all oppressed people is a lack of unity.

Having slaves for ancestors is not something to be ashamed of; one should be proud to know that one's ancestors were strong enough to live through the horrors of slavery, strong because of the rich and beautiful history of Africa. We are taught that Africans were savages, and this makes us non-consciously ashamed of our past.

Because of the Black Power movement inside of the united states, American Blacks are now able to hold their heads up high and be proud of their past. It is necessary that we study Puerto Rican history, much of which is African history, so that we can move on ridding ourselves of the barriers that exist between Afro-boricua and jibaro.

The destruction to the Lords and other movements was a traumatic experience. I've learned similar to what Vietnam vets go though. They call it post-traumatic stress disorder; I call it post-traumatic revolutionary failure stress disorder-I have my own name for it. After the collapse of this revolution, many of us had to go on journeys of self-exploration. I had to bottom out. I got into drugs, alcohol, workaholism. The Young Lords were my family. It was my dream. I didn't know what to put there. I didn't know how to deal with it. And I did it in isolation. Many of us did it in isolation. It's only now, years later that I can look at it more comfortably and understand what happened. I did become very disillusioned and didn't want to have anything to do with organizing anything for a period of time. But that healed. It's taken twenty years. The wounds are not there anymore-as open wounds. And the scabs are no longer there. There is some scar tissue, but it's not uncomfortable so I can look at things from a different perspective. And I keep returning to doing the kinds of things that I feel are necessary for social change. We need another Young Lords.

Puerto Rico is being turned into the "showplace colony" of the united states. American corporations are everywhere, all over the island, using Puerto Rican people as cheap labor. Everything that cannot be sold in the states is dumped in Puerto Rico-plastic palm trees in people's homes instead of the real thing that grows outside, makeup that is not needed, wool maxi-skirts and boots to be worn in 80 degree weather. And the people are brain-washed into buying this shit. The radio blasts American music and advertisements-"radio San Juan-turns me on." We turned it off. You get better service if you speak English, the tourists act like they owned the island and the Borinquenos are just there to be servants and part of the scenery.

Divorce is now par for the course in most families. Women are still trying to cope with how to run an organization, work a job, go to school, raise a family, and almost become superwomen. Maybe generations to come won't have to deal with these issues because we dealt with them then, and we're dealing with them now.

Many Black Puerto Ricans wind up voting for statehood because the only Black Puerto Rican leader was Jose Celso Barbosa (an American puppet), and he was for statehood.

We must follow the examples of Lolita Lebron, Pedro Albizu Campos, Julio Roldan, C.A.L. and MIRA. We must struggle against the american pigs and Puerto Rican vendepatrias.

I've walked through the streets in East Harlem, and people have said, "Dónde está los Young Lords?" Where did they go? People miss the Young Lords. They had been an integral part of that community in the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Philadelphia, New Haven, Hartford, and New Jersey.