Iris Morales Quotes

The demands of the Young Lords could have been written today. We believed in the power of the people and in community and personal transformation. We demanded the redistribution of economic and social resources. We fought for racial justice and the equality of women. As internationalists, we condemned all political, economic, and military intervention by one nation against another. We battled proudly against exploitation, social injustice, and colonial domination. It was a call for revolution!

My parents both arrived in New York City after World War II, at different times but for the same reason the search for work. They left a country they loved, but where they could not make a living. About half a million Puerto Ricans made the same journey fleeing economic despair, the result of the US colonization of the island. Government officials blamed the people for the disastrous economic situation claiming that the problem was "overpopulation." They promoted the mass exodus of Puerto Ricans and implemented policies that sterilized thousands of poor and working women. The Young Lords are the sons and daughters of this Great Migration. As young people growing up in the United States, we witnessed how our parents were exploited, degraded, and humiliated. We felt their suffering, and we too had experiences with poverty and racism. All of this propelled us into action to fight for justice.

The idea of "divided nation" insisted that, in spite of the transformative impact of the Great Migration, Puerto Ricans were still one people. It charged the United States with creating the economic conditions that forced Puerto Ricans to migrate and families to separate…"Divided nation" merged ideas of identity and national liberation to advance the proposition that the primary duty of every Puerto Rican was to decolonize the island.

There could be no unity without struggle. "Unity, struggle, unity,” we said.

Restrictive laws had not prevented or reduced the incidence of abortions; instead they forced low-income women to resort to unsafe, clandestine, and fatal procedures. Thousands of women of color died through botched or self-induced "hanger" abortions.

We identified as revolutionary nationalists' committed to ending exploitation and colonialism. We were inspired by the herstories of women activists in Puerto Rico. We learned about Lola Rodríguez de Tió and Mariana Bracetti, early fighters for the abolition of slavery and the island's independence from Spain; Luisa Capetillo and Juana Colón, working class organizers and women's rights advocates; and Lolita Lebrón and Blanca Canales, Nationalist Party militants imprisoned for their actions to free Puerto Rico. We studied the lives of African American women such as Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist, and Harriet Tubman, who freed slaves through the Underground Railroad. Our sisters in the Black Panther Party were diversifying the image of the revolutionary, and we joined the protests to demand the release of Angela Davis from a California prison, and of Afeni Shakur and Joan Bird in New York. The long line of women activists, from contemporary social justice movements, became our role models and mentors.

The Young Lords were first- and second-generation Puerto Ricans in the United States, also African Americans, Cubans, Dominicans, and Mexicans primarily from working class homes-people marginalized and scorned by mainstream society. Yet we dared to imagine a civilization "where the needs of the people come first, and where we give solidarity and aid to the people of the world, not oppression and racism." I end where I began, believing in rebel imagination, freedom dreams, and the power of the people to achieve human liberation. Our dedicated actions in pursuit of these ideals as Young Lords are the legacy that continues to inspire new generations.

When I met Cha Cha Jiménez and other Young Lords, I was impressed with their political ideals and militancy–with their sense of urgency and need for action.

Not everyone who commits to progressive movements as a young person necessarily sustains commitment for a lifetime. Leadership is determined by practice, by what a person does. Many leaders separate their politics from their personal lives. Yet politics has to translate into one's life in order to truly transform society. "Leaders" who work with youth and who have children must provide for them-financially, emotionally, and with time spent with their children. Leaders have to set an example. We must reevaluate our notions of leadership. Unfortunately, today's ideas of leadership are still quite patriarchal and elitist. The definition of a leader is still the lone charismatic male heading a hierarchal organization. Collective leadership models to include working people, women, youth, gays, and those who are most marginalized need to be developed.

Machismo was highly compatible with these ideas. Traditional Puerto Rican society relegated women to the private sphere: taking care of men, children, siblings, and the elderly, and accomplishing all domestic chores, including cooking and cleaning. Machismo was a complex set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors passed down by families from one generation to the next. Men exercised total control over the family; verbal and physical violence to keep women "in their place" was condoned. Manliness, defined by sexual virility, fostered a double standard of sexual freedom for men and monogamy for women.

I took the journey with the Young Lords from the group's beginning in New York through its painful decline and saw the organization crumble. We cannot forget that those in power-the ruling class, the exploiters, those who oppose justice-strike not just for one day, but relentlessly and remorselessly to incapacitate generations to come, using all their resources-every tactic imaginable or not, with no shame or trace of humanity of any kind-to annihilate and obliterate all who resist their control and domination. Silence will not free us. For us to remember and exchange experiences is to bring healing to reinvigorate the movements for social justice to take action and fight again another day.

At its best, the Young Lords offered revolutionary ideals and examples of movement-building strategies and tactics, and tough, hard-hitting, and painful lessons from its setbacks and failures.

We believed that the women’s struggle for equality was the ‘revolution within the revolution.’

Excited to be part of a revolutionary movement, the Women's Caucus reached out to build solidarity with other women activists during 1970. We met with visionaries such as Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American living in Harlem whose family had been imprisoned in US concentration camps during World War II, a mother of six children, a friend of Malcolm X's, and a fighter for human rights. Through our coalition work, we met women in the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets, and I Wor Kuen as well as members of other Puerto Rican organizations such as the New York chapter of the Movement Pro Independence (MPI) and El Comité. We quickly discovered the similarity of our experiences as women activists. Within the revolutionary ranks, we were all struggling to be treated as equals.

The Puerto Rican Nation must continue. We must open our eyes to the oppressor's tricknology and refuse to be killed anymore. We must, in the tradition of Puerto Rican women like Lolita Lebrón, Blanca Canales, Carmen Pérez, and Antonia Martínez, join with our brothers and, together, as a nation of warriors, fight the genocide that is threatening to make us the last generation of Puerto Ricans.