Juan González Quotes

I figured my modest contribution would be... not writing about outcast neighborhoods, but from them. Not simply to entertain but to change. Not after the fact, but before it, when coverage could still make a difference.... I have tried to use as many of my columns as possible to probe the injustices visited upon the powerless. Yes, the rich and famous are also victims on occasion. But they have so many politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, gossip columnists and even editorial writers ready to jump to their defense that they'll always do fine without my help. I prefer the desperate unknown reader who comes to me because he or she has gone everywhere else and no one will listen. More often than not I come across unexpected gems, human beings whose tragedies illuminate the landscape and whose courage hopefully inspires the reader to believe that there is indeed some greater good served by a free press than just chronicling or influencing the ouster of one group of politicians by another.

if we don't hurry and we don't get ourselves disciplined enough and we don't talk and we get out there among the masses of people, the forces of fascism will organize more.

The factories belong to those who work them; the work places belong to those who work them. That's our slogan, that's how we're going to build a revolutionary workers' movement.

we feel that we don't want abstract equality rights, we want material equality. That means the redistribution of the wealth in this society. And that means that people like Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Ford or the Bishop Estate or Dillingham or whatever, they have to redistribute the wealth that they have robbed from the poor working people of the world. I mean, they made if off our backs. Henry Ford, he made the first Model T. After that, who made all the other cars. So it wasn't him, it was the people who work in the automobile factories, who sweat in 100 degree temperatures; who risk industrial accidents for a lousy $150 a week. And he makes millions every year. And he ain't produced shit. I mean, he just sits behind his desk and writes papers, either that or signs checks. That's the reality of the way society functions. And what we say, we do want a redistribution of that wealth-spread it among the people it's been robbed from. Return it to the people it belongs to.

Hatred of oppression drives us.

When we established the Party on the island, we were expecting to enter the struggle here in an atmosphere of comrades. Instead we found the rejection of the same independentistas who were supposedly companeros and companeras.

Our people have experience with crooked politicians full of empty promises. In the 1940's, luis munoz marin and the slogan "Bread, Land, and Liberty." Where is the bread? Where is the land? Where is the liberty? munoz marin was for independence, until he got into office. Then he became a traitor, and a rich man.

Revolution is a complete change, an overturning of dead soil, a new way of life, with new government, new laws.

Fidel Castro had trust in the people and their power, when united and organized, to change Cuba.

With the division in our nation between the rich who have millions to launch electoral campaigns, and the poor who hardly have enough money to live decently, we can't talk about free elections representative of the interests of the majority of the people.

That's what imperialism is all about when one country controls the economic life of another country.

Juan Seguín is the forgotten father of Latino politics in the United States. The story of his life and career has left Mexican Americans with a somewhat different political legacy than that which Washington, Jefferson, and the Founding Fathers bequeathed to white Americans, or which Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. Du Bois symbolize for black Americans. How our nation comes to terms with that legacy will determine much of American politics during the twenty-first century.

it's time that people stop looking for speakers, for very prepared leaders-lawyers, professors, doctors, whatever. It's time that the poor look for [sic] ourselves as leaders. It's time that the universities take their place behind the poor in this struggle.

that's our goal, national liberation of Puerto Rico and self-determination for Puerto Ricans inside the United States.

The Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico was the first party to raise Guanica, to protest the invasion of the gringos as should be. In these as in many of the struggles for freedom of our people, the Nationalist Party was at the vanguard of its time. The Young Lords Party follows the example of Don Pedro Albizu Campos and the Nationalist Party and declares that for us Guanica is a day of national protest, and will be a day of national protest until we drive the Puerto Rican lombrices like ferre, the Cuban gusanos, and yankee amerikkkans into the sea.