Juan González Quotes

Jimmy Breslin once wrote that the Lords produced more good journalism—journalists than Columbia J School. The Lords were a loud, brash, radical and talented group of Puerto Ricans. We became a thorn in the side of the establishment and the police in this town, and in cities throughout the East Coast for a brief time, and influenced a generation of young Latinos to demand more equitable treatment for our community. But of all the radical groups of the '60s—and there were many back then—we probably received the most sympathetic press coverage. Even as youngsters, we understood the power of the press, and we consciously cultivated good coverage. We were helped by the first brilliant crop of young black and Latino reporters in the city's media, to whom we fed exclusives and who in turn repaid us with more all-around and sound coverage—people like a young Ed Bradley at WCBS, Gil Noble at WABC, Gloria Rojas at WNBC, Rudy Garcia at the Daily News, and of course liberal white writers like Jack Newfield at The Village Voice. And we published our own newspaper, Palante, that I edited for a while. So it was no accident that when the Lords fell apart in the mid-1970s, several of us ended up going into journalism—Pablo Guzmán, Felipe Luciano, Geraldo Rivera, our first lawyer—everybody knows Geraldo—and myself, or that when we landed there, we were all drawn to uncovering injustices and digging deeper than some journalists were accustomed to.

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.

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.

Nixon's a fool and he comes out with this stuff so heavily. What happens? China was admitted to the United Nations. And what happens? Just because some delegates clapped and cheered in the United Nations, Nixon comes out with a statement and he says that every one of those countries who clapped and cheered, we're gonna cut off your economic aid. That's what he said, I read that, check it out. I mean, he's so blatant with this stuff. That's what makes the United States such a hated country in the world. Wherever you go among the people of the world, the United States government is hated. It's that kind of behavior that's caused so much misery and oppression in the world.