Juan González Quotes

the majority of the American people don't even know what the United States government and the businessmen do.

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.

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.

Inside the U.S., we see ourselves allied with all Third World people, poor white and working class people.

The central argument of this book is that U.S. economic and political domination over Latin America has always been—and continues to be—the underlying reason for the massive Latino presence here. Quite simply, our vast Latino population is the unintended harvest of the U.S. empire.

The new slavery arrived with the amerikkkans and the only ones in this century who truly confronted that empire was the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, and for a time, the Socialist Party. Don Pedro was the defender of our nationality. Don Pedro assured with his struggle that at a later time in the future, men and women, poor and humble, capable of liberating Puerto Rico, would arise.

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.

we study history and we check out that very rarely have people been ever able to achieve anything in social changes unless they were capable of defending themselves and backing it up. Because if we were able to go into Nelson Rockefeller's office and I was able to go in and say, "Nelson, you and your father and your grandfather have been seized, have been robbing from working people for years. How about redistributing your wealth?" And if Rockefeller said "Juan you are right. I have been a thief and a crook and Standard Oil has been oppressing the people to work for years. Take it back, redistribute it among the people." There will be no need for war; there will be no need for violence. But the capitalists won't do that; they will defend themselves; they will defend their right to maintain that oppression and that exploitation.

we see, essentially, the three ingredients necessary for the liberation of Puerto Rico. We see the necessity for a strong, disciplined, scientific party. We see the need for mass revolutionary movement of the people, and we see the need for a people's army to defend that party and that mass movement. Those are the three ingredients for Puerto Rican liberation and that's what we're trying to build.

In the true spirit of the workingmen’s press of the 1830s, the muckrakers of the early 1900s, the revolutionary press of the 1970s, we have sought to do our part to keep alive dissident alternative news and information and analysis, grounded in facts and research, and in the service of social progress...as one advanced capitalist country after another faces the resurgence of right-wing, anti-immigrant and neofascist movements, we must nurture and build progressive alliances at the city and local level, not despair or lose hope. And those of us who are journalists must keep reporting the facts, exposing the injustices, drawing the lessons of history and speaking truth to power.

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.

For almost two years the YOUNG LORDS PARTY has been fighting all the institutions that oppress us-garbage conditions, hospital care, police brutality, the churches not serving the poor. And every time we marched, every time we seized a building, every time we sat in, nothing changed. Anthony Imperiale still runs Newark with a fascist fist. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Bozo Rizzo attacks the Puerto Rican and Black community at will. Lincoln Hospital continues to butcher our people with indecent healthcare. The garbage remains in our Brownsvilles, Lower East Sides, Kannecot Copper Company is preparing to steal more of our land and resources through its copper mining in Utuado. Ramey Air Force Base with its nuclear weapons and B-52's is destroying our town of Aguadilla. Culebra and Vieques are disappearing under a Navy bombing. We fight, we protest, we demonstrate. Nothing changes.

We are building a political party to involve our people in political activities. Elections don't involve you in political activity. Like the government treats you like fool. They herd you into voting booths once every four years to elect one or another oppressor. And they tell you that is democracy. And every four years you elect one slate of lying politicians who came back the next four years to try to explain to you why they couldn't succeed the last four years and promise you they are going to succeed in the next four years if you'll vote for them. So the people play their game every four years. We say that the way people should be involved, the oppressed people should be involved in the political problem is on a constant basis-running the society, not voting for oppressors to run it for them.

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.

For the past few years, I’ve sought to chronicle one of the truly epic injustices of our time...This epic injustice is the complete takeover and reengineering of the modern American metropolis by our nation’s wealthiest sectors -— the seizure of public parks, public schools and public lands, largely through the use of land use and zoning policies and executive tax breaks, so that the largely black and brown and Asian populations of those cities, along with the officials they elect, get to have only the most minimal say over a city’s most precious resources: the public commons...Who will stand up against this? Who will say this is the opposite of a democratic society? Who will defend those who have no power? Where are the leaders who will not simply talk about change, but actually fight for it?