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 … - Denise Oliver-Velez

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."

We should not be afraid to criticize ourselves about racism. We are all racists, not because we want to be, but because we are taught to be that way, to keep us divided, because it benefits the capitalist system. And this applies to racism toward Asians, other Brown people, and toward white people. White people are not all the oppressor-capitalists are. We will never have socialism until we are free of these chains on our mind.

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"