We must study and reclaim our past so that we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are, and where we are going. - Iris Morales

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.

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.

We considered ourselves "revolutionary nationalists." This idea expressed the intersecting and complex histories of Puerto Ricans exploited both in a US island colony and in the urban ghettos of the United States. Puerto Ricans suffered colonialism, class exploitation, and racism, and the Young Lords pointed to the US capitalist-imperialist system as the source of the problem. This view was distinct from that of other nationalists, who did not necessarily focus on a class analysis or on organizing the most economically disenfranchised, and from that of cultural nationalists, whose concerns were to promote and preserve Puerto Rican culture rather than transform the socio-economic-political system. For the Young Lords, revolutionary nationalism also meant internationalism-collaboration with people similarly exploited in the United States and throughout the world. The first point of the Young Lords' Thirteen-Point Program and Platform declared, "We want self-determination for Puerto Ricans: liberation on the Island and inside the United States." These were dual and simultaneous demands. The Young Lords not only organized for the rights of Puerto Ricans in the United States but also mobilized thousands to support the decolonization of Puerto Rico