It’s unfortunate that the Young Lords are not as well known among broader public as the Black Panthers. The group was arguably more progressive for its time. Patriarchy and other oppressions within the Young Lords started to break down quickly when members challenged those hierarchies inherited from society. The Lords had deep roots in and support from the “El Barrio” community.

Which makes the New York Lords’ sudden and swift decline all the more puzzling. Why did the group fall apart after just two years of success? What can radicals learn from the Young Lords?

I cannot find any audio or video from Sunday’s forum online, oddly, to help answer those questions. You can hear Democracy Now co-host and Lords co-founder Juan Gonzalez speak on his experience in this interview.

I attempted to answer the question posed above myself last year in a paper for a ‘Radical Social Movements’ class. I’m posting it online now, to share it with y’all and Google’s indexer. The paper is entitled “The Young Lords: Examining Its Deficit of Democracy and Decline. Read it here →

An opening summary paragraph is below, but consider reading the paper itself. It analyzes the Lords’ rise and fall in some detail.

The New York Young Lords broke under the weight of unrelenting police harassment and infiltration, compounded by a series of tactical missteps that ignored the main source of their strength – their support from the Puerto Rican urban poor. These communities were oppressed and ignored, rather than represented, by social institutions. The Young Lords stepped into that vacuum and restored a sense of pride and togetherness to “El Barrio” in East Harlem. But the leadership of the organization subsequently turned its focus away from the direct action campaigns that inspired unprecedented solidarity in the ghetto. The group’s paramilitary structure was over-dependent on the charisma and cooperation of a few leaders and failed to recognize the voices of the Young Lords’ rank and file members. An attempt to open a revolutionary front on the island of Puerto Rico proved to be a fatal mistake, spreading the organization too thin, diverting resources from community programs, and initiating an acrimonious factionalism in the leadership from which the Lords would not recover. With much of the original leadership resigned or exiled, a hardline Marxist clique took over the Lords and it disintegrated.

Link to full paper. Also see Vivirlatino’s reflection on the Young Lords Party and Democracy Now’s coverage.

What are the lessons of the Young Lords’ history in your opinion? Critiques of the paper? Hit me up in the comments.

Click the (HQ) high quality button or view on Youtube. Thanks to Youtube users dc2video, girwainet, and atrhasis, for uploading the footage used in this video. And of course to the journalists in Korea who captured it all.

Cross-posted to current.com.

Previously: Podcast interviews with Korean Metal Workers Union member and author Loren Goldner.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia.

Yesterday the 10-week-long occupation of the Ssangyong automotive plant in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, by striking workers was broken by a final, violent police assault. When Ssangyong went bankrupt and announced the firings of thousands of assembly-line workers, they armed and barricaded themselves inside the plant. I spoke with Loren Goldner, an author writing a book on the Korean working class who visited the factory in June, on Friday about the situation. The workers’ struggle has received stunningly little attention in the US corporate and alternative press. He was speaking to me from New York City. Please share and re-broadcast.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia and libcom.

Update: The podcast does not convey the “epic,” in the BBC’s words, nature of the final four-day fight the workers put up against the police. Below are pictures and videos collected from Youtube and libcom.org.

Broken glass from shattered police car windows

Early this morning 18-year-old Nathaniel Sanders was fatally shot by Austin Police officer Leonardo Quintana at the Walnut Creek Apartment Complex in East Austin. I arrived at the scene at about noon and spoke to residents who were gathered outside. These voices are not being heard enough right now. This podcast just aired on KVRX minutes ago.

Download the MP3 here and feel free to re-broadcast. Transcript below.

This Mediahacker.org podcast was recorded on the afternoon of May 11 2009, the day after Mother’s Day. At the Walnut Creek Apartments just south of highway 183 and Manor road in Austin, a mother named Destiny woke up to gunshots earlier this morning. [audio]

18-year-old Nathaniel Sanders is dead. According to the Austin Police Department, Sanders and two other men were sleeping in a car parked in the complex, when an Austin Police officer approached the vehicle. Police say they suspected the vehicle had been used in recent robberies.

Officer Leonardo Quintana took the man in the driver’s seat into custody, then came back for the other two men. APD says Quintana saw a weapon in Sanders’ lap and shot him. Police say the third individual got out of the car and charged the officer. The officer shot him too – that man is now recovering in the hospital.

Austin Police chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference he believes the deadly shooting of Sanders was legal. [audio]

Destiny, holding her baby and standing just yards away from where Nathaniel Sanders was shot to death, said APD was out of control. [audio]

Gathered around their doorsteps and cars in the early afternoon, here is some of what other residents of Walnut Creek Apartments had to say about the shooting. Almost everyone asked not to be identified by name. [audio]

Hours earlier, at least one individual was arrested after rocks were thrown at police cars. Destiny said the community’s healing process had just begun. [audio]

Nathaniel Sanders’ death comes almost two years after Kevin Brown was fatally shot in the back while fleeing from officer Michael Olson outside Chester’s Nightclub. I’m Ansel Herz in Austin, this has been a mediahacker.org podcast .

5/14 Update: APD is claiming that Sanders reached for a weapon near his waist. Cross posted to Houston Indymedia.

Flashback to two years ago: Shot in the Back: APD, City of Austin, and Corporate Media Blame Shooting on East Austin Club