The Young Lords - A Radical History

On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the legacy of the radical group the Young Lords with Professor Johanna Fernández. In Chicago in 1969 a former gang leader, Cha Cha Jiménez, founded the revolutionary group The Young Lords to fight police brutality, racism, and gentrification. The Young Lords, with their signature purple berets and paramilitary formations, were to Mexican and Puerto Rican youth what the Black Panthers were to radicalized Blacks. The Young Lords quickly spread to New York. But in New York the leaders, while mostly the children of poor Puerto Rican immigrants, were also often better educated. The New York chapter, bilingual and bicultural, soon gave their generation the language to understand the discrimination, displacement and structural racism that plagued their families and their communities. As children they had to serve as interlocutors between their parents, who often did not speak English, and a callous and indifferent bureaucracy, forcing them to see their parents