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The Young Lords Speak with Jacqueline Lazú, Lilia Fernández, Juan González and Omar López
Past event
Featured Book

The Young Lords SpeakBuilding Revolution on the Streets of Chicago
Rooted in a Chicago-based street gang, the Young Lords grew into one of the most dynamic revolutionary community organizations of the late 1960s and early ’70s.
In their field jackets and signature purple berets, using militant tactics like building takeovers and mass education, the Young Lords mobilized their community for liberation and against gentrification, poverty, racism, and police brutality. Forging a Rainbow Coalition with Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords expanded from their Chicago headquarters into the Puerto Rican and Latino barrios of New York City and elsewhere, demanding an end to the US occupation of Puerto Rico and self-determination for oppressed communities everywhere.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
The Young Lords Speak: Building Revolution on the Streets of Chicago brings the history and voices of a groundbreaking social justice movement into the present.
Join us for a conversation featuring historians and members of the Young Lords as they reflect on its roots in Chicago and connections to New York, from organizing against displacement and police violence to building collective power in Puerto Rican and Latinx neighborhoods. Moving between past and present, the conversation centers the voices, strategies, and political vision that shaped the movement, and what it means to shape how that history is understood. Together, they revisit how the Young Lords transformed their conditions and what it means to build on that legacy in the present.
Featured Author
Jacqueline Lazú
Jacqueline Lazú is a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at DePaul University and the author of numerous scholarly articles on the Young Lords in Chicago.
In Conversation With
Omar López
Omar López is the former minister of information for the Young Lords Organization and currently the executive director of CALOR.
About the Venue

Pilsen Community Books
Pilsen Community Books is a worker owned and operated independent bookstore that specializes in new and used literary fiction, radical history and politics, and literature in translation. The staff's goal is to unite their bookselling experience with their belief that labor is entitled to all it produces.
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