This event is FREE, but donations are most welcome. By getting a "ticket" here on WithFriends you reserve your spot and we'll send you the Zoom link to participate via email

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Join Mayday Space for a special evening online with organizer and author Johanna Fernández. We’ll discuss her newly released and timely new book. And we’ll explore lessons we can draw from the Young Lords for today’s struggles in NYC and beyond, in the time of the COVID pandemic. The Zoom conversation will be followed by a Q&A with our virtual audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & BOOK: Johanna Fernández is the author of "The Young Lords: A Radical History" (UNC Press, February 2020), a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. She teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY).

Against the backdrop of America’s escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city’s racist policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising vision, and skillful ability to link local problems to international crises riveted the media, alarmed New York’s political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young Lords.

Utilizing oral histories, archival records, and an enormous cache of police records released only after a decade-long Freedom of Information Law request and subsequent court battle, Johanna Fernández has written the definitive account of the Young Lords, from their roots as a street gang to their rise and fall as a political organization. Led predominantly by poor and working-class Puerto Rican youth, and consciously fashioned after the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords confronted race and class inequality and questioned American foreign policy. Their imaginative, irreverent protests and media conscious tactics won significant reforms and exposed U.S. mainland audiences to the country’s quiet imperial project in Puerto Rico. In riveting style, Fernández demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of popular urban culture in the age of great dreams.

MODERATOR: Ed Morales is an author and journalist who has written for The Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Jacobin, Newsday, The Village Voice and the Guardian. He is the author of several books including "Latinx: The New Force in Politics and Culture", and "Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico."

ABOUT MAYDAY:
Mayday Space is a collectively-managed organizing and social hub for grassroots groups, neighborhood residents, artists and activists from across NYC (and beyond!) to hold classes, training, meetings, film screenings, retreats, conferences, art builds, and all-ages events on an affordable sliding scale. While our space is closed due to the COVID-19 crisis, we will be offering on-line programming and supporting mutual aid efforts on the ground. Inbox us if you want to get involved in planning other on-line events like this.