Stop 2: Young Lords Members Hit the Streets - Mural at 215 E 99th St

Here, superimposed on the east side wall of PS 109, is a mural of Young Lords resident photographer Hiram Maristany’s “March to Free the Panther 21.” The iconic photo features a woman holding the Puerto Rican flag as she raises her fist in solidarity during a march to free the group of 21 Black Panthers (known as the Panther 21) who were charged with conspiracy to commit a series of bombings in New York. The exhibit seen here is part of the public arts project “Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio” and was installed on the side of an abandoned school that was transformed into an affordable housing complex for local artists to live and work. The five-story building, which was completed in 1898, houses 90 units of affordable live/work housing for artists and their families. Affordable housing was one of several key issues taken up by the New York Young Lords Party during the height of its activism.

During its organizational phase, the Young Lords Party quickly realized that members would need to connect with neighborhood residents in order to garner any sort of support. To learn more about the people living in El Barrio, Young Lord members conducted door-to-door and street conversations where they discovered the most pressing neighborhood problem: the unrelenting trash. In an interview for a 1995 PBS film on the Young Lords, founding leader Luciano explained how they learned about the community’s most urgent need: “So we’re on 110^th Street and we actually asked the people, ‘What do you think you need? What do you need? Is it housing? Is it police brutality?’ And they said, ‘Muchacho, déjate de todo eso––LA BASURA!” [Listen kid, fuggedaboutit! It’s THE GARBAGE!].” What followed was the organization’s first major activism campaign that would not only garner it widespread support from residents but would put it in the crosshairs of the local government.  

Residents were not exaggerating about the neighborhood’s trash problem. According to a series by the New York Daily News, the 160-street neighborhood of El Barrio only had six garbage receptacles and trash would go uncollected for days and weeks at a time. To make matters worse, El Barrio has a disproportionate share of New York City’s condemned housing units and was 50 percent more densely populated than other neighborhoods in the city. The neighborhood did not only have to contend with higher concentrations of household-created trash, but also had 107 abandoned buildings and 55 empty lots, which became de facto neighborhood landfills. In July 1969, 35 Young Lord members walked to the sanitation depot on 108^th Street in a quest to lodge a resident complaint. They also requested brooms and garbage bags from the sanitation depot – which no longer exists at E 108^th St and 1^st Ave – but were immediately denied. The sanitation depot’s denial prompted Young Lords members to take matters into their own hands. For three consecutive Sundays, Young Lords swept garbage into piles on the sidewalks as El Barrio residents headed to church. The garbage sweeping, which puzzled many in the neighborhood, also endeared the group to residents.

1. “El Barrio's Artspace PS109.” Artspace. Accessed November 7, 2022. https://www.artspace.org/ps109.  
2. Fernández, Johanna.The Young Lords: A Radical History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Project Muse, https://muse-jhu-edu.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/book/72262.
3. Mapping Resistance. “The Young Lords in El Barrio: The Garbage Offensive, 1969. 3rd Avenue and 111th Street.” Accessed November 1, 2022. https://www.mappingresistance.com/3rd-avenue.
4. Older, Daniel José. “Garbage Fires for Freedom: When Puerto Rican Activists Took Over New York’s Streets.” New York Times, October 11, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/nyregion/young-lords-nyc-garbage-offensive.html