On this day, 14 July 1970, Puerto Rican street gang-turned activist group the Young Lords occupied Lincoln Hospital’s major administrative building in response to the city’s indifference to the health needs of Puerto Ricans and Black people in the South Bronx and the deplorable conditions of health care delivery at Lincoln Hospital.
The Young Lords’ actions at New York hospital were an extension of the group’s activism around issues of public health in East Harlem. Their health activism included the Garbage Offensive, which protested against irregular sanitation services; the launch of breakfast programs for poor children; the Lead Offensive, during which they conducted door-to-door medical home visits in collaboration with progressive nurses, medical technicians and doctors to test local children for lead poisoning and adults for tuberculosis, and the takeover of a city operated tuberculosis truck.
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Read about this and hundreds of other struggles in our book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion, available here (or our link in bio on Instagram): https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/working-class-history-everyday-acts-resistance-rebellion-book
Pictured: Young Lords with a requisition tuberculosis truck https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1760976224087520/?type=3
“It’s not hyperbolic to say that this case is life or death for many,” Alex Summerfield, a pro-bono attorney with the Unemployed Workers Union, told the judge in his closing statements on Monday. “The main question here is, does administrative inconvenience weigh heavier than human need?”
