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THE FINAL DAYS AND THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES: A TRIBUTE TO DIANA
CABALLERO AND REMINDER FOR UNITY TODAY  
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By Diana Caballero, with a foreword by David Duhalde
February 4, 2025
Socialist Majority
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_ As we enter into Trump's second term, stories such as this and
heroes like Diana Caballero remind us that change is possible under
difficult circumstances; so we must not succumb to the temptation to
abandon mass work and turn on each other. _

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_I never had the privilege to meet Diana Caballero. But she was a
presence in my life through her partner, Jose La Luz, a founding
member of Democratic Socialists America (DSA) and former national
leader I’ve known for nearly two decades. Diana passed away late
last year, and today SMC is privileged to share a personal reflection
written in 1983 on her experiences in the __revolutionary socialist
trend_ [[link removed]]_ of the __Puerto Rican
nationalist movement_
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_From the 1970s to her death, Diana remained a socialist. Her
commitment, however, was challenged not just by capitalist hegemony
but by abuse at the hands of members of her own organization. Her
traumatic experience of being kidnapped and tortured by ostensible
comrades resulted from conditions including a rising right, increased
political repression, and a sectarian and inward turn on the
revolutionary left. The desire to discover traitors overwhelmed the
plans to seek out recruits, and carried a steep personal cost._

_I find Diana’s history rhyming with today, with lessons about
self-destructive behaviors we need to learn from. Despite this tragic
story, there is still inspiration. Diana never gave up on mass work.
Her organizing focus would shift, but her steadfast commitment to
radical transformation held._

_Even before I joined the DSA, I grew up respecting movement elders
such as Diana and her revolutionary Puerto Rican _independentistas._
They included the __Young Lords Party_
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(YLP). The YLP conducted mass work by asking community members what
injustices they experienced. In one famous instance, while some of the
YLP cadre expected denunciations of imperialism, the street consensus
was that garbage pickup in New York’s _El Barrio_ was under-served
compared to other neighborhoods._

_The revolutionary socialists listened to the masses and took action.
They burned the unpicked garbage to draw attention to neglected
service. This action led to more consistent trash pickup and served as
a victory for the party and the people._

_This story taught me the line between revolutionary and reformist is
not always so clear. The direct action tactics were radical in nature,
but the ultimate result was sewer socialism: better public services
for all. The actions did not shift the balance of power towards labor
over capital, but it did show a community that change was possible
even if not through traditional means.  _

_As we enter into a second term of Donald Trump, stories such as this
and heroes like Diana can remind us that change is very much possible
under difficult circumstances; so we must not succumb to the
temptation to abandon mass work and turn on each other. Socialists can
be the catalysts in both revolutionary shifts and self-destructive
behavior. We know this history – it’s up to us to select the
correct path forward. —David Duhalde_

I was a Young Lord at heart for a very long time but didn't start
working with the organization until about 1972. Prior to that I did
work with El Comite,' which was another Puerto Rican organization. I
started working with the YLP [Young Lords Party] when it was changing
to PRRWO [Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization]. I worked
in education with parents, working on bilingual education but also
with Puerto Rican political prisoners.

This was early 1970s; bilingual education became our civil rights
issue. It was a lot of work to get these programs started, to get
teachers hired, to get materials for kids, to get parents organized.
It's interesting because the education work was what I did and that
was what I felt I could contribute, but I think that whole era
represented for me a turning point in terms of who I was. It was
period of definition as a Puerto Rican.

I also did work with Frente Unido Pro Defensa de los Presos Politicos
Puertorriqueños, which was a coalition of Puerto Rican organizations
around one common issue, the defense of political prisoners. The
Frente Unido, the United Front, brought together all the different
defense committees—the Pancho Cruz Defense Committee, the Bengy Cruz
Defense Committee, Carlos Feliciano Defense Committee, the Committee
to Defend the Nationalists.

My main work was in education in community school district one on the
Lower East Side. It was the first time there was a Puerto Rican
superintendent in that district, Luis Fuentes. There was a Support Los
Ninos slate; it was very active in terms of getting Puerto Rican
parents involved in local school board elections. So wanting to give
the YLP/Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization recognition
for being part of that work, it was important to have people
identified openly as being part of a group providing leadership.

Well, this was the early 1970s, I would say '72 and '73, and there was
student-organizing work in the high schools as well as on college
campuses. But the push was mostly for doing work as close to the
working class as possible so that meant working in factories. It meant
organization members being pulled out of either student work or work
in public schools with parents to go into the factories and work
closely with the workers. Organizing in the unions, organizing in the
shops was the thrust in the organization. Some members were also
working in daycare centers.

When I look at it now, I have one analysis. When I think of it then,
at that time, I felt it was the correct thing to do cause I felt, if
it's true, we're about to make proletariat revolution, it makes sense
to be where the workers are and that's in the factories, so it made a
lot of sense to me. But, I also found myself in conflict because
having been involved in education and working with parents knowing
that our people feel oppression everywhere, not just in the factories.
It's our kids, it's the parents, it's our families, so I had that
conflict. On the one hand feeling, this is a politically correct move
but, on the other hand, having conflict with it and saying this other
work is important as well.

I was being told "you're such a petty bourgeois element; you don't
want to leave this education work, but eventually you're gonna have to
go and go into the factories, and the reason you don't want to do that
is because it's hard labor". I felt that's not the reason; there's
work that has to be done here as well. This was one of the reasons
why, in 1976, I was one of the first during that period to be purged
from the organization. They kept telling me, "you're a petty bourgeois
element. You should be going to the point of production, and your
wanting to work in the community is a counter revolutionary act that
you should pay for."

By this time, there was no storefront or anything like that. The
visibility of the organization in the community was through
individuals. There was not the kind of presence where the community
can say that organization is involved in this community.

We were organized into sections. I was part of the community section
that involved people who were working in the public schools; it
involved people who were working in daycare centers. We'd talk about
the work, what was happening in this center, what was happening in
that school, who were the people we could organize. We met at people's
homes, and we'd meet for marathon meetings, sometimes four or five
hours. Meetings would go on till two or three o'clock in the mourning.
First, we'd have a study section on politics, economy, on Marxism,
Leninism; then the last thing on the agenda was a discussion about the
work in that particular area, and many times we never got to that.

There was always a Central Committee, and there was a responsible
cadre in the sections who would then be accountable to the Central
Committee, who reported back to the other level of leadership. Most of
what was happening was the study and preparing for the development of
a new political party and for proletarian revolution. Everything had
to be geared in that direction. If my work in education, my work with
parents associations did not talk about proletarian revolution, I was
criticized, and I was told I was a "petty bourgeois element" that I
was going against the wishes of the organization.

I wanted to feel that I was doing the right thing for my community,
and I looked upon these people as the ones who knew so much more than
I did. Therefore, what they were saying had to be right, but I was
also conflicted because I had a difference of opinion but was afraid
to verbalize it.

Whenever there was a dissenting voice, the leaderships from above
would make sure that voice would conform to what the leadership was
thinking. If you had a dissenting voice, it was internal; you couldn't
verbalize that or you were in a lot of trouble if you did. It was a
very interesting period of repression on a number of levels.

It was 1976. At that point, what the organization was doing was
uniting with other groups from around the country. Different groups
that had started as the organization did, being community oriented,
eventually evolved into groups that talked about revolution in a very
abstract way and talked about organizing in a very abstract way.
Discussions at that time had to do with what was happening
internationally with the Soviet Union or with China and basically that
was the work, just trying to bring together these forces to build this
new Communist Party in this country and have a revolution.

People have blamed the police for infiltrating and moving the
organizing in that direction. I don't think it is all due to that. I
think there was still some people who were coming to this from a good
place and felt it was the right thing to do, and then I think some
people were into some grandiose plans to make a mark.

Whenever I verbalized you have to organize the grass roots; you have
to work with parents; you have to think about what's happening in
classrooms as well; I'd be criticized for that. I kept doing my work a
certain way, and I kept getting criticized. I was singled out and my
_compañero_ at that time was also singled out because his ties to the
student movement were very strong. We were targeted, and I would say
that at that time we probably were the two in the New York area that
had the closest ties with community and were criticized for having
those ties. The leadership targeted us cause we were not kowtowing to
what leadership was saying we had to do.

I remember being at a meeting of the community section and seeing
leadership people coming in. After about two hours, I realized that I
was being targeted. Being attacked verbally and criticized for the
work that I was doing and told that I would have to be taken to
another place or someone else's home. They said, they had to talk to
me because they felt that I was conspiring against the organization.
This was all very preliminary.

I felt they were honestly making a mistake about what I was doing, but
I was taken from that meeting and kept for three days, questioned,
terrorized. Terrorized verbally, terrorized physically, terrorized by
people in leadership who at one time I respected very much and being
questioned and being interrogated and being told to stay awake all
night or if I fell asleep I would be hit so I would be awake to answer
questions. It took about a day and a half for me to realize that I was
being accused of fractionalizing and organizing against the
organization and doing the work of the police.

At this time, I was alone trying to figure out how long this would go
on before I could leave and go home. Looking out the window to see if
there were ways that I could escape. Trying to be as honest as I
possibly could about things that I was being asked. I was very afraid.
I didn't know what was gonna go on, and I didn't know where my
_compañero_ thought I was either. I didn't know what was happening
with him. Meanwhile, he had also been kidnapped and taken some place,
beaten and also questioned. Finally, they had me for three days; they
had him for two days, and they brought us together on the third day
beaten up with a group of about ten to twelve people. Some people who
I didn't know were involved in this. They brought us together in the
home of one of the members and beat us in front of each other. The
leadership of the organization wanted people to think that we were
police infiltrators and organizing for the police.

We were targeted because we maintained ties with community. That was a
motivating force in our being targeted during that phase, which was
1976. The leadership pretty much convinced others in the organization
because they accused us of working with the police, of having
infiltrated the organization, and working with the police to destroy
the organization.

A lot of that was kept from us. In fact, when the things were
happening to us during that three-day period and even after that,
people didn't know, all the other younger people especially in the
organization didn't know that had happened to us either. People didn't
find out for months later so it was very well kept, very well kept.

It's difficult to remember, but I remember a couple of things having
to do with my relationship with Iris [Morales.]
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up a couple of times, and how interesting it was to them that we had a
relationship in terms of our similar thinking and that we were still
in connection.

Some of the people who participated were people who I had considered
close friends, who I supported economically. We had to give half our
paychecks to the organization, as well as my _compañero_’s
paycheck. We did with all good intentions because we felt it was our
responsibility to do that; these were people we knew, people who I
worked with in the community section, people who had been leadership
in the organization since the beginning who I had tremendous respect
for and other people who I didn’t know.

At the meeting we started from thinking that this was just another
criticism self-criticism session, that we could talk this through, but
after about a day, I started realizing there's some irrationality
going on, and things happening that I didn't completely understand.
There was a point where my feeling was if you want to hear me say that
I don't want to work with the working class, even though that's not in
my heart, I felt that’s what I was gonna say it because I felt
whatever I said didn't matter. But it didn't start like that. It
started with what I thought was gonna be the honest exchange, which
turned into something that was very irrational, very sick and very
traumatic.

At the point when they brought my _compañero_ and myself together, we
realized the quicker we said what we had to say the quicker we could
get out there. They left us alone after they beat us up. I said, "they
gonna kill us," and he said they possibly could. We knew they were
coming back; we knew we just had little time, this was all instinct;
it was get up now or we don't get out. They left us with a younger
person, and we were able to physically get out of there fast. Where
the strength came, after not having slept for three days or eaten for
three days, the strength came in that we were determined to get out of
there. So we had to find our way out. I had to break a bottle over the
man's head who was watching us, tear the phone out of the wall, grab
our stuff and get out of there. It was March in the middle of the
night.

Our first instinct was to go to family. For the next weeks, we lived
in terror, in fear. It's amazing because you feel that these people
were omnipotent, that they can find me, that they could tap our
phones. They didn't have that power, but at that point you're so
vulnerable and so scared and so weak, because it was their intention
to do that, that you feared for your life. So it was our underground
period where no one knew where we were; we didn't speak with anyone;
we needed to put our strength together and reflect on what just took
place and try to figure out what's gonna go on in our lives from now
on because it was a total disconnect with a world that we had been
very much part of for a number of years, intensely a part of.

The disruption was very traumatic, and it was not easy to put
ourselves together, but we had the support of family that helped us, a
very nourishing environment, which is very important, a very stable
environment. At some point, we were saying, I don't want to know from
this kind of work. But I kept thinking, if I really believed in this
then, I would still believe in this regardless of what happened. If I
believe that there has to be change, and if I believe that we have to
work and be organized and make real change then I'm gonna believe it
even now. But you're also trying to think of how you're going to
protect yourself, how you're going to live, how you're gonna move
around in the world, in the city never, mind the world. But it took us
weeks. We talked about it everyday; we'd talk a little bit more trying
to work through what happened, what took place, what are we going to
do now. Then we started making connections with people that we felt we
could trust. We thought about the people that had also gone through
this before we did.

We didn’t know how this would be brought out in terms of the
movement and how people would know what happened and what took place,
but we started making connections with some of the people that had
left the organization, either voluntarily left or also traumatized to
leave. So those connections started happening, and we had to put our
lives back together; we had to do that. It meant where we were gonna
work, how we were gonna watch after each other; how we were gonna be
secure; how we were gonna live.

We received a telegram through one of the family members. Mixed
feelings, you know, on the one hand it was, wow, there are people
reaching out to us. We saw the list of people who were reaching out to
us, we said, my God that's some mighty mixed group of people. Mixed in
the sense of the people who united and were coming together for this;
that was real important that reaching out.

Well after putting the pieces together, I mean first it meant getting
our personal lives together in terms of a safe environment, to live,
in terms of work. I continued my work in education outside of New York
City. I went to work in Long Island, working with parents, working
with teachers, doing work in bilingual education. My work in Long
Island was very good work while still being afraid for my life looking
around me at all times, wondering if anyone was gonna grab me again,
and kidnap me again.

We also knew that where there is injustice, you have to organize
against that injustice. How we would do that, we didn't know. We
eventually came back and started doing more political work. Our coming
back was working with the committee to free the Nationalist political
prisoners and working with some people that had already been
organizing for a number of years in that area. Going back to do that
kind of work meant putting out a newsletter, speaking about the case
of the Nationalists. Little by little making ties with different
people who were involved and getting our strength back and our ability
to do be able to do the things that we believed. There was a takeover
of the Statue of Liberty
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and that came about as a result of the work of the committee to free
the Nationalists. This also became a time of working with other groups
as well so the Statue of Liberty takeover involved not just
_Puertorriqueños_ or African-Americans, it involved some folks from
the White community that also believed in this and wanted to be part
of something together because the Statue of Liberty takeover was to
put forward very publicly the situation with the Nationalists and the
importance of their freedom.

When I came into the movement in 1970-1971, I came in because of the
Nationalist prisoners, my learning about being _Puertorriquena_, my
learning about these revolutionaries from Puerto Rico that committed
these acts to me were acts of a fight against injustice and acts that
had to do with the self-determination of Puerto Rico. It was important
work for me to again say I wanna get involved in this, and I did. It
was interesting because I remember the first time that it was shared
with me that there was gonna be this act taking over the Statue of
Liberty. I said wait a minute, we just got kidnapped, tortured; we're
just putting our lives back together again, and how are we going to
takeover the Statue of Liberty. I said wait a minute, I was not gonna
do what I did before, which was follow blindly whatever I was told to
do because it was the politically correct thing to do. They've got to
convince me. I have to understand it, I have to embrace it, not be
forced into it, and this is what happened. It was really having a
dialogue about why this was important for us to do, and I got
involved. I drove the car; it was timed just right. I had to get to
the ferry to take that ferry to the statue at a certain time, and
everything had to be timed just right. I mean it was putting together
the best skills of the people involved; the skills to organize, the
skills to educate because it was an educational campaign as well. It
was bringing together things that should have been brought together
cause that's what you do to organize. You organize, you educate, you
involve people, there's dialogue, there's process, it's not just cut
and dry. It was bringing together a good group of people that knew
exactly what to do, and it was an act that went down in history and
that I'm very proud to have been part of.

Taking the Statue of Liberty brought international attention to the
imprisonment of the Nationalist political prisoners, which was an
important thing to do because we knew we had to get them out of jail.
The time was right to do that, but also it brought together groups of
people and organizations from our own community that many times did
not work together for whatever political reasons, brought us together,
cause it was an issue that we could find unity around. Seeing the
Statue of Liberty with the Puerto Rican flag on her head on every
major newspaper in this country and internationally again was
significant in terms of _el Puertorriqueno_ and our struggle. The role
that I played contributed to that action because as our community
started coming down to South Ferry; people had started hearing it on
the radio or reading about it on the paper. People started coming
down, the press came down, and myself and another _compañero_ were
the ones responsible for organizing what had to be done on this side
while the other _compañero_s were at the statue. Our work involved
the press; it involved the education and bringing together of the
people that came down. At one point, I was almost flown out on a
helicopter to bring food to our prisoners at the Statue of Liberty. It
was something that brought people together, and we were able to really
execute this act. The Nationalist prisoners were not just an issue
belonging to the Left or an issue belonging to the Puerto Rican
movement, it was an issue belonging to the Puerto Rican people.

_Bueno_, the release, the final release was an incredible day. We were
over at the church on 59th and 10th Avenue, and there they were, these
people that we had read about. There they were in person Lolita,
Rafael, Irving, Oscar, Andres
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The release of the Nationalist was an amazing celebration in our
community. This was something that touched the heart of all Puerto
Ricans, all Puerto Ricans who were there to greet them. Lolita was
given the Puerto Rican flag that hung on the Statue of Liberty, so
that was also quite an experience to see her get this flag, and then
take it to Puerto Rico and put it at Don Pedro Albizu Campo's grave.
It was incredible. I guess looking at the Puerto Rican prisoners that
we have today, it is important to take lessons from the work that was
done to free the Nationalists and always know that it can be done.
It’s got to be organized. We still have political prisoners.

During the late 1970s, beginning of the '80s, was when a lot of us saw
ourselves getting involved around issues of media racism and the
depiction of Puerto Ricans in the media was important especially since
the movie with the great white liberal, Paul Newman, was coming out,
Fort Apache the Bronx. An incredibly effective campaign, because even
though the movie did come out, the issues about racism historically,
not just with the Puerto Rican community, with the Chicano community,
with Asian community; those issues were finally brought to the
forefront in a very organized way. It was a campaign that took on all
different fronts from dealing with the press around the issue, to
organizing, to disrupting filming of the movie.

For a lot of us in New York the issues around the political prisoners
and the media racism got us involved again. We saw the need to build
an organization of _Puertorriqueños_. It couldn't just be getting
involved in an issue; it had to be something more than that. It also
meant all of us accepting the fact that we were ready to do this, and
we were. Not just in New York but also in Philadelphia, some of our
folks from Chicago, from New Jersey began to talk about the need to
bring together our people to organize something that would struggle
for the democratic rights of our people. It took two years of
discussions, dialogue, of people meeting in different communities,
Puerto Rican communities, different parts of the country. It took two
years to form the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights, an
important organization that had its founding convention in New York
City in 1981. It organized and brought us together to be analytical
about the issues, to begin organizing once again, to learn from the
mistakes of the past and hopefully not make them again. The driving
force was the need to bring people together in an organized form.

The basic mission of the Congress was to fight for the basic
democratic rights of the Puerto Rican people in this country on a lot
of different levels. It also meant a fight on the electoral level. It
meant looking at what our fight was. Was it democratic rights of the
Puerto Rican people in this country? Then how to organize that fight
on all different fronts and accepting that all different fronts are
viable not that one is better than the other, but that they are all
viable and that everyone has a contribution to make in all those
areas.

There was a lot of work also with the labor movement besides the work
in education, with political prisoners, and against racism by the
police in our community. We had chapters in Philadelphia, New York and
New Jersey. We were looking at the base, because one of the mistakes
we made in the past was just mechanically applying things to different
situations, and it just doesn't work that way. That was significant in
terms of the National Congress. It had different areas of work and
actual involvement in the electoral arena. The organization didn't run
candidates but did support people's efforts to run. That was something
very different. My involvement in education naturally took me to work
around school board elections, which was work that I've done for a
number of years, but it gave me a different approach, a different
outlook about school board elections and learning how to negotiate the
system. The National Congress was different from the traditional
Puerto Rican leadership. We wanted to find our way to do this learning
from the good things from the traditional leadership, avoiding the bad
things from that traditional leadership. Learning how to do this and
how to negotiate the system in a very different way. It's not the
usual power broker type mentality. How you negotiate the system for it
to work, for you to change it, for you to impact on it because it's
gotta work for us. It's a very different approach.

Bilingual education was a constant issue, the cornerstone of our civil
rights issues. It was also an issue that brought together
_Puertorriqueños_ with other _Latinos_, with undocumented workers,
with new immigrants, not just _Latinos_ but with the Asian community,
especially with the Haitian community. It was an issue that touched
all of us; it was coalition building. An issue that was very
significant and still is because we've got the 1994 version of English
Only right before us now.

In the National Congress my work was to organize the national task
force for bilingual education, which brought me together with people
from Pennsylvania, New Jersey Puerto Ricans from different parts of
the East Coast. That work meant testifying in Washington DC, which was
also something I never thought I would be doing, actually testifying
at federal hearings about bilingual education. The work was national
in scope; it meant also organizing parents, which was local in scope;
it meant bringing those things together.

When I was elected to leadership in the National Congress for Puerto
Rican Rights, it indicated to me a recognition of something that took
a long time for me to recognize in myself, which was the ability to be
the leader of something. I never look at leaders as individuals. One
of the good things about having been doing the work in the
organization during the '70s is this collective thinking; collective
spirit is something very positive and very important. There is not one
leader; there is a collective of leadership, but I did get elected to
leadership twice. I became the President in 1983, and I served two
terms until 1987. The first elected woman President in the
organization. Not an easy period. Difficult, a major responsibility I
took on with all heart and soul behind it.

I've been a community activist for like the last twenty-five years and
most of my work has been education. I believed then, as I believe now,
that there has to be a fundamental change in the way that children are
educated in this country, in particular the _Puertorriqueño_ and
_Latino_ children. One real positive experience that the Congress gave
me was knowing how to organize different sectors of people and how to
build coalitions. Many of us education activists here in New York felt
that we also had to build a coalition effort among _Puertorriqueños_
and _Latinos_ because what we kept doing was responding to the crisis
as opposed to having a real plan on how to deal with the crisis of
education of Latino kids. So in 1984 many of us got together there was
ASPIRA, the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, the Puerto Rican
Educators Association, the Association of Progressive Dominicans, a
parents group from District 3, the National Congress of Puerto Rican
Rights - and talked about what is it that we were going to do and how
is it that we're going to do it.

In 1984, we organized into the Puerto Rican Latino Education Round
Table, a coalition of our community organizations of educators, of
parents, to respond proactively to the crisis. In that response, it
meant knowing how to do things on a policy level and knowing and
continuing with the grassroots ties. This coalition was very important
because it wasn't just the usual good government type group that talks
about advocacy and policy but has no ties with their community. The
coalition, the Round Tables’ definition of itself was very important
because we knew we had to do the work in all those different levels,
but all those different levels had to be done and brought together.
We've been together for little over ten years as a group. It's
organizational membership, individual membership, people who have a
mission in education, people who feel there has to be educational
transformation. We've been involved still with our bilingual education
issue. Also taking it out of that framework and looking at the issue
of education of Latino kids because bilingual education is not just
where our kids are in. In New York City only one in every four Latino
kids are in bilingual programs, but embracing the issue of
bilingualism and bi-literacy, the right to speak and learn in your
language. We've been involved with the English Only movement, school
board elections every few years, coalition building with other groups
involved in education in New York City, dealing with the issues of
decentralization and legislation to change the way the New York City
school system is governed, working with parents. Right now my
involvement, especially for the last two years, has been with a whole
new initiative on school reform in New York City, which is to build
small schools within this large institution of one million kids. We've
got about 350,000 Latino kids in this system, and they're in the worst
schools, the most over crowded situations, segregated situations. We
still have the highest dropout rate of any other group. Even though
we're organizing you know if we weren't there, it would be worse. But
my work right now has been very directed towards helping to build a
school, The Leadership Secondary School, which looks at our kids as
leadership and tries to develop that potential. Our work is a lot in
terms of impacting the direction school reform is taking, especially
in New York City. With _Latinos_ creating a vision and _Latinos_
articulating a vision and _Latinos_ implementing a vision of the
education of Latino students. Our school, along with the El Puente
Academy for Peace and Justice, are the only two schools in this whole
initiative to build new schools that are guided by a Latino vision.

I was Nationalist just like everyone else. When the YLP went to Puerto
Rico, it was developing pride and nationalism so I found it a good
thing. With the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights, our focus is
on the democratic rights of _Puertorriqueños_, but part of our
platform also is to support the self-determination of Puerto Rico and
how that support is actualized is not the same as going to that
country. Then, I was worked up with that Nationalist pride and
feeling. But now, it's the community struggles here; and the community
there has the right to its self-determination, which means that the
people in Puerto Rico determine.

That whole '60s period was so important, and I'm so glad I lived
through it and was able to be part of it. A lot of people also became
role models for me, a lot of the men and women from YLP especially
those who are here today still doing their work tremendous role models
and tremendous inspiration. But these days, my role models are the
young people. Usually the role model is the older person, _la que
sabe_, the experienced one. This next generation of our young people,
you know, we've lost one generation, but there's another generation
there that I'm not about to lose and that we can't lose. The kind of
organizing, the kind of thinking the kind of participation, the kind
of work that they're doing, it is incredible. It just keeps me going,
and it helps me realize that all this was worth it because of what I
see happening today.

* Young Lords
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* Puerto Rico
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* Latino community
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* bilingualism
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* Left Unity
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* community organizing
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* sectarianism
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