Jack is on a roll this morning.

Apparently there is a dirty looking hipster music group that thought that The Young Lords was a great name for their band. Jack breaks it down:

The Young Lords are some white guys who decided to form an indie rock band in NYC a few years ago and apparently couldn’t be bothered to find out whether they were ripping off the name of an entire political movement that most certainly does not belong to them. One might argue that words are words and no one can claim to own the name “Young Lords,” but how would it look if some white dudes decided to name their band the Black Panthers? That would probably be less likely to happen since more people know about the Black Panthers, but come on, people – we live in the age of Google (which, sadly, now has the MySpace page for this stupid band ranked above pages about the actual Young Lords in search results.) It is tremendously easy to look things up. I can’t help but think that they probably did look it up before they took up the name themselves and just didn’t give a fuck, but even if they could claim the innocence of ignorance then, I’m sure that one of them has Googled their band name since. For a band whose bio claims that their “sound pays homage to the past,” they’re displaying a remarkable amount of ahistoricity, ignorance and disrespect.

So why the hell should I or anyone else care about these white dudes and the name of their stupid band? Porque because the real Young Lords, the ones who moved from a street organization in Chicago to a national social justice movement, the ones who consciously modeled themselves after the Black Panthers pero specific to the needs of Ricans in the hood, including creating breakfast programs for children, drug treatment programs and fighting for the liberation of la isla and it’s political prisoners, understanding that the colonialism on la isla del encanto travels through the ocean and onto the island of Manhattan and other urban areas. I’m pissed porque if it wasn’t for the Young Lords I wouldn’t be who I am today.

The Young Lords Party and it’s members, long after the U.S. government infiltrated them, taught me when I as just 16 and searching, about Puerto Rican history and struggle and why it is still relevant today and how I needed to get involved in the struggle for the survival and growth of my community. Richie Perez, a Young Lord por vida, had me crying at a youth conference when I first heard hims speak and changed my life forever.

No hipster band could do that.
What this musical group has done is straight up historical appropriation and erasing who the real Young Lords are.

Despierta Boricua! Defiende lo Tuyo!