User talk:Jose1948

Jose(Cha-Cha)Jimenez

Founder of the Young Lords as a national human rights movement on September 23,1968 in the neighborhood of Lincoln Park,Chicago.The Lincoln Park neighborhood was a diverse community near downtown and Lake Michigan undergoing gentrification in the 60's.It was then also home to the first community or barrio of Puerto Rican immigrants to Chicago.Today,Puerto Ricans and the poor have been completely displaced via a federally supported,city sponsored urban renewal plan. The Lincoln Park neighborhood officially began as a United States community after it became an army post in 1824.Until then,it was made up of indigeneous settlements along Green Bay Road(or today Clark Street). Mostly forested land with stretches of grassland,it was virtually untouched by european settlers, as late as the 1820's.The area was so remote that in 1837 the primary structures were a city cemetary and a small pox hospital.This same year,Chicago was incorporated as a city and by the followg year, after Clark Street was widened,the Indian settlements were removed through eminent domain. During this same period of Indians being dislocated from Lincoln Park,the first wave of German immigrants also arrived to the area escaping polictical repression and religious persecution from Germany. They worked primarily as agricultural or truck farmers and also in the agricultural manufacturing plants now being constructed in the western part of this near north,Lincoln Park neighborhood. In 1859,there were also about 1000 Scotch-Irish living in this Lincoln Park.It was the same year that Joseph Sheffield,William Ogden and Michael Diversey donated 25 acres to the Presbyterian Church to relocate their seminary institution from Hanover,Indiana to Chicago's Lincoln Park. This McCormick Theological Seminary became the largest land owner in the area with 73 Houses(in 1969 the Young Lords occupied the seminary for a week demanding that this institution invest in affordable housing). After the Great Fire of 1871,the construction boom attracted more waves of German and Irish immigrants."Chicago Cottages" sprouted up all over the western part of Lincoln Park, near the Chicago River and the manufacturing plants.The more wealther German mansions were constructed east of Clark Street. Population in Lincoln Park increased in the 1920's to 95,000.Now besides German and Irish,Italians and Polish also began to move into the area. As late as the 1950's,very few African Americans,Rural Appalacian folk,native americans,gypsies and Latinos lived in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.They mostly lived south of North Avenue.It was during the 50's,60's and 70's that these groups began to enter into the area.It was while white flight to the suburbs was taking place.According to city urban renewal literature, housing stock in Lincoln Park was becoming segregated and begining to decline and "these blighted conditions had to be eliminated to increase the tax base." In 1955,Mayor Richard J. Daley came into the mayor's office and soon after, announced the Chicago 21 Master Plan for the city.It included making Lincoln Park an inner city suburb and Waller High School,Lincoln Park High. Lincoln Park was promoted in the suburbs as being only 15 minutes to the lake and 15 minutes to downtown. While the neighborhood of Lincoln Park was changing,it was also becoming destabilized.The few immigrant organizations that had recently been established were breaking up due primarily to a lack of polictical support from the city.Any fiber of a community was falling apart and crime,drugs and violence were becoming rampant. City community assistance programs were being closed down and relocated to other parts of the city.The new wave of immigrants were renters and rents skyrocketed when carpet bagger investers bought out the homeowner landlords. During this time Jose(Cha-Cha)Jimenez became incarcerated for a substance abuse charge.He was then the president and one of 7 founding gang members, and now in jail he began reading everything from Martin Luther King Jr.and Malcom X to Lenin and Mao.However,it was when he was released and seeing his neighbors and extended family members being evicted by Sheriff's police that awakened him to the possibility that Puerto Rico could suffer the same fate as the gentrification of Lincoln Park. He soon met Fred Hampton of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party.It was right after the Young Lords took over a Chicago Avenue Police Workshop Meeting which was discussing the topic of the Young Lords "gang." For several months,Fred Hampton and Jose(Cha-Cha)Jimenez maintained close communication.Cha-Cha Jimenez had already decided to form an equivalent of the Black Panthers within the Puerto Rican community.With Fred Hampton's support,the Young Lords were reorganized into ministries similiar to the Black Panthers.Later,the Rainbow Coalition was formed by Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers;Jose(Cha-Cha)Jimenez and the Young Lords; and Bill(Preacherman)Fesperman and the Young Patriots to promote solidarity and self determination. The two largest Young Lords regional chapters were located in New York and Chicago where most Puerto Ricans living in the United States are located.There were also members from other minorities in the Young Lords including: Columbians,Cubans,Panamanians,Dominicans,Mexicans,Africans,African Americans and White ethnic. The Young Lords set up several similiar programs of the Black Panthers in various cities like the:Breakfast for Children Program,Free Health and Dental Care Clinics,Clothing Programs,Food Give-a-Ways,A Free Day Care Center and the Lincoln Park Camp. They have been featured in books,documentaries as well as the recent play,El Bloque/The Block:A Young Lords Story by Jacqueline Lazu.The mission of the Young Lords has been consistently self determination,especially for Puerto Rico and the empowerment of Latino and poor neighborhoods.