What is Class Hatred?

I hate the word "classism" cos it always feels to me that it's about rich people being nice to poor people, rather than about fighting capitalism. Yet, "class oppression" or "capitalism" itself doesnt encompass the emotional dimensions of how class oppression plays out. I think there is a more developed vocab describing the impact of racism and sexism, than there is for class oppression, and that probably has a lot to do with how there has not been a working class movement or identity in this country for a while.

More drama at work -- the kitchen manager, R, is extremely mean and disrespectful. She comes into the dining room, doesnt greet any of us, and crosses her arms, towers over us to supervise us. A nurse working a double shift (6am to 11pm) left her food in the pantry area. We all know we arent allowed to leave our food in the fridge, so this nurse left it next to the coffee maker that is meant for employees. The kitchen manager comes in, and just dumps out the food in the garbage. Her excuse: You all aren't suppose to eat in the pantry anyway."

They switch up the rules on us, with no explanation for why and expect that we follow it. As of 2 days ago, we were allowed to eat in the pantry area. The nurse, having skipped her meals and breaks cos she had been so busy, came into the pantry area at around 1130am, and found her food in the garbage. The woman balled. We were all pissed.

What is most infuriating about the actions of this kitchen manager is the utter disrespect she shows for workers. This isnt the first time she has done this with food that is left for us, either by residents' families, or food that co-workers bring for one another. If the kitchen manager really thought the food shouldnt have been there, she could easily have asked around for whose food it was, and given a heads up; or she could have left a note and asked the person to get the food from her. But to throw out someone's lunch? That's cold.

Back to the topic. Some manifestations of class hatred. There's a lot of overlap with race and gender:

- Thinking that working class/poor people are lazy and need discipline coming from rich people

- "If you give them an inch, they will take a foot" - thinking that all our actions are irrational and based solely off of greed and laziness.

- Seeing our legitimate grievances as "complaints" and "bitching."

- "Hang the dead cat to scare off the others" kinda thing --Thinking that we are guided only be fear. That it is up to them to teach us "life lessons" or "lessons"

- Switching up rules on workers to make us more efficient. Thinking that we are too dumb to ask: Why. And then giving the roundabout/not making sense when we ask them why.

- Reminding us everyday that we owe it to them to have a job, and thus a life. And so we need to be obedient and subservient.

- Perpetuating the "It get Better" myth when it comes to poverty and difficult financial times.
Remember when Dan Savage did the "It get better" youtubes for addressing queer violence? CNN is the emodiment of "It gets better" politics for working/poor people. We need the "I get stronger" version and say: Eff the system! Down with bosses!

Cross posting: Reflections on anti-police upheavals in Seattle

I been busy with this collective piece that the Black Orchid Collective has been working on. I am excited to have it be out in the world and welcome lovers and haters alike. The whole process has been very encouraging. I dont think I have ever written a piece that has been so...collective!

If you have some time for 30 pages of exciting, engaging, infuriating, titillating (ok...maybe this is going too far) political writing, check us out here!

emo marxism

Sorry for this angst-y moments!

I have been feeling like I am getting the beat down, and GETTING beaten down at work.
This is very hard. Being a worker-militant ---> means you SURVIVE work everyday AND! have to have a clear mind to organize, which means you need to NOT bring the short-term drama of everyday work life and let it disproportionately affect the strategizing! Ok, break it down --> It means I need to not be fucking PISSED OFF and ANGRY and EMO!!!

I hate hate hate the m-fucking bosses. I hate them. They willy nilly pissy wissily got me and other CNAs into trouble. They made us sign that we neglected our residents --- when they actually NEVER PROVIDE THE RESOURCES FOR ME TO GIVE GOOD CARE IN THE FIRST PLACE! I am so mad! Yes, I didnt change the resident every 2 hours and thats neglect, but you know what? 11 residents to 1 CNA is neglect too!! And when you do that to extract $$ and make more profit, thats even worse!! IT'S NOT OUR FAULT!! ITS THE GODDAMN FUCKING MANAGEMENT! and they threatened to take our licenses away. I am so angry!!! This is what happens when management, the state, and capitalism MONOPOLIZE and DEFINE what "care" and "neglect" means. From their standpoint, they PIMP care out of us working bodies under the conditions of REPRESSION, SPEED UP, and basically, a COMMODIFICATION OF ALL OF US, the elderly included!!

Sorry for the rant. Yesterday was a very hard day. Add to that, I had to fight to get protective gear for working with a resident who had C diff -- a contagious illness. The lady was pooping wetness out of her rear end uncontrollably, and also puking! But my nurse and charge nurse insisted that I did not need any protective gear -- no gown, no masks. I had to fight and argue with them for it. And it took about 2 hours before it got to me -- and in the meantime, the housekeeper was the one who gave us the supplies she had stored in her closet. I hate management. They think our lives are like dog lives. They dont care about our health, our well being. What does it mean that I even have to fight to get a cheap-ass gown and mask when dealing w someone w a contagious condition.

Is this what it means to win small struggles on the job?

I hadnt blogged about this yet, but we got them to give us standard break times and permission to GO ON BREAK! at designated times. This feels so small given the amount of daily stress and struggle we had to go through to get it.

I HATE THEM!!!

And add to that, I have realized this past year that my body reacts to stress. When I get stressed out, I have difficulty breathing. All is all, this made yesterday a very awful day.

I have been trying to talk w K and S, two janitors at the local university whom I have done a lot of organizing with. What reading Capital, or Marx at the Margins doesnt give me, is the emotional resilience I need, the calmness I need, to get through the work day. I am just, angry. Really really wiped out by anger and disgust. It feels like a tired refrain at this point, and it feels tiring too.

But K had some wise words for me yesterday. He said that I need to not feel angry, because it is such a taxing emotion, that if I let it get to me everyday at work, I WILL GIVE UP.

I feel that, and thats why I need their wise words to teach me how to survive. I feel like a fucking young ass militant. I spout theory and history, but fuck, I am struggling to get through my 9th month of being a CNA, my 3rd month of being a workplace militant.

Hella humbling.

a new year, a new practice and questions

2010 is approaching an end. It's time for those cliche reflections:) It's time to look back at formerly mundane or overly-dramatic moments and try to understand something deeper in them, being honest about my failings, trying to make more sense in those past daily encounters as if, as if they point me to something closer to truth. Not a distant objective truth, but the truth of my life as it emerges from my past, toward a path of freedom-embracing-contradictions.

I, like all of us, was not free when I was born, and in fact, was not born to be free. Year by year I want to inch away at those material, spiritual and egoistic burdens that try to keep me imprisoned, to have a shot at being free, to become lighter emotionally, to have less baggage, to emancipate myself from the daily sufferings of institutionalized class race and gender oppressions including the negative personality deformations they create in me. I know I cant do that alone and so the dramas of interpersonal relationships that arise as a by-product of this joint effort, is part of this freedom path. This is hard, but we do not choose our conditions.

There are some pieces in my mind that I hope to explore in this next year:

1) A piece I hope to collaborate with some comrades on, about women leadership* and good practice around that. There is so little written on the attempts and lessons of developing female leadership that feels real and honest.

Recognizing this is a work in progress and primarily through personal experiences, and drawing from our experiences of initially being politicized through non-profit domestic violence work and then breaking with that to join revolutionary left organizations yet feeling the dichotomy between the two to be lacking in good gender practice.

Some thoughts:
- Competition b/w women leaders is partly a product of patriarchy and the tokenization of women leadership in left organizations

Perhaps this applies also to male leadership, but what is so suffocating about the way the left talks about women leadership is that there is a prototype for THE woman leader. Whereas male leadership styles are acknowledged in different ways, women's leadership are often acknowledged only when they are upfront and out loud, not the "invisible" "natural" aspects of community building and caring work which has been typically gendered female.

- Be strong when we need you to, and stop being a bitch at other times
Also takes the form of: Be strong when we need you to fight the power, but don't be strong when you advocate for yourself.

No, I come in a whole piece and the strength I have gathered from surviving through DV and gendered violence is what makes me both the person that is acceptable AND non-acceptable at various times. It is hard to pick and choose when to be strong and when not to be when my survival has socialized me a certain way.

This is not to say I dont want to take responsibility for being a better person. It is hard to put down my ego and acknowledge my failures but it is something I have to push myself to do. That said though,I seek empathy from comrades to understand that times when I am fierce are not attempts at being authoritarian but rather are ways that I have learned to fight, to have my voice heard amid the cacophony. It has been my survival mechanism.

At other times, I hear the message to be strong and fierce when encountering our common enemies, but when I advocate for myself, it would be much more palatable if I was a meek woman, who cries, not shouts, who fights back and not just take it. There have been instances when I have stood up for myself and gotten backlash for being too aggressive, too strong, and my point of self-advocacy was lost. People would have much rather me go to them in tears and would have listened to my gendered concerns more readily then. That's messed up.

- To prevent the emergence of authoritarianism as a way of dealing with oppression, we all need to exercise self awareness. Oppressed people have a responsibility to do that.

I am not excusing authoritarianism at all. But I know from my own experience and others, that the strength and fierceness we exude sometimes becomes perceived as authoritarianism, though it is not what is intended. Oppressed people don't realize sometimes, the power we have once we become leaders. We continue to operate on the mode that we are used to --- to have to keep fighting to be heard. It takes a lot of self awareness and humility to understand the different ways we need to relate to people around us because of the power we have that is different from what we are used to.

Oppressed people, because we will be the ones on the frontline of struggle, because we are the ones who NEED to rise to leadership, have a particular responsibility to make sure that we KNOW our power, USE it but also be AWARE of how it can cut those around us and ourselves.

- Personal drama needs organizational space to process and decision-making. Code of conduct, not personalized interventions

- defining leadership as mentorship AND personal growth

This is to avoid the star leader/token leader approach to oppressed peoples' leadership. We need to train one another to build a community of leaders. Leadership is not a zero sum game, ie if someone is a leader it means you arent. We need many many a gazillion leaders. This is a conscious, intentional direction we need to work toward because the constant tokenization of oppressed peoples' leadership means we are often unknowingly and defacto being channeled into the star leader/token leader position. We have to fight this current.

That said!! We cannot let ourselves DEPRIORITIZE our own growth at the expense of others and repeat once again the invisible caring labor that naturalizes the skills we have been trained from young to do.

We need to get rid of the "invisible caring worker" vs. the token star leader dichotomy and develop a perspective of female leadership that doesnt react to patriarchal norms but sets as its goals, the expansion of women leaderships in all its varieties, as norm.

Is there a Marxist Humanist method of leadership development? Can we put the Marxist method into practice when we talk about women leadership, group culture and such?

2) Congealed labor power: emotions and alienation at work as sources of value

Off the top of my head, if value comes from congealed labor power and labor power comes from the myriad of contradictions, sufferings, tensions of life, then what is the value of these emotions? Are our emotions made material through the labor process?

If fundamental to Marxism is the overcoming of the exchange value, and recognizing that workers ownership of our labor power, production and its products, is a key way to overcome that, can we also apply this form of ownership to our emotions and see this ownership (or self awareness, self-overcoming) as part of the struggle against the domination of exchange value in our everyday lives?

My point is, how can we apply Theses on Feuerbach, ie overcoming the dichotomy between a dogmatic materialism and idealism, in our conception of "being a better person," which to me relates to the socialist values such as love and care, non-commodified redux.

Can emotions also have a materialist role to play in our struggle toward liberation?

3) My aging parents want me to go home, to a tiny peninsula and island in Southeast Asia. I dont want to. Yet, can I live down not being home with family for a shot at revolution?
This gives a different edge to the work I am doing here, away from home. I feel like I need to be clear on where my time and energies are going. At the same time I dont want to project my need for fulfillment/justification to be away from home, unto our political project which is something which cannot be forced out of my own will, but is the collective action of multitudes. My work is to facilitate it and embrace its ruptures, as a hardworking and patient revolutionary.

Or, I could take a year or two out of what I hope to be a long revolutionary life, to be with family.

4) A new understanding of
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

I am not a Christian by any means, but this resonates with me a lot these days. I have a lot of anger against the system but in my everyday living, this anger does not serve me well and it brings me more suffering. How can I make sense of this continual sense of anger, need for justice, need to understand the root cause of my suffering, while at the same time, knowing that everyday interactions, everyday life necessarily, doesnt make absolute sense. That there will be those who trespass us because, simply because they are dickheads, or that those who trespass us sometimes do that also as their own survival mechanisms that is outside of themselves.

As the immediate struggle at my job begins to die down and I enter into a period of consolidation as opposed to agitation with the militant coworkers I have organized with, I have more awareness of how the actions of some of my coworkers are really just a direct result of the fear and stress they feel from the job.

A. (he is not a militant guy by any means but has often followed along in our actions) and I argued a few days ago cos A. was fuckin stressed out and dumped it on me. I was pissed and told him he needed to chill out and defended myself though at the same time, I knew A. would not have been so much of a dickhead if we werent short staffed, if the bosses werent breathing down on him, if he didnt have 7 kids he had to feed back home in Ethiopia, if he wasnt working 60 hours a week barely making minimum wage while being away from all family.

In another scenario at work, a resident, who is fucking racist and annoying keeps trying to get me pissed off with him. I can't stand him, truly and it takes me a lot not to react. I need to let it go. I need to let his trespasses slide. I can't fight him because I will lose my job. He is also close to his deathbed and it doesnt really matter to me if he stops being a racist right before his death. He is not crucial in my own struggle for liberation. The smartest thing for me to do is to chill, and let it go, and not let this person's words get under my skin, not let it be yet another burden I carry into the limited free waking life I have available after I clock out.

In these scenarios, anger doesnt serve me. Anger traps me. I just need to let go. Understand, recognize, and then let go.

Sometimes dramas in life dont need to make sense. This is a different way of thinking for me because I, like many leftists and revolutionaries, is constantly inquiring, trying to understand, trying to investigate truth, the root cause etc etc.

But sometimes these dramas of everyday life DONT have a root cause. You just need to forgive, and forget, and let the damn trespass slide.

How to have this daily attitude, that emerges from the sense that my emotional well being is what is precious to me, that capitalism wants to INVADE my mental space and I need to resist that invasion so I can have a shot at having a good life. And the best way of having a shot at a good life under this system is to let these fucking unexplainable trespasses slide.

Yet, retaining a constant hatred and impatience to ABOLISH and DESTROY this awful awful system.

This is some form of double consciousness. I dont quite know how to handle it.

For now though, I try to turn the other cheek when the nasty racist elderly try to get under my skin. I turn the other cheek when snitchbitch at work pretends she doesnt hear me. It doesnt mean I stop sticking up for myself, but that I know that they too are products of this awful awful system and they too are not immediately directly responsible for my suffering. That they too, need liberation.

You can love your enemies and not forget that they need to be overthrown.

5) Recognizing and loving femininity as strength, not weakness

As I embrace more and more of my genderqueer identity, I start to ask myself more questions about why I have never fully resonated with femme, particularly Asian femme identity, even as I find it attractive.

Patriarchal society has designated femme as weak, conquerable, a target of heteropatriarchal sexuality; Asian femme as I experienced in my high school consisted of too many horny European boys looking for female bodies to conquer (literally with world map and stickers to indicate where they have "conquered"), seeking in Asian women a stereotypical demure femme appearance with a wild-in-bed, tight vagina fantasy. The European boys used to speculate about this, naming off Asian women they had slept with who satisfied these fantasies, and left me, utterly disgusted, and utterly repulsed of heterosexuality, and perhaps somewhat fearful of Asian femmeness because it was this target of this disgusting, colonial, patriarchal fantasy....

As I embrace more and more being boi, of genderqueer, loving the androgyny, loving the embracement of a masculinity that doesnt try too hard, I am asking myself if this slight leaning toward masculine of center, has anything to do with my fears of heteropatriarchy, of wanting NEVER to be the target of such personally repulsive fantasies or possible violence that comes along with it. Even against my best political instincts, sometimes I get shocked and even angry at times when I get hit on by hetero men. I dont want to criminalize sexuality, and peoples' fetishes and desires, and believe that we can have sexual desires that CAN be dissociated somewhat from the patriarchal and racist norms of our society. That said, a sex positive world requires an anti-patriarchal, anti-violence setting where our gender and sexual expressions and experimentations are safe and not perceived as invitations to unwanted violence.

I have hella love and respect for the strong femme women in my life, straight and queer, who are sleek and confident in the various expressions of femininity, being able to express the totality of who they are amid a world that only wants to sexualize them. Being femme is hard, is rough, in a world that objectifies everything about the female body, and that has effects on the relationships between women and their bodies.

* I am not quite sure how to describe my gendered experiences. I defacto identify my struggles around leadership as something that is gendered female. I dislike the gender neutral pronouns (zir, hir) so defacto I use female pronouns even when I dont exactly feel very physically connected to being a woman.

Survive, and Sacrifice

What has stood out most to me in the past few months, is the level of mental and emotional space my workplace experiences take up. Apart from physically altering my life -- the machinification of my body, the degrading of activities that should express love and care into senseless, objectifying, rushed, numbed acts, what is also tormenting for me, is how even after I clock out, my bosses faces dont disappear from my mind, our interactions replay, the emotions I feel swell up, and anger disgust fear layer up over each other.

At my best, I channel these emotions into organizing -- both in my mind and in conversation -- to speak not of the emotions as they are static feelings sitting, dull, boring, tiring -- but rather dynamic feelings that can move us and push us along, toward another place; emotions that can be transformed and not be tired refrains. I have raved and gushed about this many times before on this blog, of my love for my coworkers, and the cooperation, solidarity that we experience together everyday, and how I never felt in such a deep way that someone's got my back. These forms of solidarity contrast deeply with the negative emotions of anger and fear and stabilize a vision, for the direction our organizing needs to be headed: where these socialist expressions can be normalized, accountable and generalized. This outburst of creativity, affirming of our loving capacities, of envisioning how struggle can transform us into people who bring joy, not pain to each other and others around us -- this is living. this is loving living.

At my worst, I realize that this churning and rechurning of hate, anger, frustration at my workplace -- and add to the debates within Congress, police brutality, queer violence, the wars, etc -- means that everyday I only survive, not live, that I am functioning in reaction against the determinancy of the worst aspects of my material reality. Not dreaming, not organizing toward something fresh, beautiful, not loving...

And this is how my bosses hope to do, to wear and tear me down. Their daily repressions are aimed at exactly that: MAKING MY LIFE MISERABLE. That seems more satisfactory than immediate firing -- it assures that everyone on the job becomes demoralized and questioning of our resistance.

Capitalism, Patriarchy, Racism wants us to merely survive. They dont want us to live.

And ironically, we use our life capacities and time to engage in activities that make sure we only survive, not live. And these institutions make sure too that the rest of our free waking life is also channeled toward survival.

And then we internalize everything. The pain, stress, anger we feel from work, lacking a channel for transformation into new things, then settle to become a part of us.

There is so much history in this. There is so much history to how our emotions, as women of color, has been internalized, like a bucket that needs to be dumped out but yet we are forced to swallow its discontents, swallowing till we have a belly full of life and its discharges, which then become a part of us. Then they tell us we are angry, resentful and aggressive.

Some of my coworkers go through this back and forth where on the job, we share moments and enthusiasm to fight to preserve the solidarity we practice, yet when they go home, check the bills, see the kids, they do a "reality check" and come back saying we can't afford to do it. The job is more important.

Suck it up.
Bear with it.
Swallow life's pain, life's debris
Survive.

*

Sacrifice.

I hate this word. I want to tear it apart.
Separate the fibers that form the tenacity of this term, especially for women.

Our daily survival, is already a daily sacrifice of our lives.

the Detachable Pussy

I love wanda sykes, except when she gets into her islamophobia, anti-Muslim, American chauvinsim diatribes.
she needs a lesson in Malcom X pan-Africanism and Black Power.

that said, I love love love this skit: The Detachable Pussy.

watching it earlier this year reminded me of my early consciousness of my body.

my first inkling and knowledge of my sexual organs came not from joy, or knowledge of their pleasure, but from the what had been drummed into me from a young age, that they would be taken away from me, without my permission.

age 10, my first awareness of women's particular oppression as a group, came from my knowledge of comfort women and the history of japanese militarism and rape in southeast asia, rape as ethnic genocide, rape as torture. so much so i would rehearse this scenario in my mind, where i would be forced to choose between being raped and not snitching, or snitching to rescue my pussy, and my body, and betraying my people.

now, i realize it was a false choice to begin with. women never not get raped in war. women never have a choice under a patriarchal militaristic invasion.

but i rehearsed this choice in my head every time i watched these 9pm drama series, which ended promptly at 10pm, so i could be tucked nicely into bed, ready for school the next day. ready to belt out our national anthem at 7.20am sharp with my other country mates.

"i will accept rape, and survive rape before i will ever let the japanese military murder my people."

this was often what i told myself, echoing the messages these nationalist dramas conveyed.

but the nation betrayed me.

it never sought my liberation. in nationalist feminist drama, the woman always dies. the woman always becomes a martyr, leaving the good sturdy men to continue the legacy of the nation.

i dont wanna be a martyr. i want to be a survivor and a builder. there is no long-term process of learning, growth, challenges in sensationalized grand moments of martyrdom and sacrifice. i want to live to learn, to build relationships, to endure and pick myself up after the fall, not die grandly to be part of a forgotten memory. i want my liberation to be part of all of our liberations. i dont want to sacrifice. enough of that self-negating bullshit.

i dont want to be loyal for the sake of an image of the preservation of "my people," "my nation," especially not when they dont reciprocate the love and trust.

this post is a little abstract.a lot of stuff is happening in my life these days. i am trying to externalize, not internalize and let pain, anger and suffering monopolize my mental space. i want to be free as i struggle, i want to save room and make space for self-transformation as i struggle, not let past pains, betrayals and anger engulf me, capture me, suffocate me, so much so that i can't grasp and appreciate the beauty of the invading socialist society i feel i experience everyday at work.

i dont know how or why, but these were some of the feelings that came to me when i first watched wanda syke's skit.

if you feel comfortable sharing, i wanna know what came up for you too.

enjoy:

words from G

i am writing this down cos i wanna remember this for myself. as things get nasty at work with management clamping down on us trying to break down our collaboration and resistance, i have been getting into a lot of political conversations with folks about how to move forward -- all while we are changing diapers, cleaning and lifting. i like this combination of activities.

but G. shared a really deep insight with me today. i believe it struck him the same time he expressed it and there is something sad about this observation, even as it is sharp.

management has been loading us with a lot of work and practising discrimination -- giving those they favor (like the damn bz who volunteered to be a snitch AND shower aide to kiss management's ass *snitch bitch*) less tasks, easier tasks, while loading me and other coworkers with heavier, more burdensome shit. my coworkers know i am hella pissed and they tell me that i need to keep a smile on my face when i interact w the bosses cos right now the shitheads are looking for every reason to fire me. in light of this increased workload, we have created a very collaborative and solidarity culture amongst ourselves, recognizing that they are doing this because we fought back. we know we havent won, but the effort scared the shit out of management and this is their retaliation. i appreciate the words of caution from these coworkers whom i trust.

G said 2 things today which struck me.

First, was like compliment and it made me happy. he said that the charge nurse was probably pissed and confused cos they couldnt understand why me, an asian person, would be so close to the ethiopians at work. he pinpointed how management hires asians, africans, african-americans and white folks -- to make it hard for us to unite, so we would racialize our differences. but they are probably really confused now because the bosses wouldnt expect that asians and africans would come together, but here and now, my coworkers and my solidarity is an expression of that and they are pissed.

for me, the ethiopians in the workplace are the fighters. i am a fighter too. so, to the extent that we are fighting together, these colorlines can be broken down in a deep way.

As we were trying to get through the massive workload -- cramming in many patient transfers into the last 30 min of our workday, G suddenly stopped and observed the temporality of our solidarity and the challenges/material pressures that it faces. he said something to the effect of:

who knows, with all this work they are loading on us, we might also fight amongst ourselves.
who knows, if they put so much work on us for a long time and we get used to it, one day one of us might go to the boss to say the other person isnt helping out enough.

this was really deep for me. my response immediately was: G, if we had issues, i would kick you and punch you and fight it out w you before i went to the boss on you.

but this is a reflection of how much pressure our solidarity faces. the bosses shape our material reality at work. and unless we change that material reality together, consciousness that our strength comes in our unity, can be very vulnerable

Models of from-below healthcare: Lincoln Hospital Takeover

A slow work-in-progress of surveying/understanding various models of healthcare. Not enough time to go in depth now. Hope is that in a few months I can see this as part of a broader picture.

Thanks cg for forwarding some of these links. Anyone else, send me what you got!:)

For now, are some links on the Lincoln Hospital Takeover by the Young Lords in NYC back in the day. 

- The Lincoln Hospital Offensive in 1970 

- excerpt from The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices from the Diaspora (see chapter by Iris Morales) here

- The Young Lords Ten Point Program
-The Health Initiatives of the Young Lords Party: How a group of 1960s radicals made healthcare a revolutionary concern [16 pages]

This is the same organization that my favorite queer revolutionary, Sylvia Rivera, was a part of. She was a transwoman activist with strong class and race politics, forefronting transliberation struggles at a time when it was invisibilized by the anti-trans gay and lesbian, as well as 2nd wave feminist politics.

Some things that stand out from the 10-point program (posted below)

* Community control over health services

* Community control over hiring and firing at hospital

* Collaboration with medical students (see excerpt description)

* Employment in hospitals

* Free healthcare

* door-to-door health services: bringing healthcare to the people

* Education

* alliance b/w unions/employed people and unemployed through agreement to provision of services and community control

The Lincoln offensive was triggered by the death of a young Puerto Rican woman who had a botched abortion procedure in the hospital. This had great impact on the way the Young Lords took up reproductive rights with the leadership (through struggle!) of women leaders.

3 major ways to reclaim healthcare for community; seeing healthcare as working class issue:

Lead Offensive
TB Offensive
Lincoln Offensive

Organization that was set up: Health Revolutionary Union Movement (HRUM) was influenced by DRUMS in Detroit -- League of Revolutionary Black Workers; HRUM set up by hospital workers of color who saw their labor struggles and struggles in healthcare as part of broader working class struggles (amazing!!)

Conducted direct action to make city more responsive to healthcare needs of poor; community control of such services

Young Lords 
Ten-Point Health Program

1. We want total self-determination of all health services through an incorporated Community-Staff Governing Board for the Hospital. (Staff is anyone and everyone working at the hospital.) 

2. We want immediate replacement of all government administrators by community and staff appointed people whose practice has demonstrated their commitment to serve our poor community. 

3. We demand an immediate end to construction of the new emergency room until the Hospital Community-Staff Governing Board inspects and approves them or authorizes new plans. 

4. We want employment for our people. All jobs must be filled by community residents first, using on-the-job training and other educational opportunities as basis for service and promotion. 

5. We want free publicly supported health care for treatment and prevention. We want an end to all fees. 

6. We want total decentralization--block health officers responsible to the community-staff board should be instituted. 

7. We want "door-to-door" preventive health services emphasizing environment and sanitation control, nutrition, drug addiction, maternal and child care, and senior citizen services. 

8. We want education programs for all the people to expose health problems --sanitation, rats, poor housing, malnutrition, police brutality, pollution, and other forms of oppression. 

9. We want total control by the community-staff governing board of the budget allocations, medical policy along the above points, hiring, firing, and salaries of employees, construction and health code enforcement. 

10. Any community, union, or workers organization must support all the points of this program and work and fight for that or be shown as what they are--enemies of poor people.