"if there is no unity within an organization as long as there is a disparity between men and women in the struggle, there will not be that ability to strive for change in the world."
Denise Oliver-Velez is an American professor, contributing editor, activist and community organizer. Specifically, she is a contributing editor for the blog Daily Kos, and is a former adjunct professor of anthropology and women's studies at SUNY New Paltz.
"Ive walked through the streets in East Harlem, and people have said, "Dónde está los Young Lords?" Where did they go? People miss the Young Lords. They had been an integral part of that community in the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Philadelphia, New Haven, Hartford, and New Jersey."
"But the racism in the island, nobody wanted to deal with because I was told "no hay racismo en Puerto Rico." But that was not true. Color, caste, class, were major contradictions, even within left-wing political groups."
"We are fighting against an enemy, the Yankee, and the Puerto Rican lombrices. The one major thing that holds us back in our fight to liberate Puerto Rico and all oppressed people is a lack of unity."
"Having slaves for ancestors is not something to be ashamed of; one should be proud to know that ones ancestors were strong enough to live through the horrors of slavery, strong because of the rich and beautiful history of Africa. We are taught that Africans were savages, and this makes us non-consciously ashamed of our past."
"Many marriages broke up because we were trying to be different, and we didnt know how to maintain marital ties, or even know how to define what marriage was. We looked at it as chains, cadenas. Youre not free! Youre this new, liberated woman, but your husband keeps telling you what to do."
"That last migration in 1947 spawned a generation who had one foot in the United States, and maybe they had dreams of Puerto Rico, but the reality of their existence was here."