The Young Lords Speak: Building Revolution on the Streets of Chicago by Jacqueline Lazú, José “Cha Cha” Jiménez (Paperback)

Nonfiction - History - Hispanic and Latino - United States - 20th Century - Social Science - Activism & Social Justice - Political Science - History and Theory

Published: 3/17/2026

Rooted in a Chicago-based street gang, the Young Lords grew into one of the most dynamic revolutionary community organizations of the late 1960s and early ’70s. 

In their field jackets and signature purple berets, using militant tactics like building takeovers and mass education, the Young Lords mobilized their community for liberation and against gentrification, poverty, racism, and police brutality. Forging a Rainbow Coalition with Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords expanded from their Chicago headquarters into the Puerto Rican and Latino barrios of New York City and elsewhere, demanding an end to the US occupation of Puerto Rico and self-determination for oppressed communities everywhere.

With a foreword by founder José "Cha Cha" Jiménez, written just before his passing, The Young Lords Speak tells the story of Chicago's Young Lords in their own words through articles, essays, interviews, and speeches.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Jacqueline Lazú is a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at DePaul University and the author of numerous scholarly articles on the Young Lords in Chicago.

José "Cha Cha" Jiménez (1948-2025) was one of the founders and leaders of the Young Lords in Chicago. As an infant, he moved with his family from Puerto Rico to a migrant work camp near Boston before settling in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. State repression, along with the police murders of Black Panther leaders, forced Cha Cha underground. He eventually returned to Chicago to continue his political and organizing work.

Review Quotes:

"[A] fascinating new work from Haymarket Books.... The story sheds light on a largely forgotten chapter in Chicago's long history of social activism and the ongoing debates about gentrification.... The Young Lords Speak vividly documents the mark the group left in the city's long history of political activism." --New City Lit

"The Young Lords Speak delivers an in-depth exploration of the Young Lords Organization from its origins as a street gang in Chicago to its transformation into a powerful revolutionary force. Professor Lazu expertly curates the first collection of primary sources, filling a critical gap in the historical narrative of the Young Lords. The anthology illuminates the ideals and actions that ignited a radical social justice movement within the Puerto Rican diaspora in the late 1960s and continues to inspire the ongoing struggle for Puerto Rican liberation." --Iris Morales, Activist, Educator, former Young Lord in New York, and author of Revisiting Herstories: The Young Lords Party

"This dazzling collection--part archive, part memoir and ethnography, part the everyday poetry of the street--hits like a hammer and then settles like an abiding life-lesson. Its authenticity--meaning its contradictions, disagreements, ambiguities, paradoxes, and uncertainties--illuminates the movement muddle in full. There's no attempt here to present the fragmented, dynamic, and contested reality of revolutionary struggle as linear or coherent, but rather as it truly is: achingly human, deeply aspirational, trembling, and real. I left my encounter with The Young Lords Speak energized, refreshed, and with my radical imagination unleashed and my courage renewed." --Bill Ayers, author of Demand the Impossible! and When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer

"Through memoir, speeches, oral histories, primary sources, and incisive framing, this reader ushers in a long-awaited compendium of the history of the Chicago Young Lords Organization. Attending to how the history of the Young Lords has often been told through the works of their counterparts and comrades, Lazu carefully lays out an archive of political thought and action that remain ever salient." --Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, Professor and Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO)