Displacement of entire poor and minority communities away fr

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Young Lords sent a message using the contact form at http://occupychi.org/contact.

We are an organization that transformed itself from a local street gang into a Latino and poor human rights movement in Lincoln Park,Chicago in 1968 as a result of the demonstrations that awakened us and that were taking place in the park adjacent to our Lincoln Park neighborhood, during the Democratic Convention of that year.In the years following that grand spectacle,about 65,000 People were either tricked out of their apartments and homes.These were bought for just "beads" or small home owners were pressured out to sell by building inspectors sent by Mayor Richard Daley. It was his vision "to create an inner city suburb" and bring "White Flight" back into prime real estate - near downtown and near lakefront areas.His goal was to increase the tax base while sustaining his political machine.We are anti-racist.It is the democractic machine that has "cleansed the lakefront beaches and buildings and the near downtown of all minorities" that is racist.Just recently within the last couple of years the Cabrini Green housing projects where primarily low income Blacks and some Latinos lived by the tens of thousands were demolished as eye sores.However, they were city owned and "encouraged to deteriorate as part of Chicago's 50 Year (housing) Master Plan" and no low income housing units were provided for these evacuated families.These city projects could have been rehabilitated or reconstructed.Today, this same area is condominiums for the rich.And the banks,the patronage machine and Daley sponsored - neighborhood associations, and city hall are to blame.We are very grateful for what you are doing to expose bank foreclosures and other injustices. Our fight is also against corporate inequality and for participatory democracy. In fact that is really the main issue: they took our neighborhoods without permitting the 99% of our neighbors voices to be heard in terms of their choices for their neighborhoods. And in fact in 1969 in Chicago, the Young Lords also occupied McCormick Seminary (now De Paul University) with 350 neighborhood residents.We also occupied Grant Hospital,People's Park at Halsted and Armitage and People's Church at Dayton and Armitage.Please don't let the machine coopt your movement like the "Machine" has corrupted and coopted our Latino leaders. Since Mayor Daley took office in 1955, the Latino Community of Chicago has been completely displaced from the neighborhoods of: La Clark,La Madison (in downtown), Uptown,Lakeview,Pilsen,Wicker Park,Humboldt Park and Lincoln Park; tens of thousands. Today it is the poor who still live in "concentrated poverty" within the periphery of the city or in the poorer sections of suburbs. And this has become a world phenomena.Welcome to Chicago.We stand with you. www.nationalyounglords.com