It is a typically hot and humid July night in Brooklyn, New York. People from all over the tn-state area are packed into the main hall of an old concrete church, which now houses a community center. The small electric fans stationed in each corner are of little help as 300-plus sweaty bodies patiently await the first screening of ¡Palante, Siempre Palante!, a film-in-progress about the Young Lords, an unsung group of Puerto Rican revolutionaries who shook up America during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Anticipation fills the air as the host, Luis Garden Acosta, begins his introduction of the filmmaker: "A woman who was one of the first Puerto Rican women to be admitted to the City College in New York before open admissions, to be accepted by the Root Tilden Fellowships at NYU Law School and, above all things, to say that sexism, male chauvinism and machismo have no place in our culture."

With such a grand introduction one might expect an image of Angela Davis, a bigger than life icon of the ‘60s to step forward, but we forget that everyday-looking people make history too. Iris Morales, a 5-foot-2-inch woman in tinted-glasses and a simple summer dress, walks out and pulls the microphone—set well above her face—from its stand.

"If we don’t document our history, no one else is going to, and it’s not the responsibility of anyone else to do so," says Morales, putting her film into context. "We need to have our collective history so that we could move palante (forward), learning from our past mistakes and successes. If we don’t, it’s like it never happened."

Morales, who once served as the Young Lords’s Minister of Education, wanted to make sure the group was not forgotten. Where there was a Black Panther Party, there was a Young Lords Party; where there was a Malcolm X, there was a Pedro Albizu Campos; and where there was an Angela Davis, there was an Iris Morales, and her interpretation of the Young Lords movement (started on July 26, 1969) helps to shed light on all aspects of its history. "rhis is a story of a group of young people who did not have mentors. We made mistakes and we learned from them, explains Morales. "I want to tell a story that does not leave anything out—the happy times and the sad times."

¡Palante, Siempre Palantel puts the Young Lords in their proper historical context. The film begins with the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in 1898, the event which set off the Spanish-American War. It then tells the story of how Puerto Ricans became citizens under the Jones Act in 1917, how they were exploited during the ‘50s and ‘60s under Operation Bootstrap, a modernization project, and how the many other mainland immigrants were treated as outsiders. "We are a multiracial people in an America that only understands race as black and white," says former Young Lord Richie Perez (now vice president of the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights) in the film’s opening. "We’re neither black or white."

The high point of ¡Palante Siempre Palante! is the historic takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem). The church, which catered to upper-class Latinos from outside the community, refused to give space to the Young Lords to run food and cultural programs for the neighborhood. Fed up with the clergy’s disinterest, the Young Lords decided to seize the building on December 7, 1969. Fourteen days later, 105 participants were arrested.

Recalling the event, Gloria Santiago Rodriguez says in the film, "I felt like I was home. My father had taken me there and the cause that all these people stood for moved me so [much] that after that visit I became involved with the Young Lords." The church was renamed La Iglesia Del Pueblo (People’s Church) and for two weeks they provided more services to the community than had been offered in 14 years: clothing drives, breakfast programs, and an educational program called Liberation School that taught young people Latino history.

"When I first found out that this church was taken over by these Puerto Ricans," says Garden Acosta, another Young Lord, "I said, What?! A church was taken over and is doing good things for the people? I have to find out about this group myself.’ " Today Garden Acosta is founder and CEO of the film screening’s host, El Puente—a unique leadership center that integrates Brooklyn’s largest Latino arts program, a youth and family health center and America’s only human rights public high school. Standing before the audience the night of the event, Garden Acosta declares, "As you can see, we’ve finally taken over the church! We have it forever!" Though his comment wasn’t made in the same church, it was clearly in the same spirit

So far, ¡Palante, Siempre Palante! only covers the early history of the Young Lords Party. The film is currently on a collegiate tour to raise money for its completion. Morales says the final version will deal with the FBI’s COINTELPRO, the agency that monitored, infiltrated and helped destabilize nationalist groups like the Young Lords and the Black Panthers.

Morales also plans to focus on the Young Lords legacy, one that has and will continue to inspire Latinos and others to spread the message that opens her film: "We believe that a man’s and a woman’s most precious possession is life. We should therefore live our lives so that we are not consumed by the anguish of long years of purposeless existence, or the shame of trial and cowardly past. so that we may say when we die: ‘We give our energies to the most noble cause in the world—the struggle for the liberation of the human race!’"

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For more information on Palante, Siempre Palante: The Young Lords visit:
www.palante.org