A Critical View of Contemporary Environmentalism: Pushing for Grassroots Struggle and Hope during an Era of Escalating Catastrophe

This thesis critiques mainstream environmentalism and pushes for Grassroots Struggle and Hope during an Era of Escalating Catastrophe.

This thesis examines how the organizations ASPIRA and the Young Lords Party fostered a cultural identity within Puerto Ricans in New York or “Nuyoricans.” ASPIRA, founded in 1961 by Antonia Pantoja, aimed to create leaders who would later give back to their communities. They established clubs for Puerto Rican high school students in schools and at ASPIRA centers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx. The Young Lords Party, founded in 1969, was a grassroots organization that fought against social injustices through their initiatives called “offensives.” ASPIRA and the Young Lords Party contributed greatly towards the development of a Nuyorican identity and instilled a sense of pride within their members and their surrounding community through utilizing various methods and strategies to teach Puerto Rican history and culture. Although the two organizations are connected, they differed significantly. ASPIRA operated with an institutional approach while the Young Lords used revolutionary and aggressive grassroots methods. This thesis studies the influence on the origins and structures of ASPIRA and the Young Lords Party, the institutional and grassroots strategies and tactics used to teach Puerto Rican history and culture and foster a Nuyorican cultural identity, and the major outcomes and impact of ASPIRA and the Young Lords on Puerto Ricans in New York.

This dissertation focuses on lay Catholic ministry to Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia when Frank Rizzo was mayor. Gramsci’s concept of “organic intellectuals” is employed to explain the praxis of the Philadelphia Young Lords, an organization formed in a Puerto Rican neighborhood during the confrontational politics of the 1970s. The dissertation advances previous scholarship on the Young Lords by offering reasons to consider these youthful leaders as lay Catholic advocates of social justice in Philadelphia and describes the role of faith convictions as they pursued social justice in the style of the biblical prophetic burden. Through interviews and textual analysis, the dissertation traces the evolution of lay volunteerism before the Second Vatican Council as foundational to the Young Lords’ application of liberation theology. The Young Lords in Philadelphia also followed the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party’s definition of the people’s multiracial identity and the Nationalists’ defense of Catholic principles. Their experiences are inserted into the general history of Philadelphia, a city which Quakers had founded as a cluster of urban villages, producing a distinctive pattern of ethnic enclaves of Philadelphia’s row house neighborhoods. The city’s Catholicism had structured parish life upon the civic culture, and initially extended this model to its Puerto Rican ministry. However, racial polarization at a time of municipal crisis under Rizzo invited new pastoral strategies towards civil right and the Vietnam War. Despite the Young Lords’ reliance on Marxist principles and the confrontational politics of the Black Panthers, local Catholic clergy supported many of their efforts. The dissertation explores the symbolic capital gained by the Young Lords which made them into a vanguard organization in the city’s fields of political and pastoral interaction. / Religion

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: A, page: 1918. Adviser: John L. Lucaites. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 14, 2008)."