The Garbage Offensive – "Seven demands"

The Garbage Offensive (1969)

In the summer of 1969, members of the Young Lords Party (YLP) organized their first major protest against systemic racism. Years of redlining policy, white flight, and the growth of the suburbs, resulted in New York City investing significantly less in essential services which disproportionately affected working class communities of color. Garbage pick up had been inconsistent for years in spite of frequent community requests that the city provide this basic public health service. The YLP had previously tried to appeal to city officials regarding the dire lack of sanitation services in East Harlem. A massive nine-day strike by the city’s sanitation workers the year before in 1968, had also failed to convince then Mayor John Lindsay of the need for fair pay and safe working conditions for city workers. On Sunday, August 17, about 30 members of the YLP and other volunteers began to line the streets along 3rd Avenue in El Barrio with huge trash bags. Working with residents of East Harlem, where some members of the YLP hailed from, the direct action was designed to block traffic and cause as much disruption as possible. And it worked.

East Harlem, Manhattan (1969). The Young Lords, fed up w neglect by sanitation of neighborhoods uptown, assisted w trash pickup in East Harlem. The Dept of Sanitation didn't cooperate w their cleanup efforts, so they piled garbage at Park & 110th in protest. Photos by Bev Grant. pic.twitter.com/phA9k7ofsM
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The protest received considerable media attention. The New York Times reported:

As a result of the “Garbage Offensive” in El Barrio, the sanitation department began regular pick ups in the neighborhood, membership to YLP increased, and the organization established their operations out of a storefront on 110th Street and Madison Avenue. They then began working on organizing in multiple areas as part of their social justice campaign against racism and poverty.

The Garbage Offensive, 1969. – Hiram Maristany SE corner of 111th Street and 3rd Avenue. Image taken from artist Miguel Luciano’s Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio. This public art project featured billboards of Hiram Maristany’s photographs, a lifelong resident of East Harlem who was an original member of the Young Lords in New York, and also their official photographer.

See more photographs taken in 1969 from the Garbage Offensive at Getty Images. For more on Mapping Resistance, Miguel Luciano, and Hiram Maristany. Read more about the 1969 Garbage Offensive in Daniel José Older’s article for the New York Times.