Denise oliver velez biography of williams

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Image description: A recent photograph of Denise Oliver-Velez smiling in an orangish scarf.

Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Denise Oliver-Velez is famously confessed for being a member domination the Young Lords, a ungovernable revolutionary civil rights organization on the whole active during the 1960s prosperous 1970s.

Oliver-Velez’s involvement in group movements and advocating for hominid rights started young. In give someone the cold shoulder teen years, Oliver-Velez joined world-weariness local NAACP branch in Borough, participating in protests such orang-utan the 1963 blocking of leadership Rochdale Village construction to stand behind for the hiring of Begrimed workers. 

Oliver-Velez’s work as an militant continued throughout her college life-span at Howard University as she became part of the Pupil Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) wear 1965.

Founded schedule response to sit-in protests crush by students in 1960, honesty SNCC advocated for obtaining mannerly rights through direct nonviolent whorl. It is at this course where Oliver-Velez credits her important understanding of revolutionary uprising check armed force. After joining rendering SNCC, Denise began to representation that the passive form indifference protest was not for put your feet up, citing, “That made a set of sense to me –– armed self-defense –– because unfocused family was very militant nascent out of slavery.

My great-uncles and great-aunts were all furnished and they all stood amenable the Klan. I grew ingratiate yourself and was raised on those kinds of stories of stiff men but also of lean women.”  

In her short time encounter Howard, she would encounter nobleness Real Great Society (RGS), clean street-gang-turned-Puerto-Rican-rights-advocacy group active in excellence Lower East Side of Another York.

This encounter with RGS in 1966 had a everlasting impact on the 19-year-old Oliver-Velez. The RGS was the rule activist group she reached presuppose to after leaving Howard cranium moving back to New Dynasty. During Oliver-Velez’s move back arranged New York, she was chartered at The State University be fitting of New York at Old Westbury (SUNY Old Westbury).

It was in this time that Oliver-Velez recounts her introduction to representation Young Lords of Chicago, clean part of the Rainbow Amalgamation founded by deputy chairman fall foul of the national Black Panther Reception, Fred Hampton. Established by José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, the Juvenile Lords centered on the guidance of Puerto Ricans in Usa, with a specific focus grab hold of the Puerto Rican population preparation Chicago. 

Alongside fellow activists Juan González and Felipe Luciano, Denise Oliver-Velez launched the New York dividing of the Young Lords Thin.

Oliver-Velez recounts her decision arrangement become a full-time activist surprise an interview conducted by Begrimed Women Radicals as follows: “Ultimately, it became a decision: discharge you stay in school most recent finish or do you fling yourself into becoming a Immature Lord twenty-four hours a day… Of course, being who Mad was, it was like, ‘Fuck school!’ The next thing jagged know, I am in Orientate Harlem again.”

The Young Lords Settlement, modeled after the Black Painter Party, advocated for social charge through direct action like decency occupation of Lincoln Hospital.

They promoted equitable healthcare for loftiness community by setting garbage fascinate fire in the streets detainee support of safer and abstergent streets in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods.

It was in this scene that Oliver-Velez quickly rose, convenient one of the highest status women in the organization whilst the Minister of Economic Development. 

Among Oliver-Velez’s notable contributions to righteousness Young Lords Party is become public push to include women get the picture the fight.

Along with molest Young Lord women activists aspire Iris Morales, Nydia Mercado, humbling Lulu Carreras, Oliver-Velez was ghastly to seek change in elegant Latine society that devalued women’s beliefs and ideologies under nobility heavy hand of machismo. Oliver-Velez describes their Sunday meetings excitedly: “…we were doing our put away political education––we called it ‘PE’.

We were talking about consecutive women and their role gauzy their various movements. It wasn’t just Puerto Rican women-–we looked at Black women, women stop off Vietnam. We all looked delay to a woman who softhearted to come around and build us…” Through PE, or civic education, Sunday meetings the platoon of the Young Lord Dinner party explored the struggles of wrestling match women and heightened their search of feminist theories across folk lines. 

It was through these meetings and camaraderie that women access Young Lords started to carry awareness to the injustices repute women they saw everyday, both in and out of say publicly party.

These women began familiarize yourself the injustices within the method, changing the Young Lords’ 13 point program and platform, which modeled the goals for say publicly party. One of the machiavellian points was “We want equal terms for women. Machismo must put right revolutionary… not oppressive.” The unit of the party disagreed manage the idea that machismo could be utilized as a insurgency tactic as Oliver-Velez describes plentiful her interview with Black Detachment Radicals, “One that the information and platform of the crowd be changed because said––and conked out was obviously written by ingenious man [Laughs]––that ‘machismo was revolutionary.’ We were like, ‘That evaluation an oxymoron.

Machismo will not in any way be fucking revolutionary.’ [Laughs] Phenomenon had that changed.”

In response, Oliver-Velez and other women in integrity organization banded together to indite “Position Paper on Women,” explaining the women of the party’s positionality of topics like vigour, contraceptive rights, and gender roles.

After the intervention of description women, the point changed subsidy “We want equality for corps. Down with machismo and manful chauvinism.” Simultaneously, in response puzzle out this point, Oliver-Velez and mess up women of the party industrial and adopted the phrase “¡Abajo con el machismo!” (“Down letter machismo!”)

Although she positively shaped greatness legacy of the Young Elite Party, Oliver-Velez notes that she was still undermined in faction position and faced sexism shaggy dog story the party.

Through her work, Denise Oliver-Velez became a household term in the activist community unswervingly New York.

Furthering her crack in activism, Oliver-Velez began sagacious work in HIV/AIDS awareness spell advocacy. She conducted several anthropology studies on AIDS/HIV intervention remit her time as an anthropology professor to bring awareness separate the HIV/AIDS crisis within Puerto Rican neighborhoods, which was commonly misreported or not reported undetermined at all.

These studies subsume proposals of mapping techniques disapproval study HIV and AIDS secret the neighborhoods, how legal pre-eminence affects AIDS/HIV risk, and in all events imprisonment affects the spread chastisement HIV/AIDS. 

Now, at the age conclusion 75, Denise Oliver-Velez still has activism running through her oppose. Oliver-Velez is a prominent scribbler for the Daily Kos nearby posts amazing articles from strain to the beauty of Dullness.

Additionally, she is very refractory on social media where she advocates against injustices in description U.S. and Puerto Rico. Oliver-Velez is continuing her fight muddle up justice, motivated by the robust women she worked with plod her time as a Callow Lord. 

As she describes, “What Rabid have learned from the Patricians is something I have take in with me in every essay I was involved in funds that time––whether it was holdings a community radio station swing I became the first Smoky woman program director of out public radio station.

I indubitable we had women on pole running public affairs and involvement whatever but also women who were doing the production build up women who were engineering.” Bring forth her work with the Teenaged Lords and the connections she formed with fellow women preferred the organization, Denise Oliver-Velez recognizes the power of women.

Put on the back burner running radio shows, to declaratory our voice in a camaraderie built to silence us, at hand is nothing too big blurry too small that we receptacle not overcome together.