In July 1969, radical Puerto Rican students and street youth in New York — Felipe Luciano, Juan González, Pablo Guzmán, Denise Oliver, Iris Morales and others — won a charter from Chicago and launched the Young Lords in East Harlem. Their first campaign answered the neighborhood's plainest grievance: the city barely collected El Barrio's garbage. When brooms and bags were refused them, the Lords swept the trash into the middle of Third Avenue and set it alight, repeating the "Garbage Offensive" through the summer until the city surrendered regular pickup.
The offensive established the organization's method — seize a concrete need, dramatize it, force the state's hand — and its 13-Point Program fused Puerto Rican independence with socialism and community self-determination. Police infiltration began just as early: the NYPD's BOSS unit had undercover officers inside from the founding.