After the First Spanish United Methodist Church on 111th Street refused space for a free breakfast program, the Young Lords took the building on December 28, 1969, renamed it the People's Church, and ran eleven days of breakfast programs, clothing drives, health services, a liberation school, and poetry nights that drew thousands — the single most famous action in Puerto Rican New York's history.
On January 7, 1970, police entered and arrested 105 members, who went to court as the "East Harlem 105." The occupation multiplied the organization — branches opened in the Bronx, Lower East Side, Philadelphia, and beyond — and set the template of militant service: the church seizure was, as the Lords said, an armed takeover in which the only weapons were breakfast, medicine, and poems.