Real Great Society

The Real Great Society (RGS) was a Puerto Rican youth collective created by activists Angelo Gonzalez and Carlos ‘Chino’ García on New York City's Lower East Side in 1964.^[1] Its name was a reference to then-President Lyndon B Johnson’s Great Society. Its goal was to help residents of the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of New York City attain bottom-up self-sufficiency.^[2] In June 1967, RGS members created the University of the Streets, which one member described as an organization that would have "young people from the neighborhood develop a curriculum which is relevant to them, their lives, their experience."^[3] The school, housed in a building on the corner of Seventh Street and Avenue A, lasted for over 30 years.^[4] Chino Garcia and several other members of the Real Great Society went on to form CHARAS/El Bohio, considered a successor organization to RGS in 1979.^[5]

References

1. Schrader, Timo (2018). "Education as a Human Right: The Real Great Society and a Pedagogy of Activism". Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 12 (1): 123–157 – via jstor.
2. Bagchee, Nandini (2018). Counter Institution: Activist Estates of the Lower East Side. Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823279265.
3. Kihss, Peter (February 27, 1968). "Ex-Gang Leaders Obtain U.S. Funds". New York Times. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
4. Resistance : a radical political and social history of the Lower East Side. Clayton Patterson, Joe Flood, Alan Moore (Seven stories press 1st ed.). New York: Seven Stories Press. 2007. pp. 23–25. ISBN 978-1-58322-745-9. OCLC 76794738.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
5. Resistance : a radical political and social history of the Lower East Side. Clayton Patterson, Joe Flood, Alan Moore (Seven stories press 1st ed.). New York: Seven Stories Press. 2007. pp. 21–36. ISBN 978-1-58322-745-9. OCLC 76794738.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Further reading

• Aponte‐Parés, Luis (December 1998). "Lessons from El Barrio—the East Harlem Real Great Society/Urban Planning Studio: A Puerto Rican Chapter in the Fight for Urban Self‐Determination". New Political Science. 20 (4): 399–420. doi:10.1080/07393149808429838. ISSN 0739-3148.
• Harrington, Michael (July 25, 1971). "American Kids, American Poverty, American Unity, American Advice". The New York Times.
• Poston, Richard W (1971). The Gang and the Establishment. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-013401-3. OCLC 152786.
• "Sublimation Is the Name of a Shop and the Reason Behind It". The New York Times. November 17, 1970.
• Taylor, Angela (January 23, 1970). "Where the Real Beautiful Meet the Real Great". The New York Times.
• Vaughan, Roger (September 15, 1967). "The Real Great Society". Life. pp. 76–91.