Denise Oliver-Velez

Quotes

• “if there is no unity within an organization as long as there is a disparity between men and women in the struggle, there will not be that ability to strive for change in the world.”
• “Many marriages broke up because we were trying to be different, and we didn't know how to maintain marital ties, or even know how to define what marriage was. We looked at it as chains, cadenas. You're not free! You're this new, liberated woman, but your husband keeps telling you what to do.”
• “Divorce is now par for the course in most families. Women are still trying to cope with how to run an organization, work a job, go to school, raise a family, and almost become superwomen. Maybe generations to come won't have to deal with these issues because we dealt with them then, and we're dealing with them now.”
• “I've walked through the streets in East Harlem, and people have said, "Dónde está los Young Lords?" Where did they go? People miss the Young Lords. They had been an integral part of that community in the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Philadelphia, New Haven, Hartford, and New Jersey.”
• “But the racism in the island, nobody wanted to deal with because I was told "no hay racismo en Puerto Rico." But that was not true. Color, caste, class, were major contradictions, even within left-wing political groups.”
• “That last migration in 1947 spawned a generation who had one foot in the United States, and maybe they had dreams of Puerto Rico, but the reality of their existence was here.”

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Key dates

Born

1 August 1947

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Wikidata facts

Citizenship

United States

Place of birth

Brooklyn

Image

Netroots Nation IMG 1375 (27693513833).jpg

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