The Black Panther Party organized a self-run, community-based institution to mitigate the devastating impacts of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” where healthcare services previously provided to Black families became non-existent. The Malcom-X Center for Black Survival created Black-controlled institutions to improve living conditions and create new opportunities for Black folks to be reliant on their own communities rather than falling victim to the negligence of the white government.
In 1970, Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx was collectively occupied by local heroin addicts, revolutionary health organizations, the Young Lords, and the Black Panther Party. In her 2018 film The People’s Detox, Jenna Bliss uses documentary storytelling to explore the history of a revolutionary drug clinic in New York City in the 1970s that profoundly transformed contemporary notions of health and care.
Click link to video:
https://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de/en/program/schaufenster/2021/jenna-bliss
Account of and reasons behind the Young Lords barricading and occupation of the South Bronx Lincoln Hospital in Nov 1970 to set up a community drug program. The occupation aimed to: 1) Implement a drug program that would
serve the community effectively and be run by the community, 2) Provide an educational program that would teach the true nature of our oppression and the connection between capitalism, dope and genocide.
We must begin to ask questions about all the things that affect the lives of Puerto
Rican and Black people. Who can better determine what’s best for ourselves than us?
