How Ford, Rockefeller Supported "Street Orgs" in the 1970s

Friday, June 3, 2016

How Ford, Rockefeller Supported "Street Orgs" in the 1970s

The Crips, Black P. Stone Rangers, Sons of Watts, Young Lords Party, Brown Berets and the Vice Lords, to name a few, formed to challenge severe macrostructural constraints that compelled them to live and to act in ways that sometimes negatively impacted their communities.

Members of these groups were overwhelmingly working class and poor, and saw no effective channel through which grievances, like poverty and racist police brutality, were being met. So, they sought extralegal and extrajudicial means of solving their problems.

In 1970, the Vice Lords were actually given $275,000 by the Rockefeller Foundation for their organizing work, and the Ford Foundation granted them $130,000, part of which was used for the Vice Lords' community-based small business development, including the African Lion, an Afro-centric boutique.

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