Young Patriots Organization

Founded in 1968, the Young Patriots Organization (YPO) recruited mostly white, working-class youth from Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. At a time when many on the left had dismissed white workers as automatically reactionary, the YPO consciously allied with the Black Panther Party and emulated its 10-Point Program and many of its survival efforts, such as free-breakfast programs, community health clinics, and upholding the need for armed self-defense. The group maintained the position, controversial in the movement at the time, that poor white people were in fact oppressed. The pages of its newspaper regularly appealed to whites to abandon racism, unite with the political vanguards of other oppressed communities, and fight the real enemy.

The YPO used the Confederate Stars and Bars flag as an emblem but attempted to redefine its meaning away from racism to rebellion, anti-racism, and an implied autonomy for poor whites. “The South will rise again” read one of its early manifestos, adding the caveat “But this time in solidarity with our oppressed brothers and sisters.” One memorable photograph, taken at the United Front Against Fascism conference in 1970, showed Patriot and Panther leadership laughing underneath Panther and Confederate flags hung side by side. The YPO regularly devoted pages of its newsletter to call for release of political prisoners of color.

The YPO's emergence was greatly influenced by the presence of the Jobs or Income Now Community Union (JOIN), a project of Students for a Democratic Society's (SDS) End Racism and Poverty program. This effort placed middle-class college students in poor ghettos, and the project in Chicago was a strategic move to build progressive consciousness among white workers to support the civil rights and black liberation movements. JOIN accomplished much during its short life, including defeating a major urban redevelopment project in Uptown.

Accounts of class tensions between outside SDS organizers and their chosen base vary greatly; most point to the fact by 1968 young white Chicagoans felt the need to form an organization that reflected their own leadership. Two organizations emerged with similar focus organizing poor whites from the left—the YPP and Rising Up Angry (RUA). Two key SDS organizers remained in Chicago. Another group, Welfare Recipients Demand Action, joined the welfare-rights organizing. The YPP and RUA had survival programs, worked with the Black Panther Party, fought for the establishment of community health clinics, supported dissident troops, and opposed the Vietnam-era draft. RUA lasted into the mid-1970s. The Patriots also rallied many around anti–police brutality work. Both groups embraced socialism. They departed from traditional Leninist thought in that they embraced multiple political vanguards instead of a single, centralized party.

Later, YPP split into two factions, the later renaming itself the Patriot Party. The Patriot Party felt the need to move beyond survival programs and expand nationwide as part of a rainbow coalition (no relationship to [Page 1505]the one later headed by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr.) with the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and other militant groups. The Patriot Party established headquarters in Manhattan and branches in Eugene, Oregon, New Haven, Connecticut, and other cities. The Patriot Party's chairman was Bill “Preacherman” Fesperman and had a five-member Central Committee, which included Darlene Fesperman and Arthur Turco. In Oregon, the chapter was headed by Chuck Armsbury, himself from a working-class background, and a professor at the University of Oregon, Eugene. One of the lasting contributions of the Eugene Patriots was the establishment of community health clinics.

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