Venceremos: Principles of Unity, published by Venceremos Publications, 1971
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Bruce Franklin, a Venceremos member, from his book From the Movement Toward Revolution (1971):
“Venceremos began as a Chicano organization in Redwood City, California, in early 1969, when it set up a revolutionary two-year college mainly for Chicano students. In the summer of 1970, it began to recruit white members as it led in the formation of the People’s Medical Center and an associated child care center.
“In late 1970, the Revolutionary Union, an organization made up of dozens of revolutionary collectives, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, split on the question of armed struggle, particularly as it related to the national liberation movements in the U.S. Over half of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union … merged into Venceremos. Since these collectives have been heavily involved in youth organizing within white proletarian communities, in factory organizing, and in anti-imperialist struggles on the campuses, the new combined organization was multi-national, mainly proletarian in leadership and membership, extremely diversified in its activities and base, and quite militant.
“With the merger, Venceremos assumed recognized leadership of the FREE YOU newspaper, which then became bi-lingual; the San Jose working-class newspaper, THE MAVERICK; Venceremos College; the People’s Medical Center; a number of young workers’ caucuses and community organizations; and the Young Partisans, a revolutionary youth organization with chapters on all the local community college campuses and in many high schools and junior high schools. Venceremos was committed to showing that a diversified multi-national revolutionary organization could work.”
Like the Panthers and Young Lords, Venceremos was targeted by U.S. police agencies through COINTELPRO and destroyed by the mid-1970s.
