“I was in the Young Lords, and one of the points in the original program was ‘Revolutionary Machismo’. Machismo is reactionary, so you can’t have revolutionary machismo. We women weren’t having it. So we made a very different kind of statement. ‘We want equality for women. Down with machismo and male chauvinism.’”

Denise Oliver-Velez, born on this day in 1947, is a former member of both the Young Lords and Black Panthers, as well as an American professor, activist, and community organizer. Oliver-Velez is an adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz.

Oliver-Velez was a member of both the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party (BPP), and fought to make the Young Lords a less chauvinistic and more feminist organization. In 1970 Oliver-Velez was appointed as Minister of Economic Development, becoming the highest ranking woman in the Young Lords.

In addition to her activism with the Young Lords, Oliver-Velez was also an AIDS movement activist, publishing ethnographic research as part of HIV/AIDS intervention projects. She has also worked in public broadcasting and community media for many years, becoming a program director and co-founder of WPFW-FM in Washington, D.C., Pacifica Radio's first minority-controlled station.

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  • Hohsia [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I swear to god, the more time I spend in this corporate work environment, the more I am convinced that it is more like a club signaling status than an actual job itself

    Y'all should see the bullshit work done that pays upwards of 6 figures. It's wild to me

    • PutinsLeftNipple [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's very interesting. It seems like the vast majority of private sector office jobs fall into two categories: low supervision work doing 1.5 hours of real work stretched out into 8 hours, or highly supervised work with a high workload with impossible performance metrics where employee turnover is really high due to burnout.

    • Sleve_McDichael [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I’ve had bullshit jobs for years and reading David Graeber’s book about the topic was like a balm for my rugburned soul

      I’m always waiting for one of my coworkers to snap and be like “none of us do any actual work!!! why are we being so hard on each other!”

      • john_browns_beard [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Thankfully I now only have like one coworker in my department with the self-importance brainworms (she's also the oldest person here and it's probably that boomer-related), and a few randos from other departments who are the same. At my previous workplace, it was like 50% of regular staff and 98% of people in supervisor or higher positions.

        I think covid made a lot of people realize that their jobs or even entire industries are really not that important in the grand scheme of things. My industry could disappear tomorrow and everyone would get along just fine. Life is far too short to take your bullshit job so seriously.