Real Great Society

The Real Great Society (RGS) was a Puerto Rican youth collective created by activists Angelo
Gonzalez and Carlos ‘Chino’ García on New York City's Lower East Side in 1964. Its name was a reference to then-President Lyndon B Johnson’s Great Society. Its goal was to help residents of the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of New York City attain bottom-up self-sufficiency. In June 1967, RGS members created the University of the Streets, which one member described as an organization that would have "young people from the neighborhood develop a curriculum which is relevant to them, their lives, their experience." The school, housed in a building on the corner of Seventh Street and Avenue A, lasted for over 30 years.