Rainbow Coalition — Wikipédia

The Rainbow Coalition (Coalition of the rainbow) was a coordination of different American political groups, launched in April 1969 in Chicago in the United States by Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers (Black Organization), William “Preacherman” Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization (White Organization) and Jose Cha Cha jimenez (in) , founder of the Young Lords (Hispanic organization) ^{[ first ]} . It is then joined by radical left -wing local organizations such as the Lincoln Park Poor People’s Coalition ^{[ 2 ]} , then at the national level by the Students for a Democratic Society, the Chicano group of Brown berets (in) , the American organization American Indian Movement and the Red Guard Party (in) , a Maoist party founded by Sino-American. Later, she will be joined by other local organizations such as Rising Up Angry (in) and Mothers and Others. Its creation was made public by the Journal des Black Panthers June 7, 1969 .

Active mainly in Chicago, it aimed to prevent conflicts between young people from the neighborhoods and to form a common front against Mayor Richard Daley and the Democratic Party apparatus in the city, accused of recovering gang wars for political purposes by obtaining More police funds and dramatizing the crime problem rather than the underlying social issues ^{[ Ref. desired]} .

The coalition has community organizations trained in different communities. The Young Patriot Organization (YPO), based in Hillbilly Harlem, a district of Uptown Chicago inhabited by whites from the South, has in particular many very nationalist members who brandish controversial symbols of southern pride, such as the flag of Confederate States. Nevertheless, the white patriots and their families undergo discrimination in Chicago, like blacks and Latinos, because they are poor and from the south ^{[ 3 ]} . Bobby Lee, Black Panther and one of the coalition training craftsmen, explains that it was marked by the “slums” and the great poverty of the districts of Uptown Chicago where the Patriots came, an important recruitment pool for supremacists whites ^{[ first ]} . The YPO and the Chicago Black Panthers unite after the participation of some of their members in meetings from the other group, deciding to work on common issues. Thus, one of the leaders of the patriots says “we are concerned about our people, the oppressed whites, those who have not yet entered the working class … We organize the Lumpen-Proletariat, the black and white negroes, that is us ” ^{[ 4 ] , [ 3 ]} While Bobby Lee describes the “rainbow coalition” as “code name for class struggle” ^{[ first ]} .

The collaboration leads to the fact that the Patriots and the Lords take up social activities created by the Panthers for poor and black neighborhoods in particular, such as popular clinics managed by volunteer medical students, or breakfasts and guard of free children, a common action of the coalition ^{[ 5 ]} .

The organization was the first in a series of coalitions led by African-American organizations to use the concept of “rainbow coalition” ^{[ 6 ]} , in particular the Rainbow/push coalition (in) From the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who resumed the term before launching in 1971 in Chicago also his own organization, less radical ^{[ 5 ]} . According to some researchers, including Peniel Joseph (in) , this concept of rainbow coalition was a prerequisite for the idea of ​​a multicultural coalition on which Barack Obama, politician of Chicago and later president of the United States, built his political career ^{[ 7 ]} .

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