The life and work of Jack O’Dell who died last week at 96 at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia were marked by an unwavering radical vision fused with an immovable partisanship for working people the world over.
A look back on how multiracial Chicago-style coalition building has influenced organizing to this day. The trajectory of fearless grassroots, youth-driven, intersectional organizing set in motion by the 1969 Rainbow Coalition still resonates today.
With a black mayor at the helm once again, it remains to be seen whether a Harold Washington-style African-American and Latino coalition can emerge to fight for socioeconomic and political parity with whites in Chicago.
Why the white worker theme is harmful. It’s a mistake to racialize an economy that harms the entire working class. What has happened to more whites now is that the market has moved past them as well. It took almost 40 years to get to this point, in the near term no recipe of policy fixes will sufficiently remedy the effects. Democrats need to focus on reversing those long-term trends, but also must have something to offer workers now.
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