by Keith Preston

This is how it needs to be. One thing this article doesn’t mention is that the Rainbow Coalition was also oriented toward building relationships with Chicago gangs like the Blackstone Rangers. Both the Nixon-Hoover FBI and the Chicago police thought this idea was so dangerous and threatening that they literally assassinated the project’s leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

“In his short time as a Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton wanted to advance the group’s goals by forming a “Rainbow Coalition” of working class and poor people of all races…

Former members of the Chicago Panthers and YPO tell different versions of the same story of how the groups connected: Each attended the other’s organizing meetings and decided to work together on their common issues. Over time, the Black Panthers learned to tolerate Confederate flags as intransigent signs for rebellion. Their only stipulation was that the white Young Patriots denounce racism…

In the end, the Illinois Panthers brought together various elements of the black community, Confederate flag-waving southern white migrants (Young Patriots), Puerto Ricans (Young Lords), poor white ethnic groups (Rising Up Angry, JOIN Community Union, and the Intercommunal Survival Committee), students and the women’s movement. The disparate groups under the coalition’s umbrella pooled resources and shared strategies for providing community services and aid that the government and private sector would not. Initiatives included health clinics, feeding homeless and hungry people, and legal advice for those dealing with unethical landlords and police brutality.”

Interestingly, it only seems to be tendencies like Attack the System and National-Anarchist Movement that have any interest in going this route today.

Recently, this meme was posted on an N-A page:

And these were some of the comments in response by leading N-As:

“This chart would be an overview of interaction between various N-AM communities, which serves as an umbrella for, sometimes mutually exclusive, ways of life.”

“I agree, but I doubt whether some of these variations would be quite as tolerant as we are. Agreeing to disagree is one thing, but true Anarchism should never venture into the realms of coercion. In other words, the squares to avoid should never become squares upon which to impose your own views.”

“The chart is also very atheistic/materialistic in that it leaves out a vast multitude of Anarchist variations centred on spirituality. Think of all the Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Occult groups, for example. And there is always room for thematic Anarchists, too, who may base their communities on sexual (beyond homosexuality), musical, dietary, historical, fictional or cinematic themes. The list is endless and the N-AM is the only movement on the planet that caters for such diversity.”

These ideas are important as well because race and ethnicity are hardly the only forms of “identity.” A modern Rainbow Coalition might just as likely include the Gamer Panthers, the Goth Lords, the Young Incels Organization, the Vegan Berets, the Medieval Knights, the Red Shirts Legion (in honor of the “red shirts” perpetually getting bumped on on Star Trek: TOS), the Queer Guards, the Otherkin Federation, the Transracials Alliance, the Heavy Metal Tribal Confederation or whatever other kinds of identifies and affiliations people choose for themselves [. . .]

via Chicago 1969: When Black Panthers aligned with Confederate-flag-wielding, working-class whites