The First Rainbow Coalition Film Review.

Nearly at the end of his life, the revolutionary Robert E. Lee lied in a hospital bed to reminisce on the past when he and the First Rainbow Coalition dreamed of fixing a broken system. However, this man is not the infamous Confederate General, this was a Black Man who was a leader in the Black Panther Party in Chicago Illinois during the late 1960s and ’70s. Beside Lee was a Puerto Rican man by the name of Jose Jiminez and a self-described “hill billy” by the name of Bobby McGinnis.

This unlikely group of friends actually had more in common than can be observed on a skin-deep level. The one trait that all these men shared, the very thing that had brought them all to this hospital room, their desire to see a change in their communities. These three lifelong friends had been brought together due to the formation of the historic First Rainbow Coalition.

The First Rainbow Coalition was revolutionary in the fact that it faced adversity from a world that had deemed them all as outcasts, less than, and unworthy of the simple necessities in life. Jiminez lamented on what made the Rainbow Coalition successful.

“...it was symbolic because we proved that it could work, multiethnic people together fighting for a common cause,” he states at the start of the film.

The First Rainbow Coalition began in 1969 led by Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago. The symbolic nature of the Rainbow Coalition exhibited many different marginalized or disenfranchised groups being championed by their own ethnic “gangs.” The Puerto Rican community in Chicago was championed by a group called the Young Lords. The Black community was spearheaded by the Black Panther Party, and the White “hillbillies” were being led by a group called the Young Patriots. Many other ethnic groups contributed to this movement such as the Asian community and the Native American community to name a few.

While corrupt politics and police brutality terrorized all of these groups they found solidarity in their unity. The First Rainbow Coalition adopted many of the creeds and programs of the Black Panther party such as the free breakfast program and the free clinic which catered to the poor and ethnic communities in Chicago and other cities in the nation. However despite their community service, politicians and police alike saw these groups as threats to the establishment and status quo. They worked to economically, environmentally, and systematically oppress and disenfranchise these groups from serving their communities when the government seemed opposed to doing so. Omar Lopez, another member of the Rainbow Coalition and Young Lords expressed that,

“It was a complete challenge to the structure, we weren’t saying let us in, we didn’t want in, so they didn’t have a handle on us.”

Often times it is thought that working within the system is the best way to change it, while this has been true in many cases, The First Rainbow Coalition took a different approach in order to see immediate results for their communities. The bravery of the men and women who participated and enacted change from within this organization speak to the greater spirit of what American values are. Working hard for success and challenging the status quo for the sake of bettering communities. The activists of today’s time owe much of their identities to those who founded and served in this historic organization.