Film Screening: The First Rainbow Coalition

In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latino Young Lords Organization and the southern whites of the Young Patriots organization. Banding together in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing, they called themselves the Rainbow Coalition. But by 1973, the Coalition had collapsed under the weight of relentless harassment by local and federal law enforcement. Although short-lived, it had an outsized impact: breaking down barriers between communities, the movement created a permanent shift in Chicago politics and an organizing model for future activists and politicians across the nation. Told through rare archival footage and interviews with former Coalition members, filmmaker Ray Santisteban’s The First Rainbow Coalition took more than a decade to complete and depicts the story of a powerful movement and the enduring legacy it left behind.

Director/producer Ray Santisteban will join moderator Ben Olguín (English, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of The First Rainbow Coalition.