Remembering Amisha Patel, a Lifelong Organizer for Justice

Amisha was actively involved in the Collaborative’s statewide campaign for drivers’ licenses for immigrants, and helped move forward a Chicago ordinance to require that big box stores pay a living wage and family health benefits. The Big Box Living Wage campaign of 2006 resulted in approval by the City Council — followed by the only veto issued by Mayor Richard M. Daley. However, the unpopularity of that veto moved Daley to support a statewide increase in the minimum wage. In 2007, that bill passed and was signed into law, providing raises for many more workers across the state.

Leading collective struggles for real change

In 2007, the Collaborative hired Amisha to lead the organization. She made big changes, starting with a training for the Board members on race and a new strategy to include the grassroots members of the coalition’s organizations in popular education trainings, allowing them to build relationships across organizational lines. She also brought her delight in using art and making events fun to the organization, bringing in more participants and making larger impacts possible.

Prior attempts at labor and community coalitions frequently devolved into a ​“rent a rally” approach that offered community support for union campaigns, but failed to get at the root causes of the issues that working families were confronting daily. Amisha took a different approach: She wanted nothing less than a transformation of community and labor coalitional organizing in the city and state, grounded in the shared need for power to change the rules. 

Amisha grew campaigns in which the members wanted to be a part of the fight, and organizations were not at the table because a funder was offering resources, but because they saw the possibilities of collective action for real change at the roots. She wanted the Collaborative to confront the racism, sexism, and classism that manifested itself in cutbacks by the overwhelming white and male Chicago ruling class and their enablers — cutbacks like the closing of schools and parks in Black and Brown neighborhoods; the destruction of public housing and lack of affordable housing; the withdrawal of mental health clinics and other city services in those same neighborhoods; the lack of well-paying union jobs for themselves and their children; the privatization of the education and governmental services that remain; the overpolicing of Black and Brown neighborhoods and skyrocketing incarceration of Black and Brown people; the criminalization and harassment of immigrants; and the increased taxation of working families by the government while corporations and wealthy pay little or no taxes, but get all the tax breaks and bailouts.

Amisha recognized that it wasn’t enough to demand more funding for members’ priorities; the city and state’s tax policies had to shift to make those changes possible. So, she initiated the campaigns for fair revenue at the city and state that are a hallmark of the Collaborative to this day. Amisha understood that with the economic crisis of 2008, caused by predatory lending, there would be pressure to cut local government budgets, and she led us in urging cuts to the priorities of the wealthy. When the Chicago Board of Trade requested millions of taxpayer TIF funds to renovate their bathrooms, Amisha created a spray-painted ​“Golden Toilet” to expose the injustice. The Board of Trade ended up returning those TIF subsidies!

In the 2010s, the privatization push swept public school districts across the country, shifting funds toward charter schools and vouchers. While some community organizations and labor unions in other cities were lured by the temporary fascination with this approach, Amisha’s organization played a key role in holding the line in Chicago and fighting back against those initiatives. The Collaborative played an active role in building the coalition that launched the great Chicago Teachers Union strike of 2012, and fueled campaigns to stop school closings and limit charters and vouchers. Amisha led the Collaborative in training organizers and members to understand the real reason for the privatization proposals: the huge transfer of public education resources to billionaires and corporations, whether through proposals led by Arne Duncan, Rahm Emmanuel or Lori Lightfoot.

Forging a new independent politics in Chicago and beyond

Amisha was a leader in building independent politics in Chicago and Illinois, as one of the four founders of the United Working Families (UWF) independent political organization in 2014 (along with Karen Lewis, CTU; Keith Kelleher, SEIU HCII; and Katelyn Johnson of Action Now). Amisha was always at the forefront of building independent political power for working families. She was committed to challenging Chicago’s rich and powerful who had run Chicago for too long under Mayors Daley, Emanuel, and Lightfoot. UWF put forward an alternate vision and slate for progressive politics in the 2015, 2019, and 2023 city council elections, and emerged victorious with their backing of Delia Ramirez for Congress and then Brandon Johnson for Chicago mayor. Because of her leadership in the mayoral campaign, Amisha was named a senior adviser for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2023 transition team.

In a 2022 article in the Forge, an organizing journal, Amisha described how the Collaborative took on similar breakthrough campaigns against the Lincoln Yards development that threatened to take over $2 billion in TIF (Tax Increment Financing) from schools and the public good to build a new luxury, high-rise neighborhood on vacant industrial land; how they organized with groups fighting environmental racism in city neighborhoods; and helped to lead the fight to bring a Green New Deal by taxing the rich and defunding the police.

Of the many lessons learned during these campaigns, Amisha discussed her fight with cancer and identified a key lesson that ​“sustainability for ourselves is non-negotiable.” In an organizing culture built on sacrifice, in which personal health and care frequently takes a back seat, she pushes back and declares: ​“Organizers are parents, caregivers, community builders, and members of our own beloved movement community. Treating ourselves and each other with care is how we build the world we want and deserve. Figuring out how to do this while moving the work forward is not easy, but is indeed possible.”

Amisha Patel lived and organized to make Chicago a model for the rest of the country, showing how we can build powerful movements that are based in deep relationship, trust, creativity, and heart. Let’s let her example lead us in struggling toward a more liberatory future for all. 

If you are moved to take action to carry on Amisha’s legacy, consider donating to the Amisha Patel Arts & Organizing Fellowship, a new program that will help support artists whose creative work fuels grassroots movements.