Remembering the Rainbow: How Jesse Jackson’s 1980s campaigns shaped today’s Democratic Party

CHICAGO—On the eve of the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC), where history will be made as Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the first Black woman to be the party’s official presidential nominee, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and The Nation magazine teamed up to celebrate iconic civil rights leader, Rev. Jesse Jackson.

DNC delegates, labor leaders, civil rights veterans, activists from the Poor People’s Campaign, and hundreds of members of the public convened Sunday evening at the historic Operation PUSH headquarters near Chicago’s Hyde Park for the event. It was held as part of the Rainbow/PUSH National Convention, which opened last Thursday.

With little money and no support from any major Democratic Party figures, he ran for president in 1984 and 1988. In his second campaign, he won seven million votes, 13 states, and over 1,200 delegates in the Democratic primary.

In looking at Jackson’s boundary-breaking presidential campaigns, speakers in Chicago put into perspective how issues Jackson raised back then—such as labor rights, anti-imperialism, voter empowerment, and true democracy—are still just as relevant today as then. They remain necessary ingredients for the agenda of a true coalition of powerful working-class forces.

Several on stage, many of whom are veterans of those earlier runs for the White House, emphasized as well that the Democratic Party would be a lot less democratic than it is today if not for Jackson and the movements he led four decades ago. Without the rule changes the Rainbow Coalition effort forced on the Democratic National Committee, progressive candidates might still be locked out.

The working-class fight

There was no mincing of words Sunday evening: The fight for democracy rests on protecting and expanding the rights of the working class and oppressed people here in the United States and beyond. This was reflected in several labor leaders’ remarks during the program.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and executive vice president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, highlighted Jackson as a brilliant strategist who used his leverage and influence to bring attention to issues often ignored by others.

“He changed the rules to make it possible for people with names like Barack and Kamala to come after him,” Gates noted. “Leadership is legacy,” she asserted.

Connecting past struggles to the fight for the future, Gates highlighted progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the battle for better education and resources for working-class parents and their children.

Pointing out the damning statistic that 80% of schools in Chicago don’t have libraries or librarians, the AFT president explained that Jackson’s activism reached all corners of advocacy work—including schools, picket lines, mayors’ and city councilors’ offices, rallies and protests, and union halls.

Rep. Pramila Jaypal, D-Wash., chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, noted that Jackson’s founding of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition wasn’t just symbolic, it told the whole nation that “everybody is somebody…. It lifted the working class up. Civil Rights, LGBTQ, farmers, and more are all part of this movement.”

She said that the coalition Jackson led in the 1980s has been reborn again and again over the years since. “We had a fragile coalition in 2008,” during the Obama campaign, she said, “and it’s still being rebuilt this year.”

Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and an early labor supporter of the ’80s Rainbow runs praised Jackson’s commitment to the trade union movement and addressed its current state.

“We have to reinvigorate a movement for working-class rights,” Cohen stated, pointing to the recent battles waged by Starbucks workers and the Stand-Up Strike of the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Despite these victories won through grassroots labor activism, though, Cohen raised the alarm that private sector union membership in the U.S. is just 6%—down from the high 33% in the mid-20th century. He said workers’ fight for a union doesn’t stop when they win a certification vote, the struggle goes on once they get to the bargaining table to win a first contract—if employers will even negotiate.

“What will the next government do about it [rights of working people] and the living wage? When we carry on that fight, we carry on the legacy of Rev. Jesse Jackson,” Cohen concluded.

April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), tackled the term “middle class,” often used by politicians when discussing legislation and progress. “You don’t ‘build the middle class’ if you don’t end poverty,” Verrett asserted, connecting the strategy pushed by today’s Poor People’s Campaign to Jackson’s advocacy for the rights of working people during the Reagan era.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., noted that the ideology of the Rainbow Coalition—of unity between various sectors of the working class and all races—was not being discussed by political leaders on a national level before Jackson. “No one else in the Democratic Party was talking about a multiracial, multiethnic democracy,” he said.

Remembering the image of Jackson standing in the middle of a field with white farmers in Iowa when he ran for president, Sanders said, “He made the point that the corporate forces destroying white farmers were the same ones exploiting Black and brown workers.”

But it wasn’t just unity for unity’s sake, Sanders emphasized. “This movement wasn’t just about bringing us together, but about bringing us together around a progressive agenda.”

Recalling his own advocacy for universal health care in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Sanders said he wasn’t the first to put that struggle on the national agenda. “I pushed health care for all, but Jesse Jackson was talking about that 30 years before me.”

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and senior Jackson advisor, noted how multiracial unity and solidarity was a central feature of the campaigns.

Referring to himself, Zogby said, “The son of an illegal immigrant nominated the granson of a slave for president; it could only happen in America.”

Rainbow’s rules

Another lasting impact of the Jackson campaigns was the revolution they sparked within the Democratic Party. The modern multiracial coalition that operates in the Democratic Party, shed of its Dixiecrat past, is the legacy of the fights he led in the ’80s.

“Today’s Democratic Party is largely Jesse Jackson’s Democratic Party,” Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd, saying that the Reverend’s impact is still felt in both Democratic strategy and its election rules.

Rather than relying on white Southerners, political “moderates,” and corporate donors, Jackson fought for the Rainbow Coalition strategy—building a party of workers, African Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, Arab and Asian Americans, Native Americans, students, environmentalists, and peace activists. He showed that it was a real path toward beating the far right and winning progress.

The right-wing Dems who controlled the party at the time relied on their “superdelegates” and winner-take-all primary voting systems to control the agenda of the party and prevent progressive insurgencies. Jackson and the Rainbow movement shattered their power.

The delegates his campaign elected forced through changes that took effect in 1992 which banned the winner-reward systems that had given bonus delegates to candidates who won a state. Instead, all delegates had to be allocated proportionally among candidates who got at least 15% support.

“When he ran in ’88, he changed the game,” Sharpton said. “The Rainbow Coalition got rid of winner-take-all and won proportional representation.”

John Nichols, the Nation magazine commentator and moderator of the event, said many don’t remember how important this was:

“Without Jesse Jackson’s rule changes, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee in 2008, not Barack Obama. Without Jesse’s rule changes, there would have been no Bernie Sanders campaign like we saw in 2016 and 2020. Without Jesse’s rule changes, Kamala Harris might not have been the vice-presidential candidate in 2020, and without those rules, she might not be the nominee right now.”

Cohen said that legacy continues. He predicted that DNC delegates this week will approve a resolution that forever bans unelected superdelegates from voting on the presidential nomination—securing the power of elected delegates and grassroots movements in the primaries.

Keeping Hope Alive

Looking toward the future, many of the speakers noted that the work of building a stronger coalition around a progressive agenda wouldn’t stop in November.

The spirit of the event seemed to be a realization of the hope and resilience in Jackson’s famous 1988 Democratic National Convention speech over 30 years ago in which he said:

“You must not surrender. You may or may not get there, but just know that you’re qualified and you hold on and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. On tomorrow night and beyond, keep hope alive!”

Speaker after speaker repeatedly evoked Jackson’s line—“Keep hope alive”—Sunday. As the crowd joined in the chant made famous by the Rainbow Coalition campaigns of the 80s, those gathered seemed to beam with optimism, sure that the future could still be bright.