The League of Women Voters of Chicago is proud to announce that the Rainbow PUSH Coalition has been selected as the recipient of our 2025 Making Democracy Work Award.

Rainbow PUSH’s roots in Chicago stretch back nearly 60 years, to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Operation Breadbasket, where Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. was appointed to lead the Chicago office in 1966. Out of that effort grew Operation PUSH (People United to Save/Serve Humanity), founded in 1971 to improve the economic conditions of Black communities in Chicago and across the country. Through direct-action campaigns, public education, and persistent advocacy, Operation PUSH pressured corporations to hire Black and other minority workers, promote them into leadership, and do business with Black-owned suppliers and contractors. 

In 1996, Operation PUSH merged with the National Rainbow Coalition to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, headquartered on Chicago’s South Side. Today, its mission remains clear and urgent: to protect, defend, and gain civil rights by leveling the economic and educational playing fields and promoting peace and justice. From youth-focused programs like PUSH Excel, which helps keep inner-city students in school and on a path to employment, to long-running campaigns for fair housing, livable wages, and voting access, Rainbow PUSH has consistently turned democratic ideals into practical, on-the-ground support for families and communities.

Crucially, Rainbow PUSH has done this work regardless of who is in office — in City Hall, in Springfield, or in Washington DC. Through economic downturns, shifting political winds, and recurring threats to civil rights and social programs, Rainbow PUSH has remained focused on the people most affected by those changes: low-income families, workers of color, young people, and others whose voices are too often ignored. That kind of sustained, independent, values-driven leadership is exactly what our Making Democracy Work Award is meant to honor.

“Rainbow PUSH has spent decades making sure that democracy is not an abstraction, but something people can feel in their everyday lives: in the jobs they can access, the schools their children attend, and the ballot they are able to cast,” said Jane Ruby, president of the League of Women Voters of Chicago. “Their work exemplifies what it means to make democracy work for all Chicagoans.”

We look forward to celebrating this year’s honoree with our members, partners and the broader Chicago community, and to lifting up the long, ongoing work of Rainbow PUSH and so many others who are building a more just and inclusive democracy.

We invite LWV Chicago members and friends to learn more about the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and to join us in congratulating them on this well-deserved recognition.