01/31/2025
Last Thursday, Southside Together and the social-justice movement in Chicago lost a giant: Ronald “Kowboy” Jackson. Even if you didn’t meet him, if you have been on a march in the last decade and a half, you have seen him or heard his voice through one of his several bullhorns. He deeply understood the connections between the struggles of oppressed communities; you were just as likely to have seen him at an immigrants-rights march, as one for affordable housing, or one against police brutality. Kowboy felt the struggle of everyday Chicagoans in his bones and fought for all of us.
After years as a bus driver and EMT, he suffered a serious health condition that found him in a Woodlawn nursing home, where he faced abuse and neglect. Kowboy fought his way back to recovery from a serious health condition, and along the way organized his fellow residents to demand that they be treated with dignity.
In 2011, when Rahm Emanuel announced the closing of the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic, Southside Together (then STOP) began to fan out into the community to organize community opposition to the closing. When someone knocked on the doors of residents at the nursing home, everyone said the same thing: you gotta talk to Kowboy.
Kowboy understood the fight immediately. He was an active part of a health program at the Woodlawn Clinic and a mental-health services consumer. He jumped right into the fight, developing into a leader of the Mental Health Movement.
Kowboy was part of the 2012 Woodlawn clinic occupation, where he got arrested along with 22 others. The morning he was released from jail, he went straight back to the clinic to lead a press conference, and then helped lead the protest occupation of the lot across from the clinic for the nearly three months it went on. Though he faced mobility issues, he never asked for a ride or help. Just the opposite, he was the one offering to help you. A few times during the occupation, he would disappear for an hour or so, and then in the distant alley you would see the silhouette of a tall figure with a cowboy hat dragging half a tree behind him. It was for firewood to keep the bonfires and the protest going. Kowboy was always willing to do what needed to be done to keep the fight going.
In 2016, when Rahm Emanuel closed the Roseland Mental Health Clinic, Kowboy was quick to put his body on the line, offering to chain himself to the clinic in protest. He knew that we didn’t have the power to stop the closure, but with a dramatic action like getting arrested and chained to the clinic, we did have the power to keep the issue alive, and to keep building for the day when we would have the power to stop it.
For twelve years, Kowboy stuck with the fight, attending countless regular meetings, strategy meetings, protests, forums. Always offering to help, give someone a ride, or just show up. He helped build the Mental Health Movement, and he was a member of the Collaborative for Community Wellness, the coalition for the Treatment Not Trauma campaign. That campaign built the power that led to Mayor Brandon Johnson making the historic commitment to re-open the mental-health clinics. Kowboy was also a leader in the Alliance for Community Wellness fight for justice for patients in long-term care facilities.
It’s fitting, and a testament to Kowboy’s steadfast resolve, that two weeks before he passed, he got to see the Roseland Clinic – the very clinic he chained himself to – finally re-opened.
Kowboy always had a soft spot for the youth. He showed up for them without fail, and it was their involvement and leadership that gave him hope.
In the darkest times, when we were losing, and even when he knew he had only months left to live, Kowboy found joy in the fight for a better world. He was always upbeat, laser-focused on what needed to be done, and always ready to offer a hand so that we could do it together.
Rest in Power Kowboy! We miss you, we love you.
