04/29/2026
Along with many thousands of others across the city and country, we are both celebrating the life and mourning the passing of our dear sister, United Working Families co-founder Amisha Patel.
Amisha’s tenacity and vision could only be matched by her kindness and care. Her deep love of our people by her fierce hatred of injustice. She died last Friday as she lived; surrounded by love, laughter and song, and with a specific set of instructions for all of us who have been a part of the powerful movement that we have built together: we have come too far to turn back now.
Amisha’s brilliance was in her curiosity, in her constant desire to learn. Fifteen years ago she saw what so many had failed to notice, as obvious as it seems now. Corporations and the wealthy had unlimited resources to bend politics to their will. Working people, those whose livelihoods and existence in this city were and are under attack from wealthy elites, needed to build something for us. A “political home” for Chicago’s multi-racial working class. An electoral expression of our city’s vibrant and powerful justice movements.
So in 2011 she founded Grassroots Illinois Action, working across neighborhoods to build independent political power, including a Humboldt Park chapter that counted as one of its key leaders a young organizer named Delia Ramirez. And in 2014, understanding the scale of both political challenge and necessity, Amisha and GIA were one of the founding organizations of UWF. Ten years later, she was helping to run the transition team for UWF member, former Chicago middle school teacher, and current Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Our victories have been enormous, and they are incomplete. There are days the challenges in front of us can seem overwhelming, our opposition too powerful. But as Amisha reminds us, “What we need are possibilities, not certainty. … we also cannot be afraid to move, even in times of turbulence and unpredictability. In fact, moving in such moments is even more critical.” Our hearts are heavy today, but our lives have more joy, more hope and more possibility because of Amisha.
