José "Cha Cha" Jiménez, a human rights activist who co-founded the Rainbow Coalition and served as chairman of the Young Lords organization, died Friday. He was 76.Mr. Jiménez spent much of the late '60s and early '70s fighting gentrification in Lincoln Park, allying with other organizations in Chicago to uplift minority and low-income communities, and rallying for an independent Puerto Rico.Bobby Rush, former U.S. representative, co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party and longtime friend of Jiménez, called him a “premier fighter” with a quiet demeanor who could move mountains — always for the oppressed — by simply speaking, even from a young age.“Cha Cha never stopped working for ordinary people,” Rush told the Sun-Times Saturday afternoon. “He made an absolutely unalterable commitment to protect the Puerto Rican community. He refused to let them be gentrified. ... He made our society and our world better. Cha Cha was a beacon for us all.”Mr. Jiménez's family came to Chicago during a large wave of Puerto Rican migration to the mainland around the time of Operation Bootstrap — a series of federal economic reforms launched in the mid-1940s to address economic crisis on the island — and eventually settled in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.At 21, Mr. Jiménez helped found the Young Lords gang in 1959 and ascended to chairman in 1964, turning the gang into an organization for mutual aid and protection. He met Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton in jail in 1968, and they discussed the divisions between Black and Puerto Rican Chicagoans and the similar work their two groups had been doing. He also spent time reading about Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Puerto Rican Independence Party member Pedro Albízu Campos while in solitary confinement. “I figured this is what we need in the Puerto Rican community, militant like the Black Panther Party to address the police brutality and housing issues we were facing,” Jiménez told WBEZ in 2018. “We brought the movement to include other people in the community. We built a movement from a gang.”Donning purple berets, the group organized several marches against police brutality in response to the killing of the Young Lords' 20-year-old minister of defense, Manuel Ramos, who was unarmed when he was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer on May 4, 1969. The officer claimed self-defense against a gun that was never found. The group's minister of education, Ralph Rivera, was shot in the head but survived. José Cha Cha Jiménez speaks during a protest by The Young Lords, and others, of the fatal shooting of Manuel Ramos by a police officer in May 1969.Chicago Sun-Times collection, Chicago History Museum The Young Lords, and others, protest the fatal shooting of Manuel Ramos by a police officer in May 1969.Chicago Sun-Times collection, Chicago History Museum Many of the Young Lords' programs reflected similar successful Black Panther Party events: free meals, free medical and dental clinics and a free child care center, all in the basement of Armitage Avenue Methodist Church at 834 W. Armitage Ave. They occupied the building for four days to protest Chicago Department of Building orders to stop due to code violations.The child care center allowed the group to welcome more women, individuals from all racial backgrounds and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The group fought the Lincoln Park Conservation Association, which had been pushing to gentrify the area, and also confronted landlords and real estate brokers. They also proposed plans for low-income housing in the neighborhood to the Department of Urban Renewal — ultimately losing out to the Lincoln Park Conservation Association’s plans for middle-income housing.Omar López, the Young Lords’ minister of information, said Mr. Jiménez’s love for his community helped him stay true to his beliefs, and his strength in organizing came from how he could identify what was causing harm to his community — and uniting people against it.“He chiseled a new image in the psyche of a whole generation of young people through his political analysis of the community,” Lopez, 80, said. “He really helped young men and women to find themselves as equals in political struggle. … It was an added tool in our resistance.” Related Young Lords: From a Turf Gang to a Civil Rights Movement By June 1969, Mr. Jiménez and Hampton, along with members of the Young Patriots — a group of Confederate-flag wielding, Black Panther button-wearing, low-income white residents in Uptown — formed the Rainbow Coalition to broaden the scope of their work. “It was a group of people fighting side by side in an alliance for change,” Jiménez told WBEZ in 2018. “But we were in conflict with [Mayor Richard J. Daley and city officials] because we lived in prime real estate areas.”“It’s not as racial, it’s more economic. … [And] it’s not just a housing issue, they were taking away our voice. There was a lot of repression going on.” Rush said coming together under the single banner saved the groups, and that it was their unity that made them so effective, inspiring other progressive movements.“We were the genesis,” Rush said. “The Rainbow Coalition saved us. We were able to create peace and unity and love and respect out of that chaos for each other because we were willing to work together. … It takes all of us to really make a difference.” Bobby Rush, deputy defense minister of the Illinois Black Panther party, reads a statement June 4, 1969, during a news conference following an early morning raid on the Chicago Panther headquarters by FBI agents, who arrested eight persons. Rush called the raid "...a trick ..to attack the party.” At left, José Cha Cha Jiménez, chairman of the Young Lords Organization, a Chicago-area Puerto Rican group.WBEZ A New York chapter of the Young Lords Organization was established in late 1969 and made national headlines with its demonstrations. After avoiding police for 27 months and then serving a year in jail — and motivated by the December 1969 assassination of Hampton by the Chicago Police Department and FBI — Mr. Jiménez ran for the 46th Ward office, securing almost 40% of the vote in his 1975 bid.In 1983, he helped Harold Washington win the mayoral election before leaving Chicago."The Young Lords Organization turned political because we found out that just giving gifts wasn't going to help our people; we had to deal with the system that was messing them over," Jiménez said. José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, a fugitive for 27 months, surrenders to police Dec. 6, 1972, in the Town Hall station at Addison and Halsted.Sun-Times file photo Aldermanic candidates Republican Darrell Quinley, incumbent Chris Cohen and Young Lords Organization chair José “Cha Cha” Jimenez on Feb. 13, 1975.Sun-Times file photo He also worked as a youth gang and addiction counselor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he continued to be vocal about the fight against gentrification.“We didn’t start this movement, and we didn’t finish it, but we definitely contributed to it and that’s our victory,” Jiménez told WBEZ in 2018. “COINTELPRO and organizations like that want to keep us disunited, so our first mission is to unite our people and go from there. ... Individuals can't make any change, you have to do it united." After his health took a turn, he returned to Chicago where he helped foster a new generation of Young Lords, Lopez said.“He was just a human being with a lot of strength," Lopez said. "He was able to share some of that with the new era of Young Lords. They followed his lead up until the end.”He is survived by his sister and longtime caretaker Daisy Rodriguez, and his daughter Melissa.Funeral services will be held 3 p.m. Thursday at Pietryka Funeral Home, 5734 W. Diversey Ave., before he is returned to Puerto Rico to be buried near his mother. José Cha Cha Jiménez muses, “What we need now is a victory,” before the voice of the Young Lords leader trails off during a May 3, 1973 interview.Howard D. Simmons/Sun-Times file photo José “Cha Cha” Jiménez talks with members of the ‘Eagles,” a young Latin group, May 1, 1974.Sun-Times file photo