SAUL ALINSKY

'Saul David Alinsky' (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of community organizing.

Contents

Biography and work

Students of Alinsky

Published works

Biographies and works on Alinsky

In pop culture

References

External links

Biography and work

In the 1930s, Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous by Upton Sinclair's novel ''The Jungle'' on the horrific working conditions in the Union Stock Yards). He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained leftist organizers and assisted in the founding of community organizations around the country. In Rules for Radicals' (his final work, published one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of leftist radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. The documentary, ","^[1] claims that "Alinsky championed new ways to organize the poor and powerless that created a backyard revolution in cities across America."
In his Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing,

"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.."

^[2] Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for the grassroots political organizing that dominated the 1960s.^[3] Later in his life he encouraged stockholders in public corporations to lend their votes to "proxies", who would vote at annual stockholders meetings in favor of social justice. While his grassroots style took hold in American activism, his call to stock holders to share their power with disenfranchised working poor only began to take hold in U.S. progressive circles in the 1990s, when shareholder actions were organized against american corporations.
Alinsky was a critic of a passive and ineffective mainstream liberalism. In Rules for Radicals, he argued that the most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired ends, and that an intermediate end for radicals should be democracy because of its relative ease to work within to achieve other ends of social justice. He was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. ''Pacem in Terris'' is Latin for "Peace on Earth."

Students of Alinsky

Many important community and labor organizers came from the "Alinsky School." Some of the below studied at the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute.

★ Ed Chambers^[4]

★ Cesar Chavez^[5]

★ Tom Gaudette^[6]

★ Michael Gecan^[6]

★ Andrew Vachss^[6]

★ Pat Crowley^[9]

★ Hillary Clinton ^[10]
Alinsky was the subject of Hillary Rodham's senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, ''.^[11] Rodham commented on Alinsky's "charm," but rejected grassroots community organizing as outdated. Once Hillary Rodham Clinton became First Lady of the United States, the thesis was suppressed by the White House for fear of being associated too closely with Alinksy's ideas.^[12]
Alinsky also had a significant influence on Barack Obama, who is a United States Senator and candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Obama particularly used Alinsky's techniques while participating in Chicago community organizations in the 1980s.^[13]

Published works

★ Reveille for Radicals (1946). 2nd edition 1969, Vintage Books paperback: ISBN 0-679-72112-6

★ (1949) ISBN 0-394-70882-2

★ Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971) Random House, ISBN 0-394-44341-1, Vintage books paperback: ISBN 0-679-72113-4

Biographies and works on Alinsky

★ ' by Sanford D. Horwitt (1989) Alfred Knopf, ISBN 0-394-57243-2; Vintage Books paperback: ISBN 0-679-73418-X

★ , copyright 1999, Chicago Video Project and Media Process Group, co-produced by Bruce Orenstein, Chicago Video Project, www.chicagovideo.org

★ Marion K. Sanders (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

In pop culture

Author Robert Greene quotes heavily from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals in his book The 48 Laws of Power and cites him as an influence.
The 2006 album ''The Avalanche'' by Sufjan Stevens includes a song, titled "The Perpetual Self Or 'What Would Saul Alinsky Do?'".
The 2006 album ''The Sufferer & The Witness'' by Rise Against includes an exerpt from the book in the back of the CD case.
The 2005 album ''It's Time to Decide'' by At All Cost includes a song, titled The Return mentioning Saul Alinsky and Allen Ginsberg's contributions to radical revolution

References

1. http://www.chicagovideo.org
2. http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/alinski.htm
3. http://www.itvs.org/democraticpromise/alinsky.html
4. http://www.itvs.org/democraticpromise/legacy.html
5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.html
6. http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2007/the-students-of-saul-d-alinsky
7. http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2007/the-students-of-saul-d-alinsky
8. http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2007/the-students-of-saul-d-alinsky
9. http://www.pat-crowley.org
10. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=39595ECB-C0AD-4E37-A093-A2E510FE3A60
11. NPR Democrats and the Legacy of Activist Saul Alinsky All Things Considered, May 21, 2007
12. MSNBC
13. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070319&s=lizza031907

External links

★ Interview with Alinsky, published in ''Playboy'' in 1972. The interview is in twelve parts. The entire text is copied onto one page, here.

★ Website of a documentary about Alinsky and his legacy, ''Democratic Promise''.

★ Some excerpts from ''Reveille for Radicals''.

★ Dissertation: ''Saul Alinsky and the dilemmas of race in the post-war city''.

★ "Problem of the Century," in ''TIME'' (book ''Reveille for Radicals'' reviewed by Whittaker Chambers, published February 25, 1946)

★ "Democrats and the Legacy of Activist Saul Alinsky". The NPR host Robert Siegel discusses Alinsky's legacy with biographer Sanford Horwitt. At issue is that Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama claim to be greatly influenced by Saul Alinksy.