Saul Alinsky

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

Contents 1 Biography and work 2 Students of Alinsky 3 Published works 4 Biographies and works on Alinsky 5 In pop culture 6 References 7 External links

[edit] 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, "The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy,"^[1] claims that "Alinsky championed new ways to organize the poor and powerless that created a backyard revolution in cities across America."

In his Rules 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 change 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. In 1969, he was awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award.

[edit] Students of Alinsky

Many important community and labor organizers came from the "Alinsky School," including Ed Chambers and Tom Gaudette. Fred Ross, who worked for Alinsky, was the principal mentor for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Chambers became Executive Director of Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute, which was formed in 1968. Since its formation, hundreds of professional organizers and thousands of community and labor leaders have attended its workshops.

• Ed Chambers^[4]
• Cesar Chavez^[5]
• Tom Gaudette
• Michael Gecan
• Andrew Vachss
• Patrick Crowley^[6]
• Fred Ross^[7]

Alinsky was the subject of Hillary Rodham's senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, "There Is Only The Fight...": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.^[8] Rodham commented on Alinsky's "charm," but noted that “one of the primary problems of the Alinsky model is that the removal of Alinsky dramatically alters its composition." ^[8] Later, in her 2003 biography, Living History Clinton notes that although she agreed with some of his ideas, "particularly the value of empowering people to help themselves" they had a fundamental disagreement: "He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn't." ^[8] 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 Alinsky's ideas.^[9]

[edit] Published works

• Reveille for Radicals (1946). 2nd edition 1969, Vintage Books paperback: ISBN 0-679-72112-6
• John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (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

[edit] Biographies and works on Alinsky

• ' Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy, by Sanford D. Horwitt, (1989) Alfred Knopf, ISBN 039457243-; Vintage Books paperback: ISBN 067973418X
• The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy, 1999, Chicago Video Project and Media Process Group, co-produced by Bruce Orenstein, Chicago Video Project, www.chicagovideo.org
• The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky by Marion K. Sanders, (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

[edit] 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 excerpt 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" which mentions Saul Alinsky and Allen Ginsberg's contributions to radical revolution.

[edit] References

[edit] 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.