Saul Alinsky
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Saul Alinsky off the cover of Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy by Sanford D. Horwitt. |
Saul David Alinsky (
January 30,
1909 Chicago, Illinois -
June 12,
1972 Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of
community organizing.
A
criminologist by training, Alinsky in the 1930s organized the
Back of the Yards neighborhood in
Chicago (made famous by
Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle). He went on to found the
Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the
Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained 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 radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. A young
Hillary Clinton was a major admirer, writing her undergraduate thesis on his work and ideas.
Author of
Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky encouraged controversy and conflict, often to the dismay of middle-class activists who otherwise would sponsor his activism. [
1] Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for confrontational political tactics that dominated the 1960s [
2]. Later in his life he encouraged holders of stock in public corporations to lend their votes to "proxies" who would vote at annual stockholders meetings in favor of social justice. While his confrontational style took hold in American activism, his call to stock holders to share their power with disenfranchised working poor never took hold in U.S. progressive circles.
Alinsky was a ferocious 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.
Many important community and labor organizers worked and studied with Alinsky.
*
Tom Gaudette*
Ed Shurna*
Jack Egan*
Michael Gecan*
Fred Ross*
James O'Keefe*
Ed Chambers*
David Knowlton*
Cesar ChavezReveille for Radicals (
1946, updated
1969)
John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (
1949) ISBN 0394708822 (See
John L. Lewis.)
*
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (
1971) ISBN 0394443411
Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy by Sandord D. Horwitt (
1989) ISBN 0394572432
*
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.
