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Two Ways to Play the 'Alinsky' Card


Saul Alinsky in Chicago in 1966.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Elizabeth Williamson
January 23, 2012

Newt Gingrich has repeatedly labeled President Barack Obama a "Saul Alinsky radical."

He raised Mr. Alinsky's name in his victory speech Saturday night after winning the South Carolina primary. On Sunday morning, Mr. Gingrich asserted on NBC that Mr. Obama draws his political vision "from Saul Alinsky, radical left-wingers and people who don't like the classical America."

Which likely raised a question for many Americans: Who is Saul Alinsky and why is he being invoked to argue there are fundamental flaws in Mr. Obama's leadership?

Mr. Alinsky, who died in 1972 at age 63, was a Chicago-born social-movement organizer whose success has been praised by Democrats and Republicans alike. He was grudgingly admired by conservative hero William F. Buckley Jr., who called him "very close to being an organizational genius." Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Republican, gives copies of Mr. Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals" to tea-party leaders.

His work to bring together residents of Chicago's low-income neighborhoods to agitate for more services from the city in the 1950s and 1960s drew the wrath of Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat who later grew to appreciate Mr. Alinsky's love of their mutual birthplace, Chicago's gritty, racially tense South Side.

Mr. Alinsky openly courted controversy and hostile reactions as a way to change society, and urged his followers to do the same. "The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression," he wrote in one book. "He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act."

In his book "Reveille for Radicals" he entitled the opening section, "Call Me Rebel."

Mr. Alinsky didn't believe in violence; his bomb-throwing was purely verbal. His approach involved interviewing people one by one to identify a common self-interest that could be used to galvanize the group. He had no faith in the political system to effect change for the people it ignored, and believed heavy pressure from outside was the only way to force the wheels of government to turn.

One of Mr. Alinsky's earliest efforts, in 1939, was a campaign to unite black, white and immigrant workers to force improvements in the working conditions in Chicago's livestock slaughtering and meat-processing plants, known as the "Back of the Yards," as in stockyards.

That was a milestone in the trade-union movement in Chicago. It didn't endear Mr. Alinsky to the city's meat-packing industry of the time. It also gave rise to a city-wide network of Chicago neighborhood associations that endures today.

Mr. Gingrich's labeling of Mr. Obama as a "food stamp president" and his effort to associate the president with Mr. Alinsky resonates with a conservative element of the electorate that sees Mr. Obama as pushing radical social change. Economists say the expansion of food stamps during the Obama administration is linked to broader joblessness and congressional moves to expand benefits.

Mr. Obama was hired in 1985 by the Developing Communities Project, an Alinsky network affiliate. After Harvard Law School, he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and advised community groups. While as a community organizer he was steeped in Mr. Alinsky's politics, he told the New Republic in 2007 that "Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest."

Obama campaign officials say the president long ago rejected Mr. Alinsky's confrontational tactics and favors working within the political system to effect change.

Mr. Alinsky encouraged the use of the word "radical" to describe himself. But while his seminal work was titled "Rules for Radicals," the seldom-cited second part of the title is "A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."

Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a thesis at Wellesley College analyzing Mr. Alinsky's tactics and was once offered a job by him, which she turned down. When Bill Clinton was president, her thesis was sealed without explanation, though it is critical at times of Mr. Alinsky's tactics.

Adam Brandon, spokesman for FreedomWorks, which has been organizing tea-party activists and includes Mr. Armey as chairman, says the group gives Mr. Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" to its top leadership members. A shortened guide called "Rules for Patriots" is distributed to its entire network.

Mr. Brandon called the effort to associate Mr. Obama with Mr. Alinsky "a double-edged sword." While Mr. Alinsky was an avowed liberal Democrat, "his tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective," Mr. Brandon said.

He cited the group's sending of tea-party activists to town-hall meetings. "When the first five people step up to the microphone to challenge a congressman,'' he said, "it completely changes the dynamic of the town hall—he spends all of his time defending himself."

Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204624204577177272926154002 [with comments]


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Right loves to hate, imitate Alinsky

The book ''Rules for Radicals' by Saul Alinsky (center) has been touted by Dick Armey (left) and James O’Keefe as a way to beat the left at its own game.
03/22/10
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/03/right-loves-to-hate-imitate-alinsky-034751 [no comments yet]


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Reading Hillary Rodham's hidden thesis

Hillary Rodham in 1965, when she was president of Wellesley College's Young Republicans, shown here with the cover page of her senior thesis from 1969 on radical organizer Saul D. Alinsky.
updated 5/9/2007
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17388372/ns/politics-decision_08/t/reading-hillary-rodhams-hidden-thesis/


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Saul Alinsky

January 30, 2012
http://www.hopeandchange.net/2012/01/saul-alinsky.html [with comment], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5HxUeoQa8s [referenced and linked in the text; with comments]


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