Saul Alinsky

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.

Early Life, Family and Influences

Saul David Alinsky was born in Chicago on January 30, 1909, the child of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Benjamin and Sarah (Tannenbaum) Alinsky.

Though many Jews were active in the new socialist movement during his youth, his parents were not, instead they were strict Orthodox; their whole life revolved around work and synagogue.

In an interview with Playboy Magazine in 1972, Alinksy talked about what influenced his path to activism: "(And) poverty was no stranger to me, either. My mother and father emigrated from Russia at the turn of the century and we lived in one of the worst slums in Chicago; in fact, we lived in the slum district of the slum, on the wrong side of the wrong side of the tracks, about as far down as you could go. My father started out as a tailor, then he ran a delicatessen and a cleaning shop, and finally he graduated to operating his own sweatshop. But whatever business he had, we always lived in the back of a store. I remember, as a kid, the biggest luxury I ever dreamed of was just to have a few minutes to myself in the bathroom without my mother hammering on the door and telling me to get out because a customer wanted to use it. To this day, it's a real luxury for me to spend time uninterrupted in the bathroom; it generally takes me a couple of hours to shave and bathe in the morning — a real hang-up from the past, although I actually do a lot of my thinking there."

Alinsky's parents were divorced when he was 18 and his father moved to California. For several years, he shuttled back and forth between them, living part of the time with his mother in Chicago and part of the time with his father in California.

Alinsky had a passion for justice which originated from his experience growing up in Chicago's Jewish ghetto where he witnessed suffering during the Depression. It was his mother who influenced him most. Alinsky's son, David, once said, "...at the core of what motivated him was his mother, Sarah Rice...She taught him that...individuals must be responsible for other individuals and that you can't just walk away when you see something that's not right."

In the early 1930s, Alinksy married Helene Simon, with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter. She died in a drowning accident in 1947. He soon after married Ruth Graham; this marriage ended in divorce in 1970. When he died in 1972, he left behind a third wife, Irene.

Education and Beginnings

He later returned to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago from which he earned a doctorate in archeology in 1930. Upon graduation he won a fellowship from the university's sociology department which enabled him to study criminology. In 1931 he went to work as a sociologist for the Illinois Division of Juvenile Research while also serving at the Institute for Criminal Research and the Illinois Prison Board. In 1936 Alinsky left his positions with the state agencies to cofound the Back-of-the-Yards Neighborhood Council. This was his first effort to build a neighborhood citizen reform group, a form of activity which would earn Alinsky a reputation as a radical reformer. [4]

Alinsky's hard-nosed politics were shaped by the rough and tumble world of late 1930's Chicago. Back then, the city, still in the grips of the Great Depression, was controlled by the Kelly-Nash political machine and by Frank Nitti - heir to Al Capone's Mafia empire. In 1938, with a freshly minted graduate degree in criminology from University of Chicago, Alinsky went to work for sociologist Clifford Shaw at the Institute for Juvenile Research. He was assigned to research the causes of juvenile delinquency in Chicago's tough "Back-of-the-Yards" neighborhood. In order to study gang behavior from the inside, Alinsky ingratiated himself with Al Capone's crowd, and came to realize that criminal behavior was a symptom of poverty and powerlessness. [5]

Into the Middle Class

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. [6] Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for confrontational political tactics that dominated the 1960s [7]. 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. The song, "The Perpetual Self, Or "What Would Saul Alinsky Do?" was featured on the 2006 release of Sufjan Stevens' album, "The Avalanche".

Students of Alinsky

Many important community and labor organizers who come from the 'Alinsky School' of thought.

• Tom Gaudette
• Ed Shurna
• Jack Egan
• Michael Gecan
• Fred Ross
• Ed Chambers
• David Knowlton
• Cesar Chavez
• Samantha Gutglass

References and Further Reading

• 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
• Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy by Sanford D. Horwitt (1989) Alfred Knopf, ISBN 0-394-57243-2; Vintage Books paperback: ISBN 0-679-73418-X

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.

cs:Saul Alinsky de:Saul Alinsky

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