Difference between revisions of "Saul Alinsky" - New World Encyclopedia
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[[Image:Saul Alinsky.jpg|frame|Saul Alinsky off the cover of ''Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy'' by Sanford D. Horwitt.]] | [[Image:Saul Alinsky.jpg|frame|Saul Alinsky off the cover of ''Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy'' by Sanford D. Horwitt.]] | ||
− | '''Saul David Alinsky''' ( | + | '''Saul David Alinsky''' (January 30, 1909 Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972 Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of [[community organizing]]. |
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+ | ==Family== | ||
+ | Saul David Alinsky was born in Chicago, January 30, 1909, the child of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Benjamin and Sarah (Tannenbaum). Saul's parents were divorced when he was 13 years old, and he went to live with his father who had moved to Los Angeles. 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. At this time he married Helene Simon, with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter. His wife died in a drowning accident in 1947. | ||
+ | A year later, on June 12, 1972, he died of a heart attack near his home in Carmel, California, leaving his third wife Irene (his second marriage in 1947 to the former Ruth Graham had ended in divorce in 1970). [http://www.bookrags.com/Saul_Alinsky] | ||
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==Education and Beginnings== | ==Education and Beginnings== | ||
==Chicago== | ==Chicago== |
Revision as of 19:02, 19 December 2006
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972 Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of community organizing.
Family
Saul David Alinsky was born in Chicago, January 30, 1909, the child of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Benjamin and Sarah (Tannenbaum). Saul's parents were divorced when he was 13 years old, and he went to live with his father who had moved to Los Angeles. 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. At this time he married Helene Simon, with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter. His wife died in a drowning accident in 1947. A year later, on June 12, 1972, he died of a heart attack near his home in Carmel, California, leaving his third wife Irene (his second marriage in 1947 to the former Ruth Graham had ended in divorce in 1970). [1]
Education and Beginnings
Chicago
The Back of the Yards
The Woodlawn Organization
Industrial Areas Foundation
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. [2] Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for confrontational political tactics that dominated the 1960s [3]. 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
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
Biography
- 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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