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