Saul Alinsky - Community Organizer - # 1 of 2

Saul Alinsky – Community Organizer - # 1 of 2
In pursuit of the truth – cinops be gone – Friday, March 20, 2009

Your Brief Two-Page Lesson Plan Discussion:
On Becoming a Community Organizer by Prostituting the Members of the Community for PERSONAL and CLASS POWER via a Marxist Mentality

Saul Alinksy’s worldview was that the United States is an oppressive and racist society where most people (the Have-Nots) are the victims of economic injustice with a future of despair. He wanted a radical change of America’s social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. His goal was not to arrive at compromise or peaceful solutions; his goal was CRUSH THE HAVES AND TRANSORM SOCIETY.

He wanted to move the United States from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e. government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. So he called for massive change.
The following are excerpts from his book, Rules for Radicals” A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (originally published by Random House in 1971).

1.) The Purpose: Mankind is divided into three parts: “the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.” His purpose is to teach the Have-Nots how to take power and money away from the Haves. “Change” is Alinsky’s favorite word, used on page after page. “I will argue,” he writes, that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change.”

Alinsky teaches the Have-Nots to “hate the establishment of the Halves” because they have power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve.” He claims that “justice, morality, law, and order, are mere words used by the Halves to justify and secure their status quo. HE TEACHES THE HAVE-NOTS “HOW TO ORGANIZE FOR POWER: HOW TO GET IT AND TO USE IT.”

2.) Of Means and Ends: “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.” Phrase your goals in “general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and ‘Of the Common Welfare.” At the same time, Alinsky admonishes his organizers that they are conducting WAR, so there are no rules of fair play and there can be no compromise.
Recognizing the importance of words, Alinsky demands that his organizers us the word “POWER,” which he calls a word of force, vigor and simplicity.

3.) The Education of an Organizer: The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were EGO (“reaching for the highest level for which man can reach – to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God”), curiosity (raising “questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern”), irreverence (“nothing is sacred”; the organizer “detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality”), imagination (“the fuel for the force that keeps an organizer organizing”).

4.) Communication: Alinsky teaches his organizers how to direct the thinking of his people while letting them think they are making their own decisions. The organizer should develop skills in the manipulative technique of asking “loaded question designed to elicit particular responses and to steer the organization’s decision-making process in the direction which the organizer prefers.” To be continued

All of the above are excerpts from another classic from The Phyllis Schlafly Report –Feb. 09 issue, titled “How a Community Organizer Became President.”
George H. Kubeck