Interview with Saul Alinsky (1972 - well worth the read)

To find out more about why Alinsky is doing what he's doing, ... PLAYBOY sent Eric Norden to interview him. The job, Norden soon discovered, was far from easy: "The problem was that Alinsky's schedule is enough to drive a professional athlete to a rest home, and he seems to thrive on it. I accompanied him from the East Coast to the West and into Canada, snatching tape sessions on planes, in cars and at airport cocktail lounges between strategy sessions with his local organizers, which were more like military briefings than bull sessions. ... His first words were a growled order for Scotch on the rocks; his voice was flat and gravelly, and I found it easier to picture him twisting arms to win Garment District contracts than organizing ghettos. As we traveled together and I struggled to match his pace, I soon learned that he is, if nothing else, an original. (Alinsky to stewardess: 'Will you please tell the captain I don't give a f--- what our wind velocity is, and ask him to keep his trap shut so I can get some work done?')" "Nat Hentoff wrote last year, 'At 62, Saul is the youngest man I've met in years,' and I could see what he meant. There is a tremendous vitality about Alinsky, a raw, combative ebullience, and a consuming curiosity about everything and everyone around him. Add to this a mordant wit, a monumental ego coupled with an ability to laugh at himself and the world in general, and you begin to get the measure of the man.

Norden began the interview by asking Alinsky about his latest and most ambitious campaign: to organize nothing less than America's white middle class.

Long and fascinating interview. Well worth the read if you want to understanding what Obama means by "community organizer" and what the master "organizer" taught him.

He may be dead but his ideas are having a huge influence in our lives today. Alinsky is a modern day Macchiavelli, and not to be underestimated. We better understand him if we are going to restrain Obama, should he get elected.

Excellent post.

By the late Sixties, Alinsky was leaving most of the field work to his aides and concentrating on training community organizers through the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute, which he calls a "school for professional radicals." Funded principally by a foundation grant from Midas Muffler, the school aims at turning out 25 skilled organizers annually to work in black and white communities across the nation. "Just think of all the hell we've kicked up around the country with only four or five full-time organizers," Alinsky told newsmen at the school's opening session. "Things will really move now."

He was right -- if his subsequent success as a radical organizer can be measured by the degree of opposition and exasperation he aroused among the guardians of the status quo. A conservative church journal wrote that "it is impossible to follow both Jesus Christ and Saul Alinsky." Barron's, the business weekly, took that odd logic a step further and charged that Alinsky "has a record of affiliation with Communist fronts and causes." And a top Office of Economic Opportunity official, Hyman Bookbinder, characterized Alinsky's attacks on the antipoverty program (for "welfare colonialism") as "outrageously false, ignorant, intemperate headline-seeking."

Now that's the best description of "community organizer" I've seen yet: professional radical.

“Now that’s the best description of “community organizer” I’ve seen yet: professional radical.”

Or, as even he himself called it: “community agitator”. He targets various groups that in his mind are being treated “unfairly” by the “system” and sows anger and unhappiness amongst them to cause them to rebel against the establishment. But he offers nothing constructive to replace the establishment - he just wants to destroy it with mobs and then move on to the next “community”. I haven’t been able to discern any consistent political or economic school of thought behind his activism other than to raise hell.

Anarchism is the closest I can come to, or some form of deconstructionism.

Should be interesting to see how things develop if Obama gets in and becomes the “establishment”. My gut tells me that at that point he will put a stop on deconstructionism agaist the establishment (him) - he’ll do that by the use of force. Or put another way, he will continue to deconstruct his opposition (us) - and this time he will have considerable more weapons at his disposal - the whole apparatus of the federal government.

We could be in for some dark times...

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