“THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT…”
An Analysis of the Alinsky Model
A
thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Bachelor of Arts degree under the Special Honors Program, Wellesley
College, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Hillary D. Rodham
Political Science
2 May, 1969
So
here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—Twenty years
largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres Trying to learn to
use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind
of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mass of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined
squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and
submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times,
by men whom one cannot hope To emulate–but there is no competition–There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again:
and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither
gain nor loss For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our
business. T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements………………………………… i
Chapter
I. SAUL DAVID ALINSKY: AN AMERICAN RADICAL . 1
II. THE ALINSKY METHOD OF ORGANIZING: THREE
CASE STUDIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
III. “A PRIZE PIECE OF POLITICALPORNOGRAPHY”. . 44
IV. PERSPECTIVES ON ALINSKY AND HIS MODEL. . . 53
V. REALIZING LIFE AFTER BIRTH . . . . . . . . 68
Appendices……………………………………… 76
Bibliography……………………………………. 84
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Although
I have no “loving wife” to thank for keeping the children away while I
wrote, I do have many friends and teachers who have contributed to the
process of thesis-writing. And I thank them for their tireless help and
encouragement. In regard to the paper itself, there are three people who
deserve special appreciation: Mr. Alinsky for providing a topic,
sharing his time and offering me a job; Miss Alona E. Evans for her
thoughtful questioning and careful editing that clarified fuzzy thinking
and tortured prose; and Jan Krigbaum for her spirited intellectual
companionship and typewriter rescue work.
CHAPTER I
SAUL DAVID ALINSKY: AN AMERICAN RADICAL
With customary British understatement, The Economist referred to Saul Alinsky as “that rare specimen, the successful radical.”
FOOTNOTE 1 (note—all such numbers in the text refer to footnotes)
This
is one of the blander descriptions applied to Alinsky during a thirty
year career in which epithets have been collected more regularly than
paychecks. The epithets are not surprising as most people who deal with
Alinsky need to categorize in order to handle him. It is far easier to
cope with a man if, depending on ideological perspective, he is
classified as a “crackpot” than to grapple with the substantive issues
he presents.
For
Saul Alinsky is more than a man who has created a particular approach
to community organizing, he is the articulate proponent of what many
consider to be a dangerous socio/political philosophy. An understanding
of the “Alinsky-type method” (i.e. his organizing method) as well as the
philosophy on which it is based must start with an understanding of the
man himself.
Alinsky
was born in a Chicago slum to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, and
those early conditions of slum living and poverty in Chicago established
the context of his ideas and mode of action. He traces his
identification with the poor back to a home in the rear of a store where
his idea of luxury was using the bathroom without a customer banging on
the door.
2
Chicago itself has also greatly influenced him:
Where
did I come from? Chicago. I can curse and hate the town but let anyone
else do it and they’re in for a battle, There I’ve had the happiest and
the worst times of my life. Every street has its personal joy and pain
to me. On this street is the church of a Catholic Bishop who was a big
part of my life; further down is another church where the pastor too has
meant a lot to me; and a couple miles away is a cemetery–well, skip it.
Many Chicago streets are pieces of my life and work. Things that
happened here have rocked a lot of boats in a lot of cities. Nowadays I
fly all over the country in the course of my work. But when those flaps
go down over the Chicago skyline, I knew I’m home. (all boldface type
indicates blockquoting)
3
Although
Alinsky calls Chicago his “city”, the place really represents to him
the American Dream–in all its nightmare and its glory.
He
lived the Dream as he moved from the Chicago slums to California then
back to attend the University of Chicago. Alinsky credits his developing
an active imagination, which is essential for a good organizer, to his
majoring in archaeology. An imagination focusing on Inca artifacts,
however, needs exposure to social problems before it can become useful
in community organizing. Exposure began for Alinsky when he and other
students collected food for the starving coal miners in southern
Illinois who were rebelling against John L. Lewis and the United Mine
Workers.
Lewis became a role model for Alinsky who learned about labor’s organizational
tactics
from watching and working with Lewis during the early years of the CIO.
Alinsky soon recognized that one of the hardest jobs of the leader is
an imaginative one as he struggles to develop a rationale for
spontaneous action:
For
instance, when the first sit-down strikes took place in Flint, no one
really planned them. They were clearly a violation of the
law–trespassing, seizure of private property. Labor leaders ran for
cover, refused to comment. But Lewis issued a pontifical statement, ‘a
man’s right to a job transcends the right of private property,’ which
sounded plausible.
4
After
graduating from the University of Chicago, Alinsky received a
fellowship in criminology with a first assignment to get a look at crime
from the inside of gangs. He attached himself to the Capone gang,
attaining a perspective from which he viewed the gang as a huge
quasi-public utility serving the people of Chicago. Alinsky’s eclectic
life during the thirties, working with gangs, raising money for the
International Brigade, publicizing the plight of the Southern share
cropper, fighting for public housing, reached a turning point in 1938
when he was offered the job as head of probation and parole for the City
of Philadelphia. Security. Prestige. Money. Each of these inducements
alone has been enough to turn many a lean and hungry agitator into a
well-fed establishmentarian.
Alinsky
rejected the offer and its triple threat for a career of organizing the
poor to help themselves. His first target zone was the Back of the
Yards area in Chicago; the immediate impetus was his intense hatred of
fascism:
…I
went into ‘Back of the Yards’ in Chicago. This was Upton Sinclair’s
‘Jungle.’ This was not the slum across the tracks. This was the slum
across the tracks from across the tracks. Also, this was the heart, in
Chicago, of all the native fascist movements– the Coughlinites, the
Silver Shirts, the Pelley movement… I went in there to fight fascism. If
you had asked me then what my profession was, I would have told you I
was a professional antifascist.
5
Alinsky’s
anti-fascism, built around anti-authoritarianism, anti-racial
superiority, anti-oppression, was the ideological justification for his
move into organizing and the first social basis on which he began
constructing his theory of action. Working in Chicago and other
communities between 1938 and 1946 Alinsky refined his methods and
expanded his theory. Then in 1946, Alinsky’s first book, Reveille for Radicals,
was published. Since Alinsky is firstly an activist and secondly a
theoretician, more than one-half the book is concerned with the tactics
of building “People’s Organizations.”
There
are chapter discussions of “Native Leadership,” “Community Traditions
and Organizations,” “Conflict Tactics,” “Popular Education,” and
“Psychological Observations on Mass Organizations.” The book begins by
asking the question: What is a Radical?
This
is a basic question for Alinsky who proudly refers to himself as a
radical. His answer is prefaced by pages of Fourth-of-July rhetoric
about Americans: “They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in
between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a
new mankind– a people of the world.”
6
Although
the book was written right after World War II, which deeply affected
Alinsky, his belief in American democracy has deep historical roots–at
least, as he interprets history:
The
American people were, in the beginning, Revolutionaries and Tories. The
American People ever since have been Revolutionaries and
Tories…regardless of the labels of the past and present… The clash of
Radicals, Conservatives, and Liberals which makes up America’s political
history opens the door to the most fundamental question of What is
America? How do the people of America feel? There were and are a number
of Americans–few, to be sure– filled with deep feelings for people. They
know that people are the stuff that makes up the dream of democracy.
These few were and are the American Radicals and the only way we can
understand the American Radical is to understand what we mean by this
feeling for and with the people.
7
What
Alinsky means by this “feeling for and with the people” is simply how
much one person really cares about people unlike himself. He illustrates
the feeling by a series of examples in which he poses questions such
as: So you are a white, native-born Protestant. Do you like people? He
then proceeds to demonstrate how, in spite of protestations, the
Protestant (or the Irish Catholic or the Jew or the Negro or the
Mexican) only pays lip service to the idea of equality. This technique
of confrontation in Alinsky’s writing effectively involves most of his
readers who will recognize in themselves at least one of the
characteristics he denounces. Having confronted his readers with their
hypocrisy, Alinsky defines the American Radical as “…that unique person
who actually believes what he says…to whom the common good is the
greatest value…who genuinely and completely believes in mankind….”
8
Alinsky
outlines American history focusing on men he would call “radical,”
confronting his readers again with the Alinsky outlines American history
focusing on men he would call “radical,” confronting his readers again
with the “unique” way Americans have synthesized the alien roots of
radicalism, Marxism, Utopian socialism, syndicalism, the French
Revolution, with their own conditions and experiences:
Where
are the American Radicals? They were with Patrick Henry in the Virginia
Hall of Burgesses; they were with Sam Adams in Boston; they were with
that peer of all American Radicals, Tom Paine, from the distribution of
Common Sense through those dark days of the American Revolution… The
American Radicals were in the colonies grimly forcing the addition of
the Bill of Rights to our Constitution.
They
stood at the side of Tom Jefferson in the first big battle between the
Tories of Hamilton and the American people. They founded and fought in
the LocoFocos. They were in the first union strike in America and they
fought for the distribution of the western lands to the masses of people
instead of the few…They were in the shadows of the underground railroad
and they openly rode in the sunlight with John Brown to Harpers
Ferry…They were with Horace Mann fighting for the extension of
educational opportunities…They built the American Labor movement… Many
of their deeds are not and never will be recorded in America’s history.
They
were among the grimy men in the dust bowl, they sweated with the share
croppers. They were at the side of the Okies facing the California
vigilantes. They stood and stand before the fury of lynching mobs. They
were and are on the picket lines gazing unflinchingly at the
threatening, flushed, angry faces of the police. American Radicals are
to be found wherever and whenever America moves closer to the
fulfillment of its democratic dream. Whenever America’s hearts are
breaking, these American Radicals were and are. America was begun by its
Radicals. The hope and future of America lies with its Radicals.
9
Words
such as these coupled with his compelling personality enabled Alinsky
to hold a sidewalk seminar during the 1968 Democratic Party Convention
in Chicago. He socratically gathered around him a group of young
demonstrators on the corner of Michigan and Bilbo on Monday night
telling them that they were another generation of American Radicals.
10
Alinsky attempts to encompass all those worthy of his description “radical” into an ideological Weltanschauung:
What
does the Radical want? He wants a world in which the worth of the
individual is recognized…a world based on the morality of mankind…The
Radical believes that all peoples should have a high standard of food,
housing, and health…The Radical places human rights far above property
rights. He is for universal, free public education and recognizes this
as fundamental to the democratic way of life…Democracy to him is working
from the bottom up…The Radical believes completely in real equality of
opportunity for all peoples regardless of race, color, or creed.
11
Much
of what Alinsky professes does not sound “radical.” His are the words
used in our schools and churches, by our parents and their friends, by
our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them and
recognizes the necessity of changing the present structures of our lives
in order to realize them.
There
are many inconsistencies in Alinsky’s thought which he himself
recognizes and dismisses. He believes that life is inconsistent and that
one needs flexibility in dealing with its many facets. His writings
reflect the flavor of inconsistency which permeates his approach to
organizing. They also suggest Alinsky’s place in the American Radical
tradition.
In
order to discuss his place, it is necessary to circumvent his
definition of “radical” based on inner psychological strength and
commitment, and to consider more conventional uses of the term. Although
there is great disagreement among writers about the definition of
“radical” and among radicals themselves over the scope of the word’s
meaning, there is sufficient agreement to permit a general definition.
A
radical is one who advocates sweeping changes in the existing laws and
methods of government. These proposed changes are aimed at the roots of
political problems which in Marxian terms are the attitudes and the
behaviors of men. Radicals are not interested in ameliorating the
symptoms of decay but in drastically altering the causes of societal
conditions. Radicalism “emphasizes reason rather than reverence,
although Radicals have often been the most emotional and least
reasonable of men.”
12
One
of the strongest strains in modern radicalism is the eighteenth century
Enlightenment’s faith in human reason and the possible perfectibility
of man. This faith in the continuing improvement of man was and is
dominated by values derived from the French and American Revolutions and
profoundly influenced by the Industrial Revolution.
The
Industrial Revolution shifted the emphasis of radicalism to an urban
orientation. Alinsky holds to the basic radical tenets of equality and
to the urban orientation, but he does not advocate immediate change. He
is too much in the world right now to allow himself the luxury of
symbolic suicide. He realizes that radical goals have to be achieved
often by non-radical, even “anti-radical” means. For Alinsky, the
non-radical means involve the traditional quest for power to change
existing situations. To further understand Alinsky’s radicalism one must
examine his attitude toward the use of power. The key word for an
Alinsky-type organizing effort is “power.” As he says: “No individual or
organization can negotiate without power to compel negotiations.”
13
The
question is how one acquires power, and Alinsky’s answer is through
organization: “To attempt to operate on good will rather than on a power
basis would be to attempt something which the world has never yet
experienced–remember to make even good will effective it must be
mobilized into a power unit.”
14
One
of the problems with advocating mobilization for power is the popular
distrust of amassing power. Americans, as John Kenneth Galbraith points
out in American Capitalism, are caught in a paradox regarding their view
toward power because it “obviously presents awkward problems for a
community which abhors its existence, disavows its possession, but
values its existence.”
15
Alinsky recognizes this paradox and cautions against allowing our tongues to trap our minds:
We
have become involved in bypaths of confusion or semantics… The word
‘power’ has through time acquired overtones of sinister corrupt evil,
unhealthy immoral Machiavellianism, and a general phantasmagoria of the
nether regions.
16
For
Alinsky, power is the “very essence of life, the dynamic of life” and
is found in “…active citizen participation pulsing upward providing a
unified strength for a common purpose of organization…either changing
circumstances or opposing change.”
17
Alinsky argues that those who wish to change circumstances must develop a mass-based organization and be prepared for conflict.
He
is a neo-Hobbesian who objects to the consensual mystique surrounding
political processes; for him, conflict is the route to power. Those
possessing power want to retain it and often to extend the bounds of it.
Those desiring a change in the power balance generally lack the
established criteria of money or status and so must mobilize numbers.
Mobilized
groups representing opposed interests will naturally be in conflict
which Alinsky considers a healthful and necessary aspect of a community
organizing activity. He is supported in his prognosis by conflict
analysts such as Lewis Coser who points out in The Functions of Social
Conflict that:
Conflict
with other groups contributes to the establishment and reaffirmation of
the group and maintains its boundaries against the surrounding social
world.
18
In
order to achieve a world without bounds it appears essential for many
groups to solidify their identities both in relation to their own
membership and to their external environment. This has been the
rationale of nationalist groups historically and among American blacks
presently. The organizer plays a significant role in precipitating and
directing a community’s conflict pattern. As Alinsky views this role,
the organizer is
…dedicated
to changing the character of life of a particular community [and] has
an initial function of serving as an abrasive agent to rub raw the
resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of
many of the people to the point of overt expressions… to provide a
channel into which they can pour their frustration of the past; to
create a mechanism which can drain off underlying guilt for having
accepted the previous situation for so long a time. When those who
represent the status quo label you [i.e. the community organizer] as an
‘agitator’ they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your
function–to agitate to the point of conflict.
19
An
approach advocating conflict has produced strong reactions. Some of his
critics compare Alinsky’s tactics with those of various hate groups
such as lynch mobs which also “rub raw the resentments of the people.”
20
Alinsky
answers such criticism by reminding his critics that the difference
between a “liberal” and a “radical” is that the liberal refuses to fight
for the goals he professes. During his first organizing venture in Back
of the Yards he ran into opposition from many liberals who, although
agreeing with his goals, repudiated his tactics. They wore according to
Alinsky “like the folks during the American Revolution who said ‘America
should be free but not through bloodshed.’”
21
When
the residents of Back of the Yards battled the huge meat-packing
concerns, they were fighting for their jobs and for their lives.
Unfortunately, the war-like rhetoric can obscure the constructiveness of
the conflict Alinsky orchestrates. In addition to aiding in formation
of identity, conflict between groups plays a creative social role by
providing a process through which diverse interests are adjusted.
To
induce conflict is a risk because there is no guarantee that it will
remain controllable. Alinsky recognizes the risk he takes but believes
it is worth the gamble if the conflict process results in the
restructuring of relationships so as to permit the enjoyment of greater
freedom among men meeting as equals. Only through social equality can
men determine the structure of their own social arrangements. The
concept of social equality is a part of Alinsky’s social morality that
assumes all individuals and nations act first to preserve their own
interests and then rationalize any action as idealistic. He thinks it is
only through accepting ourselves as we “really” are that we can begin
to practice “real” morality:
There
are two roads to everything–a low road and a high one. The high road is
the easiest. You just talk principles and be angelic regarding things
you don’t practice. The low road is the harder. It is the task of making
one’s self-interest behavior moral behavior. We have behaved morally in
the world in the past few years because we want the people of the world
on our side. When you get a good moral position, look behind it to see
what is self-interest.
22
The
cynicism of this viewpoint was mitigated somewhat by my discussing the
question of morality with Alinsky who conceded that idealism can
parallel self-interest. But he believes that the man who intends to act
in the world as- it-is must not be misled by illusions of the
world-as-we-would-like-it-to be.
23
Alinsky
claims a position of moral relativism, but his moral context is
stabilized by a belief in the eventual manifestation of the goodness of
man. He believes that if men were allowed to live free from fear and
want they would live in peace. He also believes that only men with a
sense of their own worth and a respect for the commonality of humanity
will be able to create this new world.
Therefore,
the main driving force behind his push for organization is the effect
that belonging to a group working for a common purpose has had on the
men he has organized. Frustration is transformed into confidence when
men recognize their capability for contribution. The sense of dignity is
particularly crucial in organizational activity among the poor whom
Alinsky warns to beware of programs which attack only their economic
poverty.
Welfare
programs since the New Deal have neither redeveloped poverty areas nor
even catalyzed the poor into helping themselves. A cycle of dependency
has been created which ensnares its victims into resignation and apathy.
To dramatize his warning to the poor, Alinsky proposed sending Negroes
dressed in African tribal costumes to greet VISTA volunteers arriving in
Chicago. This action would have dramatized what he refers to as the
“colonialism” and the “Peace Corps mentality” of the poverty program.
24
Alinsky
is interested in people helping themselves without the ineffective
interference from welfarephiles. Charles Silberman in his book, Crisis
in Black and White describes Alinsky’s motivation in terms of his faith
in People:
The
essential difference between Alinsky and his enemies is that Alinsky
really believes in democracy; he really believes that the helpless, the
poor, the badly-educated can solve their own problems if given the
chance and the means; he really believes that the poor and uneducated,
no less that the rich and educated, have the right to decide how their
lives should be run and what services should be offered to them instead
of being ministered to like children.
25
This
faith in democracy and in the people’s ability to “make it” is
peculiarly American and many might doubt its radicalness. Yet, Alinsky’s
belief and devotion is radical; democracy is still a radical idea in a
world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions.
Alinsky’s belief in self-interested democracy unifies his views on the
use of the power/conflict model in organizing and the position of
morality and welfare in the philosophy underlying his methodology.
CHAPTER I FOOTNOTES:
1 “Plato on the Barricades,” The Economist, May 13-19, 1967, p. 14.
2 “The Professional Radical,” Harper’s, June, 1965, p. 38.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 40.
5 Ibid., p. 45.
6 Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. 1946), p. 4.
7 Ibid., p. 14.
8 Ibid., p. 22.
9 Ibid.
10 Saul D. Alinsky, private interview in Boston, Massachusetts, October, 1968.
11 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, p. 23.
12 John W. Derry, The Radical Tradition (London: MacMillan, 1967), p. vii.
13 Dan Dodson, “The Church, POWER, and Saul Alinsky,” Religion in Life,
(Spring, 1967), p. 11.
14 Ibid.
15 John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1962), p. 26.
16 Dodson, p. 12.
17 Ibid.
18 Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: The Free Press,
1956), p.8.
19 Dodson.
20 Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in Black and White (New York: Random House,
1964), p. 331.
21 Alinsky interview, Boston.
22 Dodson.
23 Saul D. Alinsky, private interview in Wellesley, Massachusetts, January 1969
24 Patrick Anderson, “Making Trouble is Alinsky’s Business,” The New York
Times Magazine (October 9, 1966), p. 29.
25 Silberman, p. 333.
IN NOVEMBER 2012 a stone monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments was placed on the grounds of Oklahoma's state capitol. Seven years earlier, in Van Orden v Perry,
the United States Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments monument
placed on the Texas state capitol grounds did not violate the First
Amendment's clause forbidding government from making any law "respecting
the establishment of religion". But now other religions want in too: in
December the Satanic Temple launched
a campaign to place a monument of its own next to the Ten Commandments,
reasoning that it would give Oklahomans "the opportunity to show that
they espouse the basic freedoms spelled out in the Constitution". They
wanted to raise $20,000 by January 18th; they have already surpassed
that goal. On Monday, they unveiled their monument's design (pictured): a
winged creature with the torso of a man, the head of a goat and horns
sits on a throne beneath a Pentagram, two fingers sagely raised as two
tow-headed children look on in wonder. Satanists, it seems, have a sense
of humour. But what do they actually believe?That turns out to be a difficult question to answer. You will be unsurprised to hear that Satanists are a rather fractious bunch, with many different organisations, beliefs and rituals. Many of these organisations are wholly or partly occult, with much hidden from non-adherents. Some are spiritualists: they worship Satan as a deity. Adherents of the Joy of Satan Ministries, for instance, "know Satan/Lucifer as a real being", and believe he is "the True Father and Creator God of humanity". Others—notably the Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey, the most renowned occultist since Alesteir Crowley; and the Satanic Temple—are materialist, and reject belief in supernatural beings. Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the Satanic Temple, describes himself as "an atheist when it comes to supernatural beliefs", and says that for him Satanism stands for "individual sovereignty in the face of tyranny, and the pursuit of knowledge even when that knowledge is dangerous." LaVey's "Satanic Bible" proclaims "Life is the great indulgence—death the great abstinence! Therefore make the most of the HERE AND NOW!...Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth!"
Despite these differences, certain commonalities link many spiritual and materialist branches of Satanism: namely a belief that the worship of a supernatural deity—and the ecclesiastical structure that evolved to support such worship—places needless restrictions on human knowledge and progress; and a belief in science, rationality and learning, without restrictions. Peter Gilmore, LaVey's successor as head of the Church of Satan, distinguishes between "carnal people and spiritual people": he believes the latter need a "spooky daddy in the sky", whereas he is "happy being the center of [his] universe". In this sense, materialist Satanism seems close to, if not indistinguishable from, organised atheism, or perhaps atheism with rituals. But Mr Gilmore says his church uses Satan in the original Hebrew sense as "The Adversary"—"a figure who will stand up and challenge". Satan in this sense becomes a sort of literary figure or metonymy for challenging orthodoxy, rather than an evil or bloodthirsty god.
All of this is considerably less headline-grabbing than animal sacrifice or ritual murder. And, of course, some have been convicted of horrific acts nominally committed for or connected with Satan. But these are hardly the first murders committed in a religion's name, nor is there any evidence to suggest that these killers are more representative of Satanism than other religiously-inspired killers are of their faiths. Yet somehow one imagines that such arguments will fail to sway Oklahoma's legislators into allowing a giant, goat-headed, pentagrammed statue to sit next to a monument of the Ten Commandments.
