Interesting info on Community Organizers

[Gaspar]

I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is.  This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.  

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.

I guess this is why FOTD is happy.  Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is.  This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.  

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.

I guess this is why FOTD is happy.  Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.

You guys never cease to amaze me.  [:I]

[Gaspar]

As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on.  Lets see if we can identify them.

[FOTD]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is.  This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.  

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.

I guess this is why FOTD is happy.  Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.

ROTFLMAO! Caught me....rat out your source! Oh my, this revelation will doom all darksiders like the Obama's!

"As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, "

(source:Richards/Jagger)

[USRufnex]

More guilt by association from Gaspar's right wing elect a Republican at all cost talking points....

Here's the TRUTH....

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/barackobama/

He wrote scores of letters looking for the right job, and almost a year later got an offer to come to Chicago. He gave up a job as a financial writer with an international consulting firm and became a $1,000-a-month community organizer.

Here in Chicago, Obama worked as lead organizer for the Developing Communities Project, a campaign funded by south-side Catholic churches to counteract the dislocation and massive unemployment caused by the closing and downsizing of southeast Chicago steel plants.

From 1984 to '88 Obama built an organization in Roseland and the nearby Altgeld Gardens public housing complex that mobilized hundreds of citizens. Obama says the campaign experienced "modest successes" in winning residents a place at the table where a job-training facility was launched, asbestos and lead paint were negotiated out of the local schools, and community interests were guarded in the development of the area's landfills.

------------------------------------------------

Obama's work on the south side has won him the friendship and respect of many activists. One of them, Johnnie Owens, left the citywide advocacy group Friends of the Parks to join Obama at the Developing Communities Project. He later replaced Obama as its executive director.

"What I liked about Barack immediately is that he brought a certain level of sophistication and intelligence to community work," Owens says. "He had a reasonable, focused approach that I hadn't seen much of. A lot of organizers you meet these days are these self-anointed leaders with this strange, way-out approach and unrealistic, eccentric way of pursuing things from the very beginning. Not Barack. He's not about calling attention to himself. He's concerned with the work. It's as if it's his mission in life, his calling, to work for social justice.

"Anyone who knows me knows that I'm one of the most cynical people you want to see, always looking for somebody's angle or personal interest," Owens added. "I've lived in Chicago all my life. I've known some of the most ruthless and biggest bull****ters out there, but I see nothing but integrity in this guy."

Jean Rudd, executive director of the Woods Fund, is another person on guard against self-appointed, self-promoting community leaders. She admires not only Obama's intelligence but his honesty. "He is one of the most articulate people I have ever met, but he doesn't use his gift with language to promote himself. He uses it to clarify the difficult job before him and before all of us. He's not a promoter; from the very beginning, he always makes it clear what his difficulties are. His honesty is refreshing."

Woods was the first foundation to underwrite Obama's work with DCP. Now that he's on the Woods board, Rudd says, "He is among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants to see our grants make change happen--not just pay salaries."

Another strong supporter of Obama's work--as an organizer, as a lawyer, and now as a candidate--is Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the feisty ACORN community organization, a group that's a thorn in the side of most elected officials. "I can't repeat what most ACORN members think and say about politicians. But Barack has proven himself among our members. He is committed to organizing, to building a democracy. Above all else, he is a good listener, and we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."

Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side. Conducting a session in a New Horizons classroom, Obama, tall and thin, looks very much like an Ivy League graduate student. Dressed casually prep, his tie loosened and his top shirt button unfastened, he leads eight black women from the Grand Boulevard community through a discussion of "what folks should know" about who in Chicago has power and why they have it. It's one of his favorite topics, and the class bubbles with suggestions about how "they" got to be high and mighty.

"Slow down now. You're going too fast now," says Obama. "I want to break this down. We talk 'they, they, they' but don't take the time to break it down. We don't analyze. Our thinking is sloppy. And to the degree that it is, we're not going to be able to have the impact we could have. We can't afford to go out there blind, hollering and acting the fool, and get to the table and don't know who it is we're talking to--or what we're going to ask them--whether it's someone with real power or just a third-string flak catcher."

[Gaspar]

So did he not work for the Gamaliel Foundation?
Did he not teach workshops on the Alinsky method for ACORN?

[Gaspar]

Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?

Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.

Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe

Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY

No talking points, just help me to understand.  
Respectfully.

[Friendly Bear]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?

Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.

Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe

Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY

No talking points, just help me to understand.  
Respectfully.

If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:

He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.

Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:

Columbia University.

The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.

Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.

Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.

As is Barack Hussein Obama.

Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:

"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.

In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."

As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.

Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye.  Friends of Bill Club.

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?

Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.

Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe

Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY

No talking points, just help me to understand.  
Respectfully.

If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:

He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.

Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:

Columbia University.

The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.

Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.

Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.

As is Barack Hussein Obama.

Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:

"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.

In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."

As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.

Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye.  Friends of Bill Club.

As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization.  It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.

Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.

Really quite enlightening.

Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.

Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.

[:O]

[Friendly Bear]

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?

Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.

Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe

Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY

No talking points, just help me to understand.  
Respectfully.

If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:

He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.

Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:

Columbia University.

The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.

Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.

Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.

As is Barack Hussein Obama.

Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:

"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.

In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."

As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.

Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye.  Friends of Bill Club.

As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization.  It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.

Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.

Really quite enlightening.

Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.

Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.

[:O]

Ever found an error in Wikipedia?

I haven't.  

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?

Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.

Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe

Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY

No talking points, just help me to understand.  
Respectfully.

If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:

He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.

Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:

Columbia University.

The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.

Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.

Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.

As is Barack Hussein Obama.

Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:

"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.

In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."

As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.

Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye.  Friends of Bill Club.

As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization.  It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.

Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.

Really quite enlightening.

Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.

Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.

[:O]

Ever found an error in Wikipedia?

I haven't.  

Ever found articles whose accuaracy has been disputed on Wikipedia (normally says it right at the top)

I certainly have.

don't try and pass off Wikipedia as an infallable source of information.  That's just plain stupidity on anybody's part.

[USRufnex]

Many organizations that are offspring of Alinsky-- a guy who DIED in 1972... are faith based"... and now you're demonizing Alinsky just as the right wing loves to do so you can tar and feather Obama...  [!]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.html

Alinsky was a bluff iconoclast who concluded that electoral politics offered few solutions to the have-nots marooned in working-class slums. His approach to social justice relied on generating conflict to mobilize the dispossessed. Power flowed up, he said, and neighborhood leaders who could generate outside pressure on the system were more likely to produce effective change than the lofty lever-pullers operating on the inside.

Both Obama and Clinton admired Alinsky's appeal for small-d democracy but came to believe that social progress is best achieved by working within the political system, and on a national scale.

Both went to law school, turned to a mix of courthouse and community remedies, and eventually moved into electoral politics.

Associates describe the candidates as combining streaks of idealism with a realistic appreciation of the politically possible, a mix the goal-oriented Alinsky would have recognized in himself. Like Alinsky, they fashioned political strategies defined more by coalitions and compromise than by the flashy but often hollow rhetorical pyrotechnics that Clinton, in her Wellesley honors thesis, called "the luxury of symbolic suicide."

Neither candidate would agree to be interviewed about Alinsky. But Marian Wright Edelman, the Children's Defense Fund leader, who knows Obama, worked closely with Clinton and spoke at Alinsky's funeral, said the organizer's allure was formidable, particularly in the energized 1960s.

"He was brilliant. He was working for underdogs. He was trying to empower communities, which we still need to do. He spoke plainly. He had his outrageous side, but he also had his pragmatic side," Edelman said. "Both Hillary and Barack reflect that understanding of community-organizing strategy. Both just know how to leverage power."

------------------------------------------------

Born in 1909 and bred in the politicized precincts of Chicago, Alinsky was a lifelong student of the dynamics of power who concluded that the city's famed Democratic machine remained unmoved unless pushed.

Alinsky took action with an organizing campaign in 1939 in Back of the Yards, the desperate Chicago meatpacking district depicted in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Fashioning an unlikely alliance of unions, the Catholic church and others to win concessions from industry and government, he said organizers must listen to people's desires, then find leaders to carry the fight.

------------------------------------------------

An organizer must "fan the latent hostilities," he wrote in his 1946 handbook "Reveille for Radicals," and "he must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them."

A master of the attention-getting rhetorical flourish, Alinsky once pressed Eastman Kodak to hire more black workers, saying the only thing the company had done about race was introduce color film. Yet he practiced "a method that sounds more radical than it actually was," said Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, who called Alinsky "a tactician more than he was an ideologist."

Alinsky, unimpressed by dogma, believed in coalitions linked by clear-eyed calculations of self-interest. He focused on concrete local issues: bus routes, public housing, jobs. To him, the fashionable cry of the 1960s that power comes from the barrel of a gun was "absurd." To mark his differences with the bomb-throwers, he subtitled his second book "A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."

The calamitous events of that decade turned Clinton away from the GOP of her Park Ridge, Ill., youth. Arriving at Wellesley, she became president of the Young Republicans, but she soon drifted left. She said that 1968, the year she met Alinsky in Chicago, was a watershed in her "personal and political evolution," marked by the escalation of the Vietnam War and the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

When she returned for her senior year that September, Clinton decided to write a thesis on the war on poverty. Her adviser suggested Alinsky. She called her 92-page work, after a line in a T.S. Eliot poem, " 'There Is Only the Fight . . . ': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model."

Much of Alinsky's agenda, she wrote after interviewing him three times, "does not sound 'radical.' " Even his tactics, she concluded, were often "non-radical, even 'anti-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."

Among examples of Alinsky's methods, Clinton cited the 1961 decision to send 2,000 black Woodlawn community residents downtown en masse to register to vote. She mentioned activists picketing the suburban homes of slumlords and a mission to dump garbage outside the sanitation commission.

------------------------------------------------

She (Hillary Clinton) told an interviewer shortly after Bill Clinton became president that government programs were too often administered from on high, with too little effect.

"I basically argued that [Alinsky] was right," Clinton told The Washington Post in 1993. "Even at that early stage, I was against all these people who came up with these big government programs that were more supportive of bureaucracies than actually helpful to people. You know, I've been on this kick for 25 years."

In the end, Clinton gave Alinsky mixed reviews, admiring his charisma and his goal of democratic equality while questioning the usefulness and staying power of a small-bore approach based on stirring up conflict in the inner city. She noted that Alinsky was crafting a fresh appeal to the potentially powerful middle class.

------------------------------------------------

Community organizing, for Clinton principally an academic exercise, was more complex for Obama when he arrived in Chicago in 1985 to work with the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Alinsky network. His experience became an emotional and visceral exploration of the roots of urban African American decay and his own identity.

Times had changed. The '60s were over. Chicago had a black mayor, and Alinsky was gone, dead of a heart attack in 1972. But his work and the fundamentals of his philosophy survived on the far South Side.

Obama stepped into the Alinsky tradition after deciding "mainly on impulse," he has said, at age 21 to become a community organizer. His passion ran to romantic visions of the civil rights struggle.

"He wanted to make that kind of contribution and didn't know how to do it," said Gerald Kellman, who hired Obama. "There's that side of him that's strongly idealistic, very much a dreamer, and this kind of work attracts that kind of person. It isn't just that we're going to change things, but we're going to change things from the grass roots."

Obama spent three roller-coaster years trying to build a new source of power in the Altgeld Gardens housing project and the Roseland community, maneuvering among neighbors, church leaders and politicians who did not always welcome the encounters.

"It was poverty on top of poverty. There were so many people who had given up. They just didn't care," said Loretta Augustine-Herron, who signed up to work with Obama. "I don't think he knew how bad it was until he came to our area. He had to have the tenacity and the patience to train us, and sometimes he had to be frustrated."

The Alinsky method, which Obama taught long afterward, is centered on one-on-one conversations. The organizer's task is to draw out people's stories, listening for their goals and ambitions -- "the stuff that makes them tick," one of his teachers told him. There he would find the self-interest that would spark activism.

------------------------------------------------

In time, Obama helped build and guide a small network of grass-roots groups that agitated for better playgrounds, improvements in trash pickup and the removal of asbestos from public housing. The city opened a jobs office in the tumbledown community as the lights were going out in nearby factories.

It was in those neighborhoods, Obama said in announcing for president, "that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith." But by the time Obama moved on, Kellman said, he had seen "the limits of what could be achieved."

Obama spent three years at Harvard Law School, then returned to Chicago, where he taught constitutional law, handled civil rights cases and worked with community groups. He continued to teach the Alinsky philosophy, although he told the New Republic recently that "Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest."

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a friend of Obama's, sees another difference. "If you read Alinsky's teachings, there are times he's confrontational. I have not seen that in Barack. He's always looking for ways to connect."

------------------------------------------------

"It's time for politicians and other leaders to take the next step and to see voters, residents or citizens as producers of this change," Obama told Hank De Zutter of the Chicago Reporter. "What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them?"

What Obama and Clinton both learned, said Edelman, of the Children's Defense Fund, is that "community organizing is crucial but not enough."

Chicago organizer Gregory Galluzzo, Obama's former supervisor, who likes to describe himself as Alinsky's St. Paul, believes that Obama's exposure to the organizer's liturgy taught him that wisdom can emerge from the grass roots. "Hillary," he said, "leans toward the elites."

But Galluzzo believes that both candidates were influenced by their encounters with Alinsky and his methods. "By either one of them being in office," he said, "we're going to have a government that's more responsive to the ordinary people."

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?

Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.

Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe

Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY

No talking points, just help me to understand.  
Respectfully.

If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:

He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.

Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:

Columbia University.

The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.

Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.

Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.

As is Barack Hussein Obama.

Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:

"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.

In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."

As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.

Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye.  Friends of Bill Club.

As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization.  It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.

Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.

Really quite enlightening.

Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.

Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.

[:O]

Ever found an error in Wikipedia?

I haven't.  

Ever found articles whose accuaracy has been disputed on Wikipedia (normally says it right at the top)

I certainly have.

don't try and pass off Wikipedia as an infallable source of information.  That's just plain stupidity on anybody's part.

I just like to say Wiki is fallable when someone uses it to dispute one of my points. [][}:)]

Pretty much every media organization has the same problem.  I defintely don't put a whole lot of weight on Con or Lib blogs.  MSM isn't a whole lot better at getting all the facts straight because there is so much competition in the media and we are used to instantaneous news these days.

[Friendly Bear]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on.  Lets see if we can identify them.

Saul Alinsky dedicated his book "Rules for Radicals" to Lucifer.

Obama has a signed copy sitting on his bedstand.

[we vs us]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on.  Lets see if we can identify them.

I dunno, Gassy, that list at least in part looks a lot like some of the tactics that the GOP likes to deploy.  Maybe we can see if we they do it too.