What I plan to say . . .

I wrote an essay in October 2008 in response to some comments from a friend. I wanted to distribute the essay somehow and never thought of blogging. Still maybe no one but me, and those in my immediate circle of friends, will ever read it. But I will give it a try. In college speech class, I was taught to loosely organize a speech by telling people what I planned to say, tell them, then tell them what I said. So, I shall use my essay to tell you what I plan to say. The essay can be difficult to follow, because I have strung so many quotes together, but it will make more sense as, over the next few weeks, I "read" again - Rules for Radicals.

A few days ago, a friend of mine suggested that the Republican Party was using class warfare during this election cycle. I was stunned at the suggestion and realized that many of my Democrat friends might be thinking the same thing. Having just finished reading Rules for Radicals, a book written by Saul Alinsky in 1971, I decided to respond in the words of Saul Alinsky. Let me add that Barack Obama was greatly influenced by this book. He has used, as the foundation of his campaign, the tactics clearly described by Mr. Alinsky. My response to my friend is composed primarily of quotes from the book. I hope it is not hard to understand; if it is, give it a second read.

“Few of us survived the Joe McCarthy holocaust of the early 1950s and of those there were even fewer whose understanding and insights had developed beyond the dialectical materialism of orthodox Marxism.” These are the words of Saul Alinsky author of Rules for Radicals. Saul Alinsky was the first “community organizer” – or to define himself as such. In the book’s Prologue, Alinsky, addressing the American youth of the 1970s, says, “As an organizer I start from where the world is . . . . that means working within the system . . . . Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system . . . “ He told the youth that surrounded him after the 1968 Chicago Democrat Convention, “Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.”

Barack Obama’s resume states that he was a Chicago community organizer. Saul Alinsky’s community organizing test tube was the “Back of the Yards” ghetto in Chicago; Obama organized in the same South Chicago ghetto - a community organizer after the Saul Alinsky model. Rules for Radicals is Obama’s bible; he has internalized it, so that he doesn’t know where the book ends and Barack Obama begins. In reading parts of the book, one can hear Barack Obama on the presidential stump. Obama spoke in San Francisco about the voters in western Pennsylvania frustrated with lost jobs and unkept promises, clinging to their guns and religion, in the same tones as Saul Alinsky when referring to the middle class, “Seeking some meaning in life, they turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defender of the “American” faith. Now they even develop rationalizations for a life of futility and frustration . . . . Insecure in this fast-changing world, they cling to illusory fixed points . . . (pg 188).”

Rules for Radicals was written “for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away. In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power. . . (pg 3).” “My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and to use it. I will argue that the failure to use power for a more equitable distribution of the means of life for all people signals the end of the revolution and the start of the counterrevolution (pg 10).”

Saul Alinksy equates the words organizer and revolutionary. “The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustrations . . . you must agitate to the point of conflict (pg 116-117).” In describing the organizer, Alinsky said that the community organizer “does not have to have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist. . . . Political relativists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self interest (pg. 12-13).” “Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times (pg 30-31).” Alinsky continues by saying, “A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives – agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate. . . .They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do (Prologue).” “Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move. From there it’s a short and natural step to political pollution, to Pentagon pollution. . . .(Prologue).“

Alinsky believed that change is achieved by manipulation. He enumerated eleven means and ends ethics of organizing; “the third rule of the ethics of means and ends is in war the end justifies almost any means (pg 29).” In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky perfected a battle plan by which different segments of society could be effectively manipulated to reach the organizer’s desired end, even using class, race, or other kinds of warfare to achieve that end. The organizer always knows better than the organized and manipulates the organized for power – “an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self interest (pg. 12-13).”

The question that remains - is the accrued power to the benefit of the organized or the organizer?

“The setting for the drama of change has never varied. Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores (pg 18).” “On top are the Haves . . . numerically the Haves have always been the fewest. . . . On the bottom are the world’s Have-Nots. . . . Between the Haves and the Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores – the middle class (pg 18-19).” “The middle classes are numb, bewildered, scared into silence. They don’t know what, if anything, they can do. This is the job for today’s radical – to fan the embers of the hopelessness into a flame to fight. . . Together we can change it for what we want. Let’s start here and there – let’s go! (pg 194).”

Alinsky had little respect for the middle class, but saw them as a tool to achieve his ends. “Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon American’s white middle class. That is where the power is. When more than three-fourths of our people from both the point of view of economics and of their self-identification are middle class, it is obvious that their action or inaction will determine the direction of change. . . . even if all the low-income parts of our population were organized . . . it would not be powerful enough to significant, basic, needed changes (pg 184).”

Community Organizer Barack Obama learned the lessons of Saul Alinsky well. He has used the battle tactics in Rules for Radicals to propel himself into the most powerful national political battleground and possibly to become the 44th President of the United States. It took longer than Saul Alinsky had hoped – decades longer - but his words still echo that he spoke to the young radicals after the infamous 1968 Chicago Democrat Convention, “Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.” Or even the President.

Why bother?

Last year, in the months before the presidential election, I read a great deal about the man who was to become President of the United States (POTUS) - Barack Obama. One small book, Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, spoke volumes to me about this man. Candidate Obama's experience as a community organizer was an important part of resume. I didn't know what "community organizer" meant - oh I had an idea - but I really didn't understand until I read Rules for Radicals (RFR). Last fall, I carried the book around with me and begged people to read it; most, however, thought I was just a crazy woman. Why did I care about a book that was written nearly forty years ago and what did it have to do with the election? With careful reading - the book reveals much about about the man, Barack Obama. RFR is the foundation of community organizing and one cannot understand this man, if one does not understand community organizing.

Now, these months later, media talking heads mention RFR. I can tell though, most have not read it. They are only quoting parts and pieces - and that from others who have read it.

So - I decided to read RFR on a blog. I will make comments; but, I am not a political scientist. I just hope others will begin to read RFR, buy a copy of their own - I think I paid $14 for it - and form their own opinions about the community organizer who is President of the United States . . . Barack Obama.