Who is rules for radicals dedicated to

In an age of dissolving political labels, he is a radical—but not in the usual sense, and he is certainly a long way removed from New Left extremists. His strategy was emulated by the Federal Government in its antipoverty and model-cities programs: the poor have been encouraged to participate in measures for their relief instead of just accepting handouts.

A sharing of power, thinks Alinsky, is what democracy is all about. Where power is lacking, so are hope and happiness. Alinsky seeks power for others, not for himself. His goal is to build the kind of organization that can dispense with his services as soon as possible.

Nor does he confine his tactics to the traditionally underprivileged. Although he has largely helped the very poor, he has begun to teach members of the alienated middle classes how to use power to combat increasingly burdensome taxes and pollution. Alinsky was never one to shy away from conflict. The general idea here is that purity about tactics is a luxury that only the already powerful can afford; that doesn't mean anything goes, but it does mean that the undesirability of a particular means has to be weighed against the gravity of the injustice being fought.

A bogus list of "rules to create a social state" allegedly written by Alinsky has made the rounds since Barack Obama became president, including things like "Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control. Conservatives aren't wrong that Alinsky was solidly on the left of the American political spectrum. The section of Reveille for Radicals defining what the term "radical" meant to Alinsky lays out some more specific beliefs:. 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 … The Radical believes completely in real equality of opportunity for all peoples regardless of race, color, or creed. He insists on full employment for economic security but is just as insistent that man's work should not only provide economic security but also be such as to satisfy the creative desires within all men.

In the next chapter he adds, "Radicals … hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. In Reveille he is as contemptuous of "top down" approaches to social planning as he is of laissez-faire economic policies. The Radical, he says, "will bitterly oppose complete Federal control of education. He will fight for individual rights and against centralized power …The Radical is deeply interested in social planning but just as deeply suspicious of and antagonistic to any idea of plans which work from the top down.

Democracy to him is working from the bottom up. The portions of Reveille dealing with Alinsky's views on American history are revealing in this regard. He expresses sympathy for Thomas Jefferson in his dispute with Alexander Hamilton, and cites Jefferson's dichotomy between "those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes" and "those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.

Alinsky had no patience for the Weather Underground and other violent New Left groups. Alinsky also had harsh words for New Left activists in the s. Sugrue notes that this is in keeping with Alinsky's stance in the s, when he "had little patience for the bona fide socialists and card-carrying Communists" and "repudiated Marxism.

So, yes, Alinsky was a man of the left. But he wasn't a Communist, he wasn't a Marxist, and he was certainly not a part of the New Left.

The latter is a particularly common misconception. In , David Brooks used his New York Times column to assail the Tea Party movement for copying Alinsky's tactics more on that later , calling him "the leading tactician of the New Left. Alinsky's whole problem with the New Left is that they eschewed his tactical advice. As for Alinsky's own musical tastes, in Reveille he writes that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is "the song of America's Radicals … the martial music of anger, of faith, of hope … the battle hymn of the American Radical … Its words burn in the hearts of all Radicals.

She spoke to Alinsky in the course of writing the thesis, and thanked him in the acknowledgements for "providing a topic, sharing his time and offering me a job. But Clinton takes pains to hear out criticisms of Alinsky's model.

She notes that it is at least somewhat dependent on Alinsky's unique talents. Most crucially, she sympathetically cites criticisms of Alinsky on the grounds that community organizing is insufficient in a world in which "the territorially-defined community is no longer a workable social unit. Clinton also, as shown by the newly uncovered letter she sent to Alinsky, was in contact with him while in law school at Yale.

She thanks him for "encouraging words of last spring in the midst of the Yale-Cambodia madness" a reference, presumably, to the Yale protests over a trial of Black Panther leaders and of the Nixon administration's bombing of Cambodia and alludes to the duo's "biennial conversations. His secretary's response seems to confirm that the two had a friendly relationship.

Mentioning that he will be in San Francisco while Clinton was in Berkeley, Harper continues, "I know he would like to have you call him so that if there is a chance in his schedule maybe you can get together. Even at that early stage I was against all these people who come up with these big government programs that were more supportive of bureaucracies than actually helpful to people.

In her memoir, Living History , Clinton recalls her thesis and relationship with Alinsky, but notes that she came to disagree with him over his contention that real change can't occur from the inside — which makes sense, given that she was a sitting US Senator by then:.

For my thesis, I analyzed the work of a Chicago native and community organizer named Saul Alinsky, whom I had met the previous summer. Alinsky was a colorful and controversial figure who managed to offend almost everyone during his long career.

His prescription for social change required grassroots organizing that taught people to help themselves by confronting government and corporations to obtain the resources and power to improve their lives. I agreed with some of Alinsky's ideas, particularly the value of empowering people to help themselves.

But we had a fundamental disagreement. He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn't. Later, he offered me the chance to work with him when I graduated from college, and he was disappointed that I decided instead to go to law school. Alinsky said I would be wasting my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within.

President Obama, unlike Clinton, had no personal ties to Alinsky. Alinsky, after all, died when Obama was 10 years old. But Obama was certainly influenced by Alinsky's followers and overall model of organizing. Obama, famously, worked as a community organizer in Chicago between to Jerry Kellman, who hired Obama, was trained by Alinsky's organizing school , as were Mike Kruglik and Gregory Galluzzo, his other main organizing mentors.

Paul who never met Jesus. Alinsky said I would be wasting my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within. Based on what she has actually said and written about Saul Alinsky, to characterize Hillary Clinton as a starry-eyed acolyte of the Rules for Radicals author is a stretch. Fact Checks. Questionable Quotes. Mostly False About this rating. What's True Saul Alinsky wrote an epigraph describing the rebellious angel Lucifer as "the first radical known to man" in his book "Rules for Radicals.

This is the epigraph in question: Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which , the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.

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