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and I should care because...?
You should be a stand up comic...
and I should care because...?
See that what my thought when looking at the photograph is that one doesn't have any perspective as to the exact context of the photo.
What if it was taken at a seminar for the community organizing stuff he did?
What if it was taken at a class about political science?
+4 or 5
Rules for Radicals
In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing led Rules for Radicals. Those who prefer cooperative tactics describe the book as out-of-date. Nevertheless, it provides some of the best advice on confrontational tactics. Alinsky begins this way:
What follows is 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.
His “rules” derive from many successful campaigns where he helped poor people fighting power and privilege
For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.
According to Alinsky, the organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome su ion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.
Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.
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.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
http://vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/rules.html
Doesn't seem to be much that shocking there to me. I'm sure someone will object to the "Christian church" dig, but hey.
Quite frankly it seems like something the Tea Party might be able to use.
I have no problem with any of that.
Non-violent protest tactics for people who don't have a lot of free spe- er, money, to influence politics to advance their own interests.
Yonivore, can you please tell me why specifically this is a bad thing?
It seems that you seem to think it is, which truly baffles me.
Hmm, I seem to remember something about somebody coding for the board doing something where "Luck_The_Fakers_" got subs uted or inserted in random (HA) places.
Kori probably knows what the deal is.
As you can see, my memory of that is fuzzy.
Sounds like a manipulator to me.
+gashole
Cheers, Gashole!
:beer
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast....boogeyman.htmlBritish blogger Richard Adams reads up on Saul Alinsky:
[He] was what passes for a left-wing radical in American politics, agitating for better living conditions for the poor in the slums of Chicago and New York – that has been filtered through the likes of right-wing talkshow hosts such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin. ... Rather than the far-left figure that Gingrich and others would paint him, Alinsky appears in his writings – including Rules for Radicals, published in 1971 – to be more concerned with the nuts and bolts of grassroots organisation in effecting change. "Dogma is the enemy of human freedom," Alinsky once observed, and said he never considered joining the Communist party.Dan Savage draws a parallel:
Alinsky's advice to young radicals—"go home, organize, build power [and] you be the delegates"—is the strategy adopted by American religious right and social conservatives in the 1980s.They're organized, they're the delegates, they pack the school boards, they pack the city councils and state legislatures. The right's adoption of Alinsky's strategy was a success for the right and a disaster for the country. But you gotta give 'em credit: the right got out there and they organized and they built power. And how did they do that? Well, they did it with... wait for it... community organizers!Andrew Kaczynski dug up the above image:
In the wake of the devastating Detroit riots of the summer of 1967, Michigan Gov. George Romney — a liberal Republican — met the radical organizer Saul Alinsky to discuss the grievances of the urban black poor. ... "I think you ought to listen to Alinsky," Romney told his white allies, according to T. George Harris's 1968 book, "Romney's Way."
I thought Obama's piece in the OP was well written and thought out. Frankly, more respect, not less, after reading that.
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