Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky - Quotes and Excerpts

Crossroad ^ | 1971 | Saul Alinsky

[CutePuppy]

Excerpted from full article in the interest of space and essence.

* Article's link to Hillary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky is a reference to November 26, 2007 FR article written and posted by FReeper Richard Lawrence Poe.

[CutePuppy]

Saul Alinsky's quotes from BrainyQuote.com

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

History is a relay of revolutions.

Last guys don't finish nice.

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it.

[PubliusMM]

Ping...

[ETL]

Saul Alinsky on "Change"...
From Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing:

"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. 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 change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."

Saul Alinsky, The Latter Rain (Latter-Rain.com is a "Liberation Theology" commie-left website -etl)
http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/alinski.htm
_____________________________________________________

"The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction.

The record turnout in the Democratic Presidential primary races shows that millions of voters, including millions of new voters, are using this election to bring about real change. We wholeheartedly agree with them."

http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/907/1/4/
_____________________________________________________

A Landslide Mandate For Change

Congratulations on an extraordinary history making election!

We can think back with pride to decades of hard work toward our strategic goal of a big enough, broad enough and united enough labor and all-people’s movement that could overcome the ultra-right blockage to all progress. That all people’s movement has come to life, it is dynamic and it has the potential to keep growing.

The election of Barack Obama and a strengthened Congress creates new conditions in our country. There is now the possibility to shift gears and move forward. This new day requires us to further develop our tactics in order to continue to deepen and broaden labor and people’s unity.

There are thousands of experiences that we all have had in these momentous days, some large, some small, all of which express the enormity of change in thinking and readiness for involvement that is underway and that steels us for the battles ahead.

The tears of joy we all shared as crowds gathered to watch the election results here and throughout the world dramatize the new moment we are in.

http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/991/1/154/
_____________________________________________________

"Barack Obama told supporters that
'change has come to America' as he
claimed victory in a historic presidential election."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html

[Mr. Jazzy]

Please tell me that this bastard Alinsky is buried somewhere so I can go piss on his grave.

Thanks.

[Ronin]

Somebody build me a time machine so I can go back and shoot that satan-spawn before he has a chance to write this crap.

[RhoTheta]

This is nothing new. Alinsky didn’t invent this. The serpent in the Garden of Eden was the first Community Organizer. “Hath God said....”

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That’s a thought...

[gidget7]

A better thought is to use what we can AGAINST the Alinsky-ites. Ridicule for one!!

[CutePuppy]

Saul David Alinsky
January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel, California

When asked about death, Alinsky replied "They'll send me to hell — and I'll organize it."

[CutePuppy]

Alinsky didn’t invent this.

He didn't invent it, but he distilled it, and his disciples keep pouring it to the ambitious "repressed".

For Clinton and Obama, a Common Ideological Touchstone - WaPo, March 25, 2007

[CutePuppy]

Ridicule for one!!

Yep. 'Tis better to give than to receive.

[Spunky]

Thanks for posting this.

[CutePuppy]

You are welcome. To be effective against our enemies, we have to know what drives them and what tactics they are likely to employ.

I was hoping this could be a Reader’s Digest version of it on FR.

[SnarlinCubBear]

#13 above - Freeze your target, etc. - When I read that a few months ago, I saw that was exactly what the left did to Palin and her family.

It’s rather effective. They have managed to marginalize her to an awful lot of the population. Such a shame.

[CutePuppy]

They have done this successfully to Gingrich, Cheney, Bush and others.

The reasons why it is rather effective are that, on one side, they stay on message and have the support of massive media machine to hammer the message to impressionable and otherwise uninformed; while on the other side people either shrink from their support or just stay on the sidelines, afraid of getting involved.

Yet liberals failed to "freeze" Reagan and G.W. Bush in his first term because there was a strong and effective response from the targets themselves and ridicule of the attacks and the attackers from the supporters far and wide. That's the "Teflon effect".

Bush survived these attacks very well until 2005 partly because of 9/11, in large part because conservatives coalesced around him and attacks were met with sharp PR. It really showed in mid-term and later in 2004. Bush eventually lost the battle for the "hearts and minds" because after winning second term, Bush lost a lot of "home" support with some of his Big Government policies and PR mistakes and then went completely incommunicado, making it difficult, if not impossible to defend him and the GOP "brand". Congressional "leadership", if there was one after 1999, didn't have any plans, ideas, or communication strategy because in many cases they had to work against their "leader" in the White House. Easy to "freeze" and personalize.

GOP could easily personalize and freeze every "conservative" Dem congressional candidate tying them to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in 2006 and 2008, but I didn't see or hear it even being mentioned or discussed.

Republicans simply don't do cause celebre very well. They are busy with work and family and other things, they don't have vast well-financed legal and PR machines designed to do the "wet work" on their opponents. It's the kind of job that Republicans just won't do.

[Major Matt Mason]

Please tell me that this bastard Alinsky is buried somewhere so I can go piss on his grave.

I think the next, big Tea Party gathering should be held wherever this Marxist POS is buried. We can then all march to his gravesite and urinate on his grave en masse.

[Mr. Jazzy]

I will make sure that I am “properly” hydrated in order to complete the mission.

[GOPJ]

"An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent... He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises.... "The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. p.117 "Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum.... Process is really purpose." p.122

Worth another look...

[CutePuppy]

"Change comes from power, and power comes from organization." p.113

"The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new." p.116

Yes, well worth a look... and, hopefully, taken as an invitation to counter action.

Also deserve a closer look and much bigger publicity than they have gotten - Alinsky's disciples Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven of Cloward-Piven / Cloward-Piven Strategy fame.