Saul Alinsky's Influence on Today's Political Activists
I read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals in college. It's interesting to take a retrospective on his work, to see what others are saying, and to examine the work of people who are still trying to implement his vision and tactics.
Alinsky, unimpressed by dogma, believed in coalitions linked by clear-eyed calculations of self-interest....
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."
The Alinsky method...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 (Obama's) teachers told him. There he would find the self-interest that would spark activism.
Drill Deeper:
