Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinsky
 Outlining his strategy in organizing, Alinsky writes: There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoyevsky 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 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, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families &ndash; more than seventy million people &ndash; whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default. For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting whatever he believed to be 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 situation, they stop thinking about it. According to Alinsky, the organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome suspicion 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 situation. Alinsky would say, &#34;The first step in community organization is community disorganization.&#34; Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a &#34;mass army&#34; that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals. According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. &#34;The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.&#34; In a separate chapter he suggests that the perennial question, &#34;Does the end justify the means?&#34; is meaningless as it stands: the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, &#34;Does this particular end justify this particular means?&#34; These rules of the ethics of means and ends are only one chapter of his book, totally distinct from his &#34;clear set of rules for community organizing.&#34;