Who is Saul D. Alinsky?
The Bear on Jan 31 2008 at 9:30 am | Filed under: Election 08’
SideBear: This name has been popping up in internet articles and talk radio quite a bit lately and I thought it would be a good time to rerun from our achieves (March 2007) exactly who is Saul D. Alinsky and his connections to the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
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The Students of Saul D. Alinsky
Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) - the son of Russian Jewish immigrants was an old Jewish radical famous as a community organizer from Chicago’s Back of the Yards. From the late 1930s until his death in 1972, Alinsky crisscrossed the country, stirring the have-nots — poor whites and blacks — to demand power from the haves.
Many biographers have labeled Alinsky as a communist, but he always maintained that he never joined the Communist Party. In a Playboy Magazine interview in 1972 he said, “Anybody who tells you he was active in progressive causes in those days (1930s) and never worked with the Reds (Communists) is a goddamn liar. Their platform stood for all the right things, and unlike many liberals, they were willing to put their bodies on the line.”
From the book The Life of Alinsky….
“We’re talking about revolution, not revelation” - Saul Alinsky
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By the late 1960s, Alinsky had become a folk hero to America’s young campus radicals. In 1969, he set up a training institute for organizers and wrote Rules for Radicals, in which he urged America’s youth to become realistic, not rhetorical radicals. In 1970, Time Magazine hailed Alinsky as “a prophet of power to the people,” contending that Alinsky’s ideas had forever changed the way American democracy worked. By the early ’70s, Alinsky concluded that America’s poor would have to ally themselves with the middle class, whom he was afraid would move to the right.
Unfortunately, he never got to organize the middle class. On June 12, 1972 Alinsky died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 63 years old.
He was a mentor to several generations of organizers like Ed Chambers, Fred Ross and Cesar Chavez.
Alinsky’s most famous tactic was “picking a target, freezing it, personalizing it and polarizing it.”
Alinsky was more than just an organizer; he founded the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute commonly called the “Alinsky School” which was the training ground for many important community and labor organizers.
Alinsky wrote several books on the subject of organizing and power seeking….
Many important community and labor organizers came from the “Alinsky School” and studied at the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute.
Ed Chambers, Cesar Chavez, Jack Egan, Tom Gaudette, Michael Gecan, Samantha Gutglass, David Knowlton, Fred Ross, Ed Shurna, Andrew Vachss and…..
Hilary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama
Although Obama did not study directly at “Alinsky School”, he was influenced enough by Alinsky to write a chapter in a book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.
From the chapter in the book……
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Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City
For three years Barack Obama was the director of Developing Communities Project, an institutionally based community organization on Chicago’s far south side. He has also been a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, an organizing institute working throughout the Midwest. Currently he is studying law at Harvard University. “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City” was first published in the August/ September 1988 Illinois Issues [published by then-Sangamon State University, which is now the University of Illinois at Springfield].
Chapter 4 (pp. 35-40) of After Alinsky By Barack Obama can be read here….
Hillary Rodham’s hidden thesis
In 1969 Hillary Rodman Clinton wrote her thesis as a senior in Wellesley College. The senior thesis of every Wellesley alumna is available in the college archives for anyone to read — except for those written by either a “president or first lady of the United States.” This action was taken at Wellesley College at the request from the Clinton White House.
So far, that action has sealed precisely one document: Hillary Rodham’s senior honors thesis in political science, entitled ” ‘There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”
Since HRC is no longer the first lady the thesis can only be read but not copied at Wellesley College but I am sure some intuitive individual in the mode of Sandy Burglar will eventually bring this to light.
Summary
By not knowing the contents of the thesis it is difficult to judge Hillary on it but just the subject matter that she chose for her thesis is enough to make my radar respond.
It is common today for all employers to do a background check on potential employees, especially when the job being applied for is the President of the United States. So I don’t think I am being overzealous in this matter.
After reading about Saul D. Alinsky there is no doubt in my mind that he was a true socialist/communist in the mode of Karl Marx. And as astute Hillary watcher since the early 90s there is no doubt in my mind of her socialist leanings. Just consider these more recent events….
Saul Alinsky would have smiled when in the early 1990s, when she tried to nationalize our health care system — 15% of the economy.
Or just last month when, outraged at soaring oil company profits such as Exxon’s record $39.2 billion, Clinton said: “I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund” for “smart” alternatives.
That amounts to nothing less than a seizure of private property without compensation. Clinton said, “She would “take” profits (confiscate is a better word) and use them as she thinks best.”
She fails to understand that the profits she would seize belong to the shareholders of the Corporation. Since that about 80% of all Americans are vested in the stock market in one form or another via stocks and/or pension funds she is talking about “taking” the people’s money.
Is this not exactly what Alinsky was preaching in the 1930s?
Maybe we have just discovered the origin of those leanings as David Brock, in his 1996 biography, “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham,” called her “Alinsky’s daughter.”
And as Barbara Olsen relates in her book “Hell To Pay” Hillary did her law internship at Yale Law for Bob Treuhaft.
Mr. Treuhaft and his wife, Jessica Mitford were avowed Stalinists, not Marxists. Treuhaft, in fact, was the former leader of the Communist Party of Northern California.
I found these facts from her background more than coincidental and her prior associations very interesting.
One can say that what Hillary wrote as a college student is not germane to today’s issues but you don’t have to go that far back to know that she is an avowed socialist as her position on universal healthcare and “It Takes a Village” (or commune) are both examples of her leanings.
In defense of Hillary (Did I really say that?) is a 40 year old college thesis written by a 21 year old that relevant? Or is this is the window into her soul? Normally I would say no.
But then one has to question why the Clintons’ felt it necessary to use the power of the Presidential Office and demand that this thesis be sealed? Why would they feel they had to? If they had not done that, this probably would not even be an issue at this point. The real problem here is her constant abuse of power. It’s the cover-up stupid!
SideBear: Doesn’t Alinsky’s most famous tactic of “picking a target, freezing it, personalizing it and polarizing it” remind you of the Clinton White practice of the politics of personal destruction?
Or to put it another way as they called it “Containment of the Bimbo Eruption” as they sliced and diced every woman who complained about the advances of the Arkansas Philander.
Saul D. Alinsky, Communist Party, “Alinsky School”, Cesar Chavez, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Rodman Clinton, Wellesley College, Clinton White House, Karl Marx, Barbara Olsen, Stalinists, Marxists
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To clarify, Alinsky wrote ‘Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals’ and ‘Reveille for Radicals.’ Other books contain his articles and essays from Harper’s and there are several books written ABOUT him. He DID NOT, however, write ‘A Role Model for Left-Wing Satanists.’ A woman by the name of Diane Vera did.