Rush Limbaugh, April 9, 2008

“This sort of clever manipulation was at the heart of Alinsky-style ‘community organizing’ in the interest of revolutionary change. He taught, through his books and seminars for radical acolytes, how to convince the common folks that the organizer was merely their tool, willingly offering his own time and service so that they could succeed in throwing off the yoke of their masters.”

www.patdollard.com, “Hussein, the Money Wizard,” June 9, 2007

Media and blog coverage of Barack Obama, his field program, and his campaign’s ascent has been especially interesting in its overall confused treatment of legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky (Hillary Clinton, as detailed above, has suffered the same kind of muckraking). The memory of Alinsky (now dead 26 years), who popularized and largely put into motion the organizational styling that have been credited for Sen Obama’s most recent successes, has been handled in some circles similarly to the way in which the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (and Sen. Obama’s middle name, for that matter) was; as if he were an erratic, anti-American aggitater whose influence should cast an air of doubt onto that of the candidate.

A leftist who so openly identified with the term “radical” might not so much mind these associations.

However, considering how much Alinsky influenced the tactics of the American left and right, this pot-stirring is simply inaccurate. Alinsky pushed for a people-powered revolution. He might not have fully understood the scope of how his tactics would by systemized and used by folks on all sides of the spectrum, but used by social justice groups for more than a decade, the ascent of his techniques is not just limited to radical leftists. They would become the tools of an increasingly-organizer-oriented mainstream Democratic Party, especially within the context of Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy. The GOP would nearly perfect the art of the GOTV push thanks to the very same tactics. We would see his rules used to popularize the issues and image of mainstream political candidates. Reaching even further across the spectrum, John Altevgot, a former Christian radio host and conservative political activist, has called Alinsky his hero.

While it might politically sexy for partisans to attribute a sense of “anti-American” guilt unto Sen. Obama by association with Alinsky, this is a deceitful, inaccurate attack. Alinsky’s methods, while rooted in a partisan divide, came to transcend them and have been used by those on all sides of the spectrum. Alinsky was the grandfather of the way that we all — right or left, pre or post partisan— organize, and his actions have influenced how we all perpetuate our respective causes. Right, Left, Center, mainstream or fringe, the honest thing for all of us to do would be to celebrate and civilly discuss the tools that Alinsky brought to our table.

-Saul Alinsky

Since Thursday marks the anniversary of Saul Alinsky’s passing, we’ll be focusing a bit on the grandfather of modern political organization. While it has been 26 years since Alinsky passed, he maintains relevance by being featured in the news nearly once a day. This is especially true in the context of this election, where two of the most talked about candidates worked to exemplify Alinsky’s teachings, and Ron Paul’s campaign is still alive thanks in part to modern applications of Alinsky’s methods.

In addition to pointing out cool, web-based odds and ends online, posting videos, and putting together Alinsky-centered podcasts, we’ll be talking with David Sirota on Wednesday and we’ll be sure to ask him Alinsky-relevant questions in focusing on the modern applications of his teachings. If you have anything you’d like to see go up, please be in touch.

Alinsky:

• Wikipedia entry
• 1970 Time Magazine profile
• Biographical overview
• “The American Radical”
• Comprehensive interview

Alinsky and Sen. Obama:

• Obama learns from team-Alinsky
• Obama, Alinsky, and ’self-interest doctrine’
• Obama, (Bobby) Kennedy, and Alinsky

Alinsky and Sen. Clinton

• “Alinsky’s Daughter” and the Super-Secret Saul-Centered Senior Thesis
• More thesis chatter on Hillary Clinton Quarterly
• And even more on The Boston Globe

Alinsky Miscellany:

• Alinsky quoted to suggest that conservatives are more honest than liberals
• Post-Alinsky organizing?
• Taking Alinsky to the inter-webs
• Alinsky’s core rules for radicals
• Lyrics to Sufjan Stevens’ Sufjan Stevens:The Perpetual Self, Or What Would Saul Alinsky Do?

• What to do with all these terrorist videos on Google? Sen. Joe knows!
• Frontline featured “Growing Up Online” last night.
• Are you on “the list”?
• Hillary appeals directly to blogs.
• Estonia Cyber War (awesome comic/movie name?): One Year Later
• The Onion asks – What are we Twittering?
• Zimbabwean singer uses Internet radio to evade censorship.
• Earthquake slows censors, allows Chinese bloggers (temporary) free reign.
• And finally, rest assured — The Internet will fix pretty much everything.

• Having trouble with your online recruitment efforts? Maybe you can ask a Mujahideen what works for him.
• The UN suggests that microfinance efforts have yielded successes among poor borrowers in the developing world, though successes with agriculture are questionable.
• The MySpace Data Availability project! Content transferability! The future is now!
• And the Young Citizen of the Year Award goes to… Teenagers already daunted by their everyday goings on focus their efforts on community organization.
• South Korean “Internet geeks” wage cyber-war against “tainted” US beef imports.
• Water-slinging flash mobsters destroy award-winning garden.
• Different web strategies were signs of different results for Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama. Slowed enthusiasm leads to slowed Internet returns for Clinton.
• And finally, mobile technology in the time advanced social networking.

• Apparently, the Facebook community hates Microsoft.
• Internet fund raising is reportedly keeping Sen. Clinton in the race.
• Online community membership “swells” as the market for social networking software triples.
• Flash Mob, noun, “A sort of secret event where a select few are told to gather and perform some zany act of hilarious consequence at a random place and time.”
• Burmese blogs help to mobilize fund raising efforts in response to cyclone-related destruction.
• George Oats of Flickr very generously discusses how to Internet communities best flourish.
• Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, assets that that our “tethered appliances” like iPhones and Blackberrys create two classes of Internet-user, and this gets in the way of positive netizenry.
• Finally, if your local paper is shutting down due to layoffs, entrepreneurs like Rich Carr might suggest that you start your own news source online.

• Egyptians are using Facebook to defy government attempts to keep incidents of police brutality quiet. One young woman, Esraa Abdel Fatah, 27, is highlighted for or organizational efforts using the site.
• A flash mob takes on Bath Abbey. The mob freezes for five minutes, people stare, and the The Bath Chronicle deems it a success (seriously).
• UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is apparently looking to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for tips on raising lots of cash via the Internet.
• Speaking of Sen. Obama, it’s not just the money that he’s raising online that will potentially make him a powerbroker in the party, even if he loses.
• And finally, another discussion about the rise of shareholder activism and it’s impact on US corporations as the economy continues on a downturn.