The Chicago Tribune greeted the publication of "Rules for Radicals" with a lead editorial headlined "ALINSKY'S AT IT AGAIN" and concluded:

              "Rubbing raw the sores of discontent may be jolly good fun for him, but we are unable to regard it as a contribution to social betterment. The country has enough problems of the insoluble sort as things are without working up new ones for no discernible purpose except Alinsky's amusement."

    To which Alinsky responded: "The establishment can accept being screwed, but not being laughed at. What bugs them most about me is that unlike humorless radicals, I have a hell of a good time doing what I'm doing."

The Progress Report, Interview with Saul Alinsky.



I want to thank those who have borne with me to the bitter end as I've explored President Obama's rhetoric over the past four postings.  Number five concludes it all, as I can count better on one hand than two, and besides, the world and TPM have moved on to more important things like the green revolution in Iraq, Universal Health Care, and whether or not Ma'am Boxer was overbounding her steps in asking a General to call her Senator.  

My thesis throughout is pretty simple.

• Obama's life history as a bridge between communities (racial, ethnic, religious, philosophical) in conflict, plus
• a big picture view of history as the story of either communities interacting for the common good or in conflict to their detriment led him to
• Law, and especially constitutional law, as a field which uses language precisely in a matter which clarifies the causes of conflict and through that clarification allows mediation and negotiation to lead to resolution, making
• Community Organizing properly understood a natural field of interest for him.
  

It is the nature of Community Organizers to reform a political system from outside, as the quotation with which I opened this essay makes abundantly clear.   A Community Organizer is not like a Small Town Mayor, Governor Palin.  Community Oganizers are "in your face" types to mayors of towns of all sizes-including Mayor Giuliani.  They don't dismiss Community organizers- they dislike and fear them.  This is true for "professional" politicians regardless of party, though the Democrats may be a wee bit more subtle about this than Republicans are.  How many Democrats in office rose to the defense of Project Acorn?  How many hunkered down and waited for the ruckus to blow over?

I hope you read the entire interview with Alinsky-which first appeared in Playboy, of all places.  It will place community organizing on the landscape of politics in the position it belongs.  If you can stomach it, you might read some of the rabid right's comments on him-the web is rife with this.  I'm not going to provide a link for this, but Saul Alinsky Grooming N*gg*rs for War at Podblanc (no link for that, either. Google it if you have a strong stomach) is typical.  I will provide a link to The Southern Poverty Law Center's Report on Craig Cobb, the evil genius behind Podblanc.  

Sorry for the digression. 

It might be better to call Community Organizing Community Building, because a populations sense of community may not exist before the Organizer's activities begin.  The story of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council is enlightening.  Watch the Video at the link and read the history.

 
 

The photo tells the tale-St. Rose of Lima meets the Polish Falcons, the St. Cyril Girl Scouts, and who knows who else to put a little fire under the aldermen and mayor of Chicago (Richard J.'s Chicago?  Don't know, the picture isn't dated-but some Democrat or other's Chicago).  Alinsky and his philosophy stopped these groups from fighting each other and start fighting a common enemy, their own political powerlessness.

What I think is interesting and audacious about Barack Obama is that he's trying to create a hybrid model:- governing as an insider with the tools of an outsider.  This is a new model-it may or may not work, but we don't really understand it as well as we need to.  Obama has very little direct power over Congress-much less than we think he has.  We can thank that partly on James Madison who designed a Constitution complex enough so government  wouldn't do very much and what it did do it wouldn't do very fast.  We can also thank the nefarious deed which defined corporations as persons-I'll write about that sometime, perhaps, if there are some who don't know the story.  We can also thank those who wrote a limitation to Presidential terms in office while scrupulously avoiding term limits for themselves.  I wrote elsewhere that there are many Democrats just waiting for the Obama Effect to blow over-hopefully in only one term-but certainly in two.  Maybe they're secretly in the majority, who knows?  But as long as 90 per cent of congressional seats are secure and big money runs the campaigns, Democrats and Republicans alike can thumb their noses at the President and make nice sounds while frustrating him at every turn.

The President has one tool-the majority he organized to first win the nomination and then the election.  His tactic-get everyone to the table and bludgeon them with us.  We push them through him.  But we have to do the heavy lifting.  That's how it works.  That's how it worked for King in Birmingham. And we take what we can get at the first round and go right back to get more.  "Why after all the turmoil did you settle for three clerks in downtown Birmingham?"  "Three clerks?  We mean three clerks in every store." The idea of a window of opportunity which will close forever is not really a vision compatible with the way community organizers work.

If he's going to move Congress, he's going to move them through us, and we're going to have to make not nice, loud, and often.   But can he hold us together and keep us organized?  Aye, there's the rub.  I suspect it wasn't easy to keep St. Rose of Lima and the Polish Falcons on the same page.  But I think it will be harder for him to keep us coherent enough to provide pressure.  

I look at the advice Obama gets through the pages of TPM.  Robert Reich says drop everything and focus on health care, because that's the most important.  For someone else-trying Bush and and his cronies for war crimes is most important...drop everything else and focus on that.  No-closing Guantanamo is the most important...focus on that.  Hey, what about unemployment?  That's most important.  No, solving the Palestine Conflict is most important, attack that first- and so it goes.  And when he devotes attention to most important number seventy-three everyone else pounds on him except those for whom number seventy-three is numero uno.  

And what's true at TPM is not less true elsewhere.  Obama says (rightly, I think) that we should not let the Iran Regime cast the current protest as an American issue.  So of course near unanimous votes in both Houses of Congress ignore the President's wishes and play into the hands of the Supreme Council and the Theocrats.  There is a greater Obama Effect in Teheran than there is on Capitol Hill.

Imagine a world where an endorsement from Obama of Universal Health Care with a public provider option for all evoked letters to Senators and Congressmen from thirty million Americans-less than half of those who voted for him, and far less than the numbers polls indicate would favor such a plan.  Aside from ridding the Post Office of debt, don't you think Congress might pay some attention?  Suppose five per cent of those voting for Obama happened to drop by the local office of their Senator or Congressman-just happened to do it on the same day.  I have a feeling there would be some powerful speeches in support of Public Health Care.  Or same scenario for global warming, or regulation of the banking system?  I have a feeling congress would work a little harder and a little more efficiently.

That's not a world I live in-yet.  So maybe I ought to look for 1%:  that would still be 694,000 persons wielding their influence on day to day issues they thought were important.  How many mail trucks would it take to carry 694,000 letters to capitol hill?

Thankee for reading, as always.  See you again if I think of anything to say about anything.