The Purpose
Of Means and Ends
A Word About Words
The Education of an Organizer
Communication
In the Beginning
Tactics
The Genesis of Tactic Proxy
The Way Ahead
SAUL ALINSKY was born in Chicago in 1909 and educated first in the
streets of that city and then in its university. Graduate work at
the University of Chicago in criminology introduced him to the
Capone gang, and later to Joliet State Prison, where he studied
prison life.
He founded what is known today as the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky
concepts of mass organization for power. His work in organizing the
poor to fight for their rights as citizens has been internationally
recognized. In the late 1930s he organized the Back of the Yards
area in Chicago (the neighborhood made famous in Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle). Subsequently, through the Industrial Areas Foundation
which he began in 1940, Mr. Alinsky and his staff helped to
organize communities not only in Chicago but throughout the
country. He later turned his attentions to the middle class,
creating a training institute for organizers. He died in 1972.
“This country's leading hell-raiser.... has set down some of the
rules of the game. No one has had more experience or has been more
successful at it than Alinsky.” —The Nation
“Alinsky's techniques and teachings influenced generations of
community and labor organizers, including the church-based group
hiring a young [Barack] Obama to work on Chicago's South Side in
the 1980s.... Alinsky impressed a young [Hillary] Clinton, who was
growing up in Park Ridge at the time Alinsky was the director of
the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Alinsky is that rarity in American life, a superlative organizer,
strategist, and tactician who is also a social philosopher.”
—Charles E. Silberman
“He cannot be bought; he cannot be intimidated; and he breaks all
the rules.” —The Economist (London)
“I consider him to be one of the few really great men of our
century.” —Jacques Maritain
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