Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Rules for Radicals: How to Begin Taking Back Our Government

I am disgusted and fed up with campaign coverage. I don't give a crap about Hilary 'tearing up' or Obama wearing or not wearing a flag pin of any sort! I am not impressed with idiots who find patriotism in a flag pin like Bush finds courage at the bottom of a bottle! I care even less about how McCain --an idiot --is doing!

The debates might as well be about how many angels can dance on the head of a flag pin. Everything is eyewash until the treasonous criminals who seized the White House are brought to justice before a hangin' judge! Until someone addresses that issue, everything else is just meaningless polemics, a sop, bread and circuses to let the 'people' believe that they actually count. Since 911, you don't count!

I am not a 'Kumbayah Liberal'. I am a roll up your sleeves and carry a tire iron radical! I am not gentile when someone like Bush --a prissy, prancy, snot-nosed, gay boy cheerleader --tries to bullshit me while scrapping the Constitution and threatening the rest of the world with nukes! Bush's co-conspirators, the GOP, the MIC and certain well-heeled individuals have much to answer for. With any luck at all, they will! In a dock! Charged with a panoply of crimes for which there is abundant probable cause now to try their sorry asses! Don't waste time calling me a 'conspiracy theorist'; I'm not talking theories --I'm talking indictments!

The American left used to be tough. Throughout the American left were found tough minded organizers and radicals like Saul Alinsky who did not mince words.
"Liberals in their meetings utter bold works; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement 'which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.' They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still sit.

The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. There is a saying that the Liberal is one who walks out of the room when the argument turns into a fight.

Society has good reason to fear the Radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the Radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while Liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives.

Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action - by using power. Liberals may then timidly follow along or else, as in most cases, be swept forward along the course set by Radicals, but all because of forces unloosed by Radical action. They are forced to positive action only in spite of their desires ...

--Saul Alinsky: The American Radical
The American left was, in fact, so tough that a shocked and awed GOP decided that if they could not come up with their own strategies they would revert to form and steal those of the 'organizers' that represented America's left wing throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s. Though they will not admit it, the GOP was as impressed as it was frightened with Saul Alinsky. He had, after all, organized the tough Chicago neighborhoods made famous by Upton Sinclair in his novel: The Jungle.
There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky 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 change 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 - more than seventy million people - 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.."[2]

--Saul Alinsky, Organizer
So impressed was the GOP that throughout the '80s --the decade that saw the rise of Tom DeLay --GOP consultants would include Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals' as the cornerstone of the various GOP 'Campaign Manuals' that they put together. It was a GOP manual, in fact, that was my introduction to Alinsky. I think it's time the 'left' reclaimed Alinsky. He is, after all, one of our own. It's time the 'left' dust off his 'Rules for Radicals', reclaim them, and put them to work in service to a higher call than that of Bush self-aggrandizement, bullying, and outright theft of the world's resources.
RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."

Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people."

It results in confusion, fear and retreat.

Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy."

Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

RULE 6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."

They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

RULE 7: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."

Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up."

Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 10: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive."

Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

RULE 11: "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

--Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
Even now, Alinsky is quoted more often by the 'right' than the 'left' who should be studying him. I found the following comment on the 'Free Republic':
"Hillary!" Rodham (Pre-Clinton), while at Wellesley, studied Saul Alinsky, whose ideas provided the organizing thesis for her (mysteriously unavailable) Senior Honors Paper.(!)

This is the absolute truth!

Heads up!
My response to the 'wing nut' who posted this is: so what! I advocate taking Alinsky back. He's the genie in the lamp. He served the left well until, somewhere, sometime, he was hijacked. The right wing rubbed the lamp and his 'Rules for Radicals' became the object of right wing study, application and practice.

The right wing, however, misunderstood and misapplied Alinsky. The right wing organizes from the top down; Alinsky from people to people, block by block! The right wing is ideologically constipated. Alinsky believed in what works for the people.

I say: reclaim Alinksy, the Genie! Let him out of the lamp and put him back to work for greater and better causes than the enrichment of some one percent of the population who didn't work for it and doesn't deserve it. Class warfare? You bet your sweet ass, it is! Bring it on! Put Alinsky to work for peace and people --not guns and phony aristocrats!

Put Alinsky to work organizing 'committees' that will track down war criminals (we know who they are) when they are out of office and on the lamb. Put Alinsky to work organizing research teams that will support numerous capital crimes cases. Put Alinsky's principles to work getting the goods on the 'real killers' of 911! And we know who they are as well! Some good starts have been made. But a revolution is won, like chess, in the end game with checkmate. In this case, we start with Rule 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."



11 comments:

SadButTrue said...

The elections have gotten to be nothing more than a delaying tactic, their purpose to give the false expectation that things will magically get better after next November.

" Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. "

Sadly this applies more often to the liberals who have constantly been off balance by irrelevant arguments, though I could perhaps take issue with their characterization as an 'organization.' Liberals as a group in America are even less organized than the Democratic party, and we all know what Will Rogers said about them.

In that light I wonder how it's possible that the uncoordinated left can restore fairness. The multinational corporate feudalists who are the real enemy (the GOP just being the local surrogate) are not going to give up their power, privilege and fabulous wealth readily. Not until some of them are dragged screaming out of their limousines and hanged from the nearest utility pole.

But I believe that Bu$hCho™ have planned for such a contingency. Didn't one of the presidential directives give the same kind of authority to corporate security services that KBR and Blackwater now hold in Iraq? IOW, a license to kill?

Unknown said...

SadButTrue said...

The elections have gotten to be nothing more than a delaying tactic, their purpose to give the false expectation that things will magically get better after next November.

You're right! The 'elections' are little more than bread and circuses, a terrible distraction from the fact that the government has fallen victim to a coup d'etat!

Americans are too easily distracted. Lulled into complacency with false hopes of 'regime change', Americans have forgotten that Bush has put himself above the law. If he wants to stay, who will make him leave?

Secondly, the GOP has stolen the last two elections. What's changed?

how it's possible that the uncoordinated left can restore fairness.

Well, the real problem is that there is no 'left' left to organize.

Alas and alack, goodbye America. The elections will come and go and whether Bush goes or stays, nothing will have changed except that the dollar will be even weaker, the economy will be that much closer to dry rot!

Anonymous said...

Bill Moyers and Dan Rather ought to come calling bearing flowers.
.............

This looks interesting.

Little Brother, a new civil liberty/science fiction/tech work with a bold title, is free to download or purchase in the young adult section instead of the science fiction section in your favorite book store.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/14/little-brother-book.html

Little Brother

Cory Doctorow

doctorow@craphound.com
http://craphound.com/ littlebroth...tle_Brother.htm

This book is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

snip

The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of in my young adulthood.

What's more, kids were clearly being used as guinea-pigs for a new kind of technological state that all of us were on our way to, a world where taking a picture was either piracy (in a movie theater or museum or even a Starbucks), or terrorism (in a public place), but where we could be photographed, tracked and logged hundreds of times a day by every tin-pot dictator, cop, bureaucrat and shop-keeper. A world where any measure, including torture, could be justified just by waving your hands and shouting "Terrorism! 9/11! Terrorism!" until all dissent fell silent.

We don't have to go down that road.

If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don't hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around.

If you believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech -- not censorship -- then you have a dog in the fight.

If you believe in a society of laws, a land where our rulers have to tell us the rules, and have to follow them too, then you're part of the same struggle that kids fight when they argue for the right to live under the same Bill of Rights that adults have.

This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard-of liberty? It's not just a noun, it's a verb, it's something you do.

snip

I can talk about Little Brother in terms of its bravura political speculation or its brilliant uses of technology -- each of which make this book a must-read -- but, at the end of it all, I'm haunted by the universality of Marcus's rite-of-passage and struggle, an experience any teen today is going to grasp: the moment when you choose what your life will mean and how to achieve it.

- Steven C Gould, author of JUMPER and REFLEX

I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can.

Because I think it'll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won't be the same after they've read it. Maybe they'll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it'll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they'll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they'll want to open their computer and see what's in there. I don't know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It's a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless.

- Neil Gaiman, author of ANASI BOYS

....

Chapter 1

This chapter is dedicated to BakkaPhoenix Books in Toronto, Canada. Bakka is the oldest science fiction bookstore in the world, and it made me the mutant I am today. I wandered in for the first time around the age of 10 and asked for some recommendations. Tanya Huff (yes, the Tanya Huff, but she wasn't a famous writer back then!) took me back into the used section and pressed a copy of H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy" into my hands, and changed my life forever. By the time I was 18, I was working at Bakka -- I took over from Tanya when she retired to write full time -- and I learned life-long lessons about how and why people buy books. I think every writer should work at a bookstore (and plenty of writers have worked at Bakka over the years! For the 30th anniversary of the store, they put together an anthology of stories by Bakka writers than included work by Michelle Sagara (AKA Michelle West), Tanya Huff, Nalo Hopkinson, Tara Tallan --and me!)

BakkaPhoenix Books: 697 Queen Street West, Toronto ON Canada M6J1E6, +1 416 963 9993

I'm a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco's sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced "Winston."

much more to the book...

..................

Little Brother book tour Chicago: tonight in Naperville, tomorrow in Chicago

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 14, 2008

I've been on my Little Brother book-tour for two days (doing school appearances around Chicago), and for the next two nights, I'll be doing public events at Chicago area bookstores:

Tonight (Wednesday, May 14):
Anderson’s Bookshops, Naperville, IL
123 West Jefferson Avenue
Naperville, IL 60540
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
7:00 pm

Tomorrow (Thursday, May 15):
Barnes & Noble, Chicago, IL
1441 W. Webster Street
Chicago, IL 60614
Thursday, May 15, 2008
7:30 pm

Hope to see you there!
................

Anonymous said...

Fuzzflash sez...

Len and Sad and Benmerc and Damien:
There are still good men and women of courage and principal, present company excepted, who are prepared to speak truth to power. The journalistic son of Ed Murrow below is but one of them. Unless I’m a bad judge, Keith ain’t kiddin’ around.

Courage, mes amis, there will yet be Justice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/14/olbermann-to-bush-this-wa_n_101831.html

Unknown said...

Very timely link, Fuzz for several reasons --not the least of which Huffington Post is somewhat redeemed.

I have revised article above to include your link in the add'l resource addendum.

Marc McDonald said...

When the Dems come to a fight, they bring nothing more than a pair of boxing gloves and a vow to play fair and by the rules.

By contrast, when the GOP comes to a fight, they bring a switchblade, a pair of brass knuckles and a .38 Special (with hollow-point bullets) concealed in their sock.

The GOP fights viciously, dirty, and does whatever it takes to prevail.

We saw evidence of this in 2000.

During a brief period, that election was essentially up for grabs.

The GOP simply went in and took it by brute force.

Meanwhile, the Dems politely sat around, waiting for the phone to ring.

Amazingly, this sort of thing continues to this day. Bush has an approval rating in the toilet and he is despised by most of America. And yet he routinely bullies the Dems and almost always gets his way on everything---from torture to illegal wiretaps to the ongoing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A lot of people feel sorry for Al Gore and the way he was cheated in 2000. However, I'm actually kind of annoyed with him. He should have stood up and aggressively defended his election win, instead of meekly rolling over for the Busheviks.

Unknown said...

And Marc, what the GOP learned, it learned from Saul.

My message to DEMS:

IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO GO TO THE MAT FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE AND WHAT IS RIGHT, THEN YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Unknown said...

Well, I certainly don't give a shit what Bush does with a golf club, though I would prefer he shove it up his stupid ass!

Ed Encho said...

Hear Hear! The butterflies, zebras and moonbeam, effete, identity group obsessed limousine liberals have rendered the left impotent and irrelevant and it's long past time to get back to the real, left, the labor left, the tire iron totin' radicals and the gospel of Alinsky.

You would not believe how frustrated that I get when trying to deal with the ivory tower snobs who have hijacked liberalism and the left. They are as mired in groupthink and denial as their more angry counterparts in the great Dittohead army.

They are all just lemmings and it's time to stop allowing the idiots to control the destiny of all of the rest of us.

Lord Bush is over in God's Chosen land (and cutout for the wetwork of the empire)Israel rattling the sabers for war against Iran and the idiot limousine liberals are sitting here with their thumbs up their asses engaged in a High School popularity contest and waging total war over Tracy Flick's sense of entitlement.

There is a major disconnect here.

They only act as an impediment to the total systemic change that is now necessary to hold the war criminals and looters accountable and return the rule of law to the land.

Great Post, you hit the target with this one.

EE

Anonymous said...

I just take a bulldog approach.

somercet said...

"The right wing organizes from the top down; Alinsky from people to people, block by block!"

Oooopsie!!!

Hell is where your every wish is granted. Mine? Laissez-nous faire.