My Dad and Saul

A Saturday Short: How to fight the good fight.

I didn’t know another teenager who had ever heard of Saul Alinsky, let alone read his book, Rules for Radical, as required reading for dinner conversation. A community organizer in a depleted working class neighborhood, our dad took Alinsky’s protest methods as a way to call attention to and facilitate change for our community. They sometimes backfired but more often they brought about real change that made life better for the neighborhood.

I think the best way to honor today’s ‘No King’ protests, as well as my dad on Father’s Day, is to remind people that the current high-stakes in this battle are not unique—the people won the fight over and over again—and that American history is on our side. My dad is cheering us on!

A blueprint for following Alesky’s rules of engagement:

• Empower the disenfranchised. Mobilize ordinary people, particularly those who are marginalized or disenfranchised, to fight for their rights and interests.

• Build organizations. Create strong, community-based organizations that can sustain long-term efforts and provide a unified voice for advocacy.

• Employ direct action. Using direct, nonviolent action to confront and challenge power structures. This includes protests, strikes, sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience.

• Tactics and strategy. Put pressure on those in power. These include targeting individuals in positions of authority, personalizing issues and using creative and disruptive methods to draw attention to causes.

• Be pragmatic. Encouraging activists to be flexible, opportunistic and to use whatever means necessary (within ethical bounds) to achieve their goals.

• Focus on local issues. Identify make the fight relatable and urgently important to people and communities if the Presidential executive orders and laws are enacted.

In Alesky’s own words:

On the importance of community organizing: “The only answer to organized money is organized people.”

On the role of psychology and perception in power: “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”

Push your opponents into unfamiliar territory: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”

Undermine and delegitimize your opponents’ moral authority: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

Place persistent pressure on your opponents: “Keep the pressure on.”

Leverage threats: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

Wear down your adversaries: “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”

On the importance of community organizing: “The only answer to organized money is organized people.”

On power and change: “Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.”

On the role of organizers: “A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.”

On the tactics of organizing: “The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.”

On the necessity of conflict: “Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project these values into a utopia, the utopia would be a curious and lifeless Eden with no conflicts and therefore no real freedom.”

On the importance of relationships: “If people feel they don’t count, then they don’t act. If they don’t act, the way for the exploiting minority to keep power is easy.”

On the power of people: “People hunger for drama and adventure, for a breath of life in a dreary, drab existence. This hunger must be met by organizing people around the burning issues of the times.”

And, as always, share!