Survival Kit For The Next Four Years

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The thing to remember as Barack Obama prepares to take over as the President of the United States is that he has been schooled in Community Organizing in Chicago.  The handbook for the Chicago Community Organizers was Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.  These are the rules taken from the book.  As you read them, think about how Barack Obama won the election.

1.  Power is not only what you have, but what your opponent thinks you have.  If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

2.  Never go outside the experience of your people.  The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

3.  Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent.  Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

4.  Make opponents live up to their own book of rules.  "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

5.  Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.  It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

6.  A good tactic is one your people enjoy.  "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

7.  A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.  Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

8.  Keep the pressure on.  Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose.  "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.  It is this that will cause the opposiiton to react to your advantage.

9.  The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.  When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization.  They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied.  Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.

10.  The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.  Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"

11.  Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.  Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies.  Identify a responsible individual.  Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting.  "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength."

Alinksy was a communist who was interested in seeing America become a communist country.  He was about power--not improvement.  I believe the important events taking place in the Obama administration will not be the ones we see--they will be the behind-the-scenes deals with the UN, Iran, and other foreign countries.  Obama wants to be reelected, and he will move very carefully in areas that are visible.  I do believe, however, that his presidency will not be a positive thing for this country.  His community organization work in Chicago was not a positive thing for that city.  Chicago schools were not improved (the Annenberg Challenge funneled most of its money to radical organizations), and Chicago has one of the highest murder rates in the nation.

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This page contains a single entry by Granny G published on December 6, 2008 9:03 AM.

A Few Comments on the Auto Industry Bailout was the previous entry in this blog.

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