Happy 100th Birthday Saul Alinsky
posted on: Friday, January 30, 2009
By NCRP
Today is the 100th birthday of Saul Alinsky, who is often credited as the father of community organizing.
Alinsky was born in 1909 in Chicago where he studied at the University of Chicago before he began organizing in the 1930s. While doing research in Chicago’s Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood, a massive slum with high gang activity, juvenile delinquency and poverty rates, Alinsky developed his vision for an “organization of organizations” – one that would build alliances across disenfranchised and poor workers to increase political power. Working with union leaders, he reached out to immigrant groups who were traditionally in competition with one another; on July 14, 1939 he held the first Back-of-the-Yards Council meeting. This is credited as the first organized meeting of a whole community; the Council went on to successfully picket, strike, and boycott in order to win better working conditions and wages.
Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940, now a major national organizing network with 59 affiliates in 20 states, the District of Columbia and four countries. The IAF theory of organizing focuses on power-building within existing community groups such as congregations, schools and homeowners associations. IAF is, in their own words, “proudly, publicly, and persistently political.” Alinsky continued his work in Chicago’s South Side, co-founding The Woodlawn Organization in 1959 to challenge Mayor Richard Daley’s political machine through voter registration drives.
In the introduction to his final work, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.” Then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama borrowed this message in a 2008 Super Bowl advertisement, declaring, “The world as it is is not the world as it has to be.” Again, in his famous “Yes we can” speech following his defeat in the New Hampshire Democratic primary victory, Obama harped heavily on the ability of ordinary people to impact their communities and the world for the better.
As NCRP continues its Grantmaking for Community Impact Project work in North Carolina, Alinsky’s legacy lives on in the work of the community organizing and advocacy groups whose work we are documenting. Happy 100th birthday Saul Alinsky!
Today is the 100th birthday of Saul Alinsky, who is often credited as the father of community organizing.
Alinsky was born in 1909 in Chicago where he studied at the University of Chicago before he began organizing in the 1930s. While doing research in Chicago’s Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood, a massive slum with high gang activity, juvenile delinquency and poverty rates, Alinsky developed his vision for an “organization of organizations” – one that would build alliances across disenfranchised and poor workers to increase political power. Working with union leaders, he reached out to immigrant groups who were traditionally in competition with one another; on July 14, 1939 he held the first Back-of-the-Yards Council meeting. This is credited as the first organized meeting of a whole community; the Council went on to successfully picket, strike, and boycott in order to win better working conditions and wages.
Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940, now a major national organizing network with 59 affiliates in 20 states, the District of Columbia and four countries. The IAF theory of organizing focuses on power-building within existing community groups such as congregations, schools and homeowners associations. IAF is, in their own words, “proudly, publicly, and persistently political.” Alinsky continued his work in Chicago’s South Side, co-founding The Woodlawn Organization in 1959 to challenge Mayor Richard Daley’s political machine through voter registration drives.
In the introduction to his final work, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.” Then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama borrowed this message in a 2008 Super Bowl advertisement, declaring, “The world as it is is not the world as it has to be.” Again, in his famous “Yes we can” speech following his defeat in the New Hampshire Democratic primary victory, Obama harped heavily on the ability of ordinary people to impact their communities and the world for the better.
As NCRP continues its Grantmaking for Community Impact Project work in North Carolina, Alinsky’s legacy lives on in the work of the community organizing and advocacy groups whose work we are documenting. Happy 100th birthday Saul Alinsky!
posted by NCRP at
4:12 PM
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