Saul Alinsky
From Metapedia
Saul Alinsky (January 30, 1909 - June 12, 1972) was a political activist who developed methods for organizing communities for radical social change. Leading Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both have been influenced by the Saul Alinsky doctrine. Groups such as American Indian Movement were influenced by Alinsky.
Alinsky parents were Russian Orthodox Jewish immigrants. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in criminology. He worked with Clifford Shaw at the Institute for Juvenile Research studying youth gangs. He associated himself with one of Chicago's most notorious mobs once led by Al Capone to understand the roots of crime.
He worked with labor organizers in an attempt to better the lives of those who lived in the slums near the stockyards. He formed the Industrial Areas Foundation an umbrella organization for activists. In the 1960s he was popular with young radicals and wrote the book Rules for Radicals which emphasized revolutionary social change.
Hillary Clinton wrote a 92-paged thesis on Saul Alinsky when she was a 21-year-old college senior at Wellesley College titled: “THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT...An Analysis of the Alinsky Model” The paper was kept hidden during the Clinton administration. Hillary Clinton as a teenager first met Alinsky on a field trip organized by a liberal Methodist church. As a senior at Wellesley she interview him for her thesis paper. In her paper Clinton idolized Alinsky and includes him with her other heros: Martin Luther King, Walt Whitman, and socialist Eugene Debs.
Barack Obama after finishing Columbia University went to Chicago and began to work in a organization Alinsky helped to start.
