Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky David ( born January 30, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, † June 12, 1972 in Carmel, California, USA) was an American civil rights activist, pioneer of community organizing and founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation.

Life

Saul Alinsky D. grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Chicago, an area that later called Alinsky "the slum district of the slum ." Alinsky was strictly orthodox Jew brought up and educated, but was contrary to the hopes of the parents to their faith distanced approach. After completing his schooling, he enrolled in 1926 at the University of Chicago, where he first received a bachelor 's degree in archeology. During his archeology studies, he participated in events organized by Ernest Burgess. Its reinforced social engagement as well as the disappearance of career opportunities for archaeologists due to the global economic crisis led to the demolition of Alinsky archaeologists career.

As part of a graduate scholarship Alinsky began in 1930 criminology and sociology to study. He had an ambivalent relationship to sociology because it fascinated the research fields on one side, but he had a deep distrust of academics and especially to sociologists who were unrealistic in his perception. In particular, the detachment of the research object Alinsky criticized as insufficient examination of the individual suffering and misery of the people in the slums. As a result he broke off his studies in 1938. Yet were many methods of empirical social research and the theories and models that have been developed at the Chicago School of Sociology, the basis for later Alinsky own approach. In particular, the method of nosing around ( participant observation ), which he had learned in various university research projects during his cooperate, it was part of his methodology. Furthermore formed William I. Thomas ' approach of the Four Wishes as a motif structure every action the basis for Alinsky's own personality theory. Specifically, the essay by Ernest Burgess Can Neighborhood Work have a Scientific Base? The incentive of Alinsky's interest in the neighborhood work.

1935 Alinsky worked with in the Chicago Area Project, a research project of Ernest Burgess and Clifford Shaw, which should develop concepts for advanced courses of action in the prevention of juvenile delinquency. Alinsky's area of ​​responsibility was the identification of key persons in the Back of the Yards neighborhood ( meatpacking district ) on Chicago's west side. At the same time trade unionist John L. Lewis founded the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO ) in response to the policy of the American Federation of Labor (AFL ), the largest at that time the U.S. skilled workers Trade Union Confederation. The CIO enabled as an umbrella organization of industrial workers for the first time together all the formerly independent unions in the industrial production. Lewis thus created an "organization of organizations ". Lewis' organizing campaign in the meat packing industry was organized at Alinsky's work in the Chicago Area Project. Thus, the two met and began Alinsky in the organization campaign the CIO to participate. Lewis was one of the most important teachers Alinsky. For Alinsky, however, it was clear that he could not be a trade unionist. Against the background of the high occurrence of fascist movements that tried to exploit the hopelessness of the slum dwellers, Alinsky developed the idea to create on the model of Lewis, a civil umbrella organization that would unite the local facilities, clubs and organizations in the district. The position of the district in negotiations to provide better living conditions to the outside could be strengthened in this way.

Community organizing by Saul Alinsky

On 14 July 1939, the founding congress of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council ( BYNC ) took place. Represented on the Council almost all important local organizations, trade unions (AFL and CIO), businessmen, representatives of sports and social clubs, teachers, and priests ( the Catholic priests occupied 1/3 of the committee seats). As one of the first acts of the BYNC declared solidarity with the local union group PWOC, which had been initiated by the CIO. This alliance represented a novelty, because it previously had under no circumstances an alliance between the Catholic Church and a left union organization given. Alinsky had managed to unite both parties in the struggle for better living conditions in the neighborhood. Thanks to this alliance, the medical care was improved, reorganized, waste collection, created recreational facilities, a lunch for children with 1,200 hot meals a day, set up a summer camp program for the children and a community fund, which additionally ensured improvements.

Alinsky limited his work in BYNC clear of social work from which he accused to operate welfare colonialism and to be paternalistic. Alinsky touched his own role in BYNC from the beginning as that of a " technician " on. He saw himself as an external teacher and supporter, not as a leader of the movement. The community organizing should be based on local democracy, not an external authority. His approach was based on the principle of subsidiarity in Catholic social teaching, would have to be moved to the small social units in a position to solve their own problems. An intervention of larger social units (usually the state) would be permitted and therefore only required if this principle would fail. Another acquired by Alinsky approach stems from the sociologist William I. Thomas, according to which the self- controlled organizations of immigrants from central posed for integration into U.S. society.

In response to the success of the BYNC Alinsky founded, together with the Bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, Bernard J. Sheil, and Marshall Field III. , Millionaire owner of a successful chain of department stores, Kathryn Lewis, daughter of labor leader John L. Lewis, and Joseph Meegan, who had been previously involved in the construction of BYNC, 1939, the Industrial Areas Foundation ( IAF). The IAF should serve civic organizations as an advisory and coordinating body that were active in neighborhoods that had similar problems, such as back-of -the -Yards neighborhood. In addition, the IAF served as financial protection for Alinsky, who was then on worked as a professional organizer.

Some of the biggest civil society successes Alinsky's work were campaigns aimed at improving the living conditions in the ghettos of African Americans in Chicago ( Woodlawn, 1958), as well as the equality of black workers at Eastman Kodak in Rochester (1964).

Saul Alinsky D. died in 1972 unexpectedly of a heart attack. His student and longtime collaborator Edward T. Chambers took over the management of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which he still holds. The Industrial Areas Foundation is now the largest network of community Orgainizing in the U.S. with 56 associated local organizations in 21 states across the U.S., Canada, UK and Germany.

Reception

The former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, wrote in 1969 her thesis at Wellesley College on Saul Alinsky. The work took place in 2008 during the preselection campaign of the Democratic Party in the presidential election of the United States a lot of attention, because in connection with the frequent insults Alinsky due to its proximity to the trade unions, in this way Clinton should be represented as a left-wing radicals as a communist. It is now no longer publicly available. The influence of Alinsky on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seems to have been none the less significant.

Writings (selection )

• Rules for Radicals. A practical primer for realistic Radicals. Reprint. Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1989, ISBN 0-679-72113-4 ( first edition 1971).
• Reveille for Radicals. Reprint of 2nd updated edition. Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1991, ISBN 0-679-72112-6 ( first edition 1946).
• Instructions for Mächtigsein. Selected writings. ( German translation of Reveille for Radicals ). 2nd edition. Lamuv Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-88977-559-4 ( paperback Lamuv 268).
• John L. Lewis. An Unauthorized Biography. Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish MT 2007, ISBN 978-1-4325-9217-2.
• A Sociological Technique in Clinical Criminology. In: American Prison Association: Proceedings of the Sixty -fourth Annual Congress of the American Prison Association. WB Burford, Indianapolis IN 1932, ISSN 0065-7948, pp. 167-178.
• Community Organization and Analysis. In: American Journal of Sociology, May 1941, ISSN 0002-9602, pp. 797-808.