Sunday, July 04, 2010

SAUL ALINSKY


In his book, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Alinsky recommended "power tactics" to solve the kinds of problems that organizers and stewards often encounter. "Tactics are those consciously deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them," wrote Alinsky.

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

2. Never go outside the experience of your people. It may result in confusion, fear and retreat.

3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat.

4. Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules.

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

8. Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.

12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

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