SAUL ALINSKY

Editor's note: Hi I stumbled upon this article about Saul Alinsky, the renown Community organiser, many said he sort of "developed" Community organising, read about him and his work! share your comments!

Few know it today, but Chicago was the birthplace of a powerful grassroots social movement that changed political activism in this country. "Community Organizing" was pioneered in Chicago's old stockyards neighborhood by the soberly realistic, unabashedly radical Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky's hard-nosed politics were shaped by the rough and tumble world of late 1930's Chicago. Back then, the city, still in the grips of the Great Depression, was controlled by the Kelly-Nash political machine and by Frank Nitti - heir to Al Capone's Mafia empire. In 1938, with a freshly minted graduate degree in criminology from University of Chicago, Alinsky went to work for sociologist Clifford Shaw at the Institute for Juvenile Research. He was assigned to research the causes of juvenile delinquency in Chicago's tough "Back-of-the-Yards" neighborhood. In order to study gang behavior from the inside, Alinsky ingratiated himself with Al Capone's crowd, and came to realize that criminal behavior was a symptom of poverty and powerlessness.

The Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood, setting of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, was an immense slum in the shadows of Chicago's giant Union Stockyards, one of the largest factory complexes ever created. Its inhabitants were poor; they had no rights and no job security. In the course of one year, wages were cut three times. As Alinsky watched and decided that he could no longer stand by as a silent observer. He believed that widespread poverty left America open to the influence of demagogues and that the only antidote was active, widespread participation in the political process. Alinsky envisioned an "organization of organizations," comprised of all sectors of the community - youth committees, small businesses, labor unions and, most influential of all, the Catholic Church.

He consulted with Herb March, a union leader organizing stockyard workers for the CIO - the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He teamed up with Joe Meegan, a powerful organizer with strong links to the Catholic Church, through whom he was able to convince a powerful Bishop Bernard Sheil to join the fight against unfair labor practices. Alinsky also recruited leaders of previously hostile ethnic groups: Serbs and Croatians, Czechs and Slovaks, Poles and Lithuanians - always appealing to their mutual self-interests. Finally, on July 14, 1939, Alinsky and Meegan convened the first Back-of-the-Yards Council meeting, chaired by Bishop Sheil. The event was revolutionary in American history because it was the first time an entire community was organized. The union, the community and the Church became one and the same. More...