Saul David Alinsky January 30, β June 12, was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago -based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians, bankers and business leaders won him national recognition and notoriety.
Responding to the impatience of a New Left generation of activists in the s, Alinsky β in his widely cited Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer β defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise involved in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice. Beginning in the s, Alinsky's reputation was revived by commentators on the political right as a source of tactical inspiration for the Republican Tea Party movement and subsequently, by virtue of indirect associations with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama , as the alleged source of a radical Democratic political agenda.
While criticized on the political left for an aversion to broad ideological goals, Alinsky has also been identified as an inspiration for the Occupy movement and campaigns for climate action.
Both parents were strict and observant Orthodox. Alinsky describes himself as being devout until the age of 12, the point at which he began to fear his parents would force him to become a rabbi.
Although he had "not personally" encountered "much antisemitism as a child", Alinsky recalled that "it was so pervasive Old Testament. They beat us up, so we beat the hell out of them. That's what everybody does. But I want to tell you something great: 'where there are no men, be thou a man'". Alinsky considered himself an agnostic , [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] but when asked about his religion would "always say Jewish. In , Alinsky entered the University of Chicago. Overturning the propositions of a still ascendant eugenics movement, Burgess and Park argued that social disorganization, not heredity , was the cause of disease , crime , and other characteristics of slum life.
