13 Rules For Radicals – Alinsky’s Guide For Activists

Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

The organizer… must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustrations… you must agitate to the point of conflict.

RULE 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
RULE 2: Never go outside the experience of your people… the result is confusion, fear, and retreat… [and] the collapse of communication.
RULE 3: Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
RULE 4: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity
RULE 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counter attack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
RULE 6: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.
RULE 7: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues
RULE 8: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose*.
RULE 9: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
RULE 10: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.
RULE 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside. This is based on the principle that every positive has its negative*.
RULE 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
RULE 13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame. The real action is in the enemy’s reaction. The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.

Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. — Saul Alinsky — Rules for Radicals, prologue

The end is what you want and the means is how you get it
– In war the end justifies almost any means
– Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition to be unethical
Tactics, like life, require that you move with the action
– Tactics means doing what you can with what you have
– Tactics is the art of how to take and how to give
For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose.

First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power.

Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.

Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place

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Next post in this series: I Am Vegan – there is power in a word
*NOTE*: Rules For Radicals is long out of print, along with Reveille for Radicals (1946) and many of the sources I used have different versions of the rules, some have had comments added, without saying that they are not from the Alinsky original, these have then been copies and pasted. As far as I can tell, these are the rules — in Alinksy’s own words.

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Post 2011 ‘Vegan Animal Liberation Alliance’. Copying and distribution of this entire article, text and / or graphic, is permitted in any medium, but please include the credit:
Written by RedGlitter of VALA http://redglitterx.wordpress.com/
or at least a link to this page, that would be nice

31 days of Animal Rights Activism

You are either an activist or an inactivist.
~ The Cove (2009) Documentary about Japan’s secret slaughter of dolphins

In solidarity with Russian protesters and in honour of Strategy 31 activists, I will be participating in the local version – Activism 31.

This just means, every day for the month of October, I will joining others in my area participating in actions that supports their causes. Not every action will be my causes, but I will join with others to support them, for social justice and human rights, not just animal rights, and in return they have committed to support me.

By supporting each other, we can be stronger, grow our network, weave the web of activism amongst local communities, we can all get stronger.

Strategy 31 is a growing movement in Russia, and now spreading to other world cities – London, New York, Toronto and Tel Aviv. It is a series of protests to support the Article 31 of the Russian constitution, which guarantees the right to peaceful assembly.

The protesters have attracted many Russians who have never before dared speak out against their government, showing a bravery of defiance of their government that some activists in western countries are yet to emulate.

One act of civil disobedience among protesters is to write “31″ on the palm of their hand while attending protests, in defiance of the government crackdown on support of Strategy 31.

Beginning on 31 July 2009, and held on the 31st of every month with 31 days, protesters have gather in Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow and is supported by a number of human rights organisations.

Every one of the Stategy-31 actions since it commenced has been refused permission by the authorities on the grounds that other activities were planned to take place… These “counter-actions” included the “Choose Health, Be Like Us!” festival (July 31, 2009), a youth sports festival (August 31, 2009), the “Division” military-sports festivity (October 31, 2009), an action of the pro-Kremlin “Young Russia” movement (December 31, 2009), and the “Winter Amusements” festivity (January 31, 2010). Each of the Strategy-31 actions was dispersed by regular and riot police and accompanied by large-scale detentions of participants and passers-by.
… The strategy 31 action on 31 May 2010… was dispersed with “exceptional cruelty”, with over 100 arrests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy-31

This “exceptional cruelty” included hitting an 82 year old woman, Lyudmila Alexeeva on the head shouting “Still alive, you old bitch?” at the 31 March protests.

So, If anyone has any actions they want participants for, if its local I will hold a sign and hand out leaflets, if it on the other side of the world, I will sign your petition and email politicians.

For more about Strategy 31: What is Strategy 31? by Maryana Torocheshnikova

Liberation: for Animals & Earth

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution…
revolution is but thought carried into action.
Emma Goldman

From the Liberation archives

Animal liberation = earth liberation = people liberation

The liberation of animals and the earth will require nothing short of a total revolution in thinking and in action.

How can it possibly require anything less? The status quo has produced the largest extinction of plants and animals since the dinosaurs disappeared. And this time it is man-made.

Daytime TV psychologists will tell you “if you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always gotten”.

So why do we continue to do the same “vegan education” that we have always done and expect to produce different outcomes.

Why do we continue to fight each about “direct action”, when we fight each other, the Animal Abusers just laugh at how childish we act and just continue to do what they have always done.

It is not a competition over whose oppression is worse, oppression is oppression, exploitation and cruelty are exploitation and cruelty, the oppressor is the same – a system run by a small group of people (rich, white, male, capitalists) who profit from the exploitation of people, animals and the earth.

From my perspective, a lot of animal rights activists have forgotten what they are fighting for. They are preoccupied with the methods they will use – “non violent education” or “taking action” – but what has been overlooked in the middle is the animals.

The fight for animal liberation and earth liberation needs to be put front and centre of activism, instead of defending our weapons of choice, which is what we are doing now.

As Steven Best has said “It is becoming increasingly clear that human, animal, and earth liberation movements are inseparably linked, such that none can be free until all are free. This is not a new insight, but rather a lost wisdom and truth.” Total Revolution: Revolution for the 21st Century, (Guerrilla News: Dispatches from the Frontlines).

Because it is in the fight to make a difference that revolution will occur, when people began to think differently about the part each one of us can play in the revolution for liberation, then they will begin to speak differently and act differently.

Every person is important, every person can make a difference.

I will stand with anyone who is fighting to make a difference for animal rights, earth liberation or social justice.

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Articles copyright 2010 ‘Vegan Animal Liberation Alliance’. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Written by RedGlitter of VALA http://redglitterx.wordpress.com/

Feedback welcome.

A Militant, Radical and Powerful movement

These following two videos, are compliments of each other. The first one from Naomi Klein, talks about the reasons why we need to create a movement, the new radical left. While the second video, is from an insider’s point of view, Will Potter, an activist who knows very well the impact of the increasingly totalitarian laws designed to crush dissent but also thoughts of dissent.

“We have to build that independent left. It has to be so strong and so radical and so militant and so powerful that it becomes irresistible.”
Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein: Building a Real Left
- Watch more like this: here.

Will Potter of GreenIsTheNewRed talks how eco-campaigners are the new terrorists

Will Potter in this video says, “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act … Non-violent civil disobedience as terrorism if it’s done by animal rights activists”

For a more in-depth look at Will Potter and the connection with AETA : Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act: Ever Heard of It?

Is there a connection between these two things?

Those in power, on all sides of the political spectrum, from the left to the right, it doesn’t matter – the poor, the marginalised, the working class, don’t all see a difference when they feel ignored, and life is getting harder, regardless of who is in charge.

Now, those in power are busy propping up the Wall Street and the banks and financial institutions that caused the GFC (Global Financial Crisis). The bail outs, have let the Masters Of The Universe off the hook, enabling them to keep doing more of the same, pillaging and plundering workers, environment, and consumers, without skipping a beat.

Recent legal efforts – from Arizona’s new racial profiling laws against Mexicans, to the expelling of Roma from France, and the manufactured outrage against a Muslim community centre in New York and the terrorist boat-people in Australia, the crack down on protesters and passers-by in Toronto during the G20 – these are all diverting attention from who is benefiting from this world wide financial crisis by blaming the poorest of the poor, activists who are trying to save lives, and the most marginalised.

Who will stop to ask why business leaders are making millions when it is so easy for fear-mongering shock jocks to the point the finger at Muslims, Hispanics, boat people, Roma, terror-babies, and say “they are the cause of your problems.

Although, it is hardly surprising that those who created global financial meltdown, are now holding their collective hands out, expecting tax payer bailouts, with cries of “we are too big to fail” yet, at the same time, claim they are uniquely qualified to solve this crisis, (yes, the crisis that they created).

But like the magicians sleight of hand trick, your eye follows where the finger points, and you don’t notice what the magicians other hand is doing.

When compassion is criminalised, when vandalism becomes terrorism, when babies are “terror-babies”, reality has been turned on it head.

Activists learn the lesson, step out of line and get punished, severely. This is new and improved McCarthy-era communist hunts, this is the modern age Witch-Hunt.

And like the witch-hunts of old, there were no real witches, in this case, there are no terrorists among the eco-warrirors and animal rights activists. It is all an illusion.

It is time to ask who benefiting?

Who gains an advantage when people who fight to save the lives of enslaved animals, the planet and poor are branded terrorist…..

The capitalist crisis & how to fight it… it must be emphatically stated that the struggle for socialism and to abolish capitalism requires the building of a revolutionary working-class party, steeped in the theory of Marxism and imbued with its revolutionary spirit.

Feedback welcome.

Liberation, Peace and Justice

Liberation, Peace, and Social Justice

This is a video clip I made (not just uploaded), against a background of John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance”, with quotes, clips, images from the past century. Ranging from women fighting for the vote, to the Gaza freedom flotilla of 2010. Focusing on civil rights and liberation movements, including John F Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Gloria Steinem, Pearl Bailey and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Social justice is something people must stand up for. The lessons through history are that people who stand up for their rights and the rights of others get them.

Northern Ireland, feminism, Palestine, Black Panthers, Nelson Mandela, Tienanmen Square, Suffragettes, Australian Aboriginal sovereignty, socialism, peace, justice, fighting hunger, Cesar Chavez, a montage of images and quotes to inspire Liberation of people and animals…

Tags: #46664, Aboriginal, Animal Liberation, Animal Rights, black power salute, burning monk, César Chávez, civil disobedience, civil rights, coffin, cupcakes, Desmond Tutu, Emmaline Pankhurst, famine, feminism, freedom fighter, Gaza, Gloria Steinem, Huey Newton, human rights, Iraq, Israel, It's Time, John Lennon, justice, liberation, Martin Luther King, Nelson Manela, Palestine, protest, revolution, sacrifice, socialist, soldiers, Sudan, Sydney, Tiananmen Square, toxic waste, vegan, Vietnam War, women's liberation