Unlike the lawyer Saul Goodman in the TV series Breaking Bad whose telephone number is plastered on billboards, you can’t call Saul Alinsky. The revered community organizer can’t be reached on the phone or by text, for that matter, because he died in 1972. Fortunately for us he wrote the book Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals as a manual for successful community organizing before he died.
In his book Alinsky describes the rules for effective community organizing that he distilled from his lifetime of experience organizing on behalf of the poor and powerless and in the labor and civil rights movements. In the Prologue to his book, Alinsky writes, “First there are no rules for revolution any more than there are rules for love or rules for happiness, but there are rules for radicals who want to change their world; there are certain central concepts of action in human politics that operate regardless of the scene or the time. To know these is basic to a pragmatic attack on the system.”
Decades ago when I was a young community organizer in New York City, Rules for Radicals had served me well as an effective “how to guide,” which was Alinsky’s intention. Since then my paperback copy with its red cover sat unopened on my bookshelf. Then, a week ago I remembered it and decided to re-read it to see if Saul’s rules could be used to successfully protest the oppressive actions by Trump, Musk and their minions. Indeed, they can! But don’t take my word for it, make your own call to Saul by reading his book (Rules for Radicals is available in print and e-editions including a free pdf version on Wordpress). If you don’t have time for the entire book read Chapter Seven on Tactics. In that chapter he explains the thirteen “battle tested” rules for radicals, which are:
1. “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” Use the power of your “enemy’s” imagination against them.
2. “Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. It also means a collapse of communication…”
3. “Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”
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.”
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.” People are more likely to listen to something they might otherwise tune out if it is said with humor.
6. “A good tactic is one that people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time.”
7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment…”
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.” Most, if not all of us, know this from personal experience.
10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is the unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”
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.” Alinsky provides examples of “passive resistance” that result in positive results.
12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying ‘You’re right - we don’t know what to do with this issue. Now you tell us.’”
13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it…the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen’”. Otherwise, the “target” will be able to confuse the issue and evade any responsibility by scapegoating and blaming others.
In addition to the thirteen rules Alinsky also provides three overall principles for these rules:
1. “The real action is in the enemy’s reaction.”
2. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
3. “Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action.”
If you’re in the same quandary I was in as to what can be done to stop Trump, Musk and their MAGA minions, give Saul Alinsky a call by reading his Rules for Radicals.
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