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Alinsky's Rules For Radicals
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent 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.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents 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 counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one 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 for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: 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 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents 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 counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one 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 for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: 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 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
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Blog Archive
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2008
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May
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- Ex-attorneys general file brief supporting Siegelman
- Saddest Headline Of The Year
- One Way To Deal With The Obama Half of The Rules C...
- You Have To Figure that The TruckNutz Are Attached
- Why Conservative Women Seem So Angry All The Time
- A look at the numbers in the presidential primary ...
- Clintonesque? McCainesque? Uninformed, Whiney and ...
- 'One Man, Very Strong'
- Adolescent Is As Adolescent Does
- Sexism?
- Unexpectedly, GT12 Posts Something Nice About Cali...
- No title
- Aerosmith's Tyler in rehab for 'safe environment'
- Obama campaign used party rules to foil Clinton
- More yawns than cheers in Puerto Rico primary
- Texas Democratic chairman, wife endorse Obama
- Obama distances himself from another clergyman
- In Miami, Spanish is becoming the primary language
- Calif.: Same-sex marriages OK beginning June 17
- The Good News? 10% of Americans Think Obama Is Muslim
- Mr Clean
- Numbers Game
- Scotty-Rama
- Has Osama Jumped The Shark?
- Daddy Neo-Con Goes Barack
- Clintons Are From the 20th, Obamas Are From the 21st
- Back To Meritocracy
- No title
- Blood Sweat and Tears
- Yale gives Paul McCartney honorary music degree
- Political Wire Fest
- Of Course, We Knew This Already ...
- Jews For Armageddon!
- Where We Are Part II
- Where We Are At
- Vets install pacemaker in search-and-rescue dog
- One Woman's Perspective
- Another One That Doesn't Listen To Himself
- In A Word
- Why Not Joe?
- Maybe They Should Try The Internets and The Youtubes
- Let Her Do It Herself
- September date set for Spector's 2nd murder trial
- Let No Violation Go Unnoticed
- Just Stop Her!
- Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please Not The Veep
- NY Gov: Clinton should stop Mich, Fla effort
- Yoko Ono tries to block use of `Imagine' in film
- Offering The Hand Of Unity
- Federal court rules against military gays policy
- Officials: Obama begins veep search
- 45th
- Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightma...
- Defending Marriage, If Not Honesty In Marriage
- We Are All Obamaniacs Now
- Obama leads McCain in November match: Reuters poll
- Analysis: Time to focus on candidates' legacies
- Exit poll: Whites help Clinton in KY, not OR
- Go Brits!
- Well, The Next Generation Won't Make Us Look Stoopid
- Truely A Third Term For Bush
- Perhaps This Will Shut Up Pat and Joe and (of cour...
- Teddy
- Inspiration
- No title
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- This Is Our Time
- And While We're On The Subject Of The Collapse Of ...
- So Good, We Run (blog-ese for steal) It In It's En...
- Because Somebody (Pat Buchanan, HRC) Might Bring T...
- We Are Soooo In Trouble When Sanity Has To Depend ...
- Why We Hear That Wright Is Wrong and Parsely Is Ju...
- Bush-ian
- How They Do It
- Yes, But She'll Win KY
- Blog Quote Of The Day
- Kennedy-esque
- Study says global warming not worsening hurricanes
- Analysis: Flap conflicts with McCain's image
- Obama to reach delegate milestone Tuesday
- Play of the Day: Obama's new name
- Someday We Will All Die
- No title
- Racism: It's Not Just About Color
- Robert Byrd Endorses O
- You Know Those Crazy E-Mails?
- Let's Can The 'Reformer' Talk, OK?
- Change We Can Believe In
- Desperately Seeking Status
- Whoa!
- Today's Big News
- Obama developing a McCain strategy before winning ...
- McCain's national finance co-chair exits over lobb...
- Obama picks up delegates in Kan., Md., Nev.
- Spokeswoman: Sen. Kennedy is 'conscious, talking'
- Superdelegates: Who Are They And Who Are They Supp...
- Buoyed by recent wins, Democrats eye Southern seats
- Analysis: Obama reacts fast to Bush on diplomacy
- This Is Not Going To Help His Political Aspirations
- Speechless
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May
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