Some Recommended Reading From the NEA

Good thing these folks are teaching our children, isn't it?

An inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!

Saul Alinsky wrote the book on American radicalism - two books, in fact: a 1945 best-seller, "Reveille for Radicals" and "Rules for Radicals" in 1971. The "Reveille" title page quotes Thomas Paine... "Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul."

Saul Alinsky, who was a labor and civil-rights activist from the 1910's until he died in 1972, has written here a guidebook for those who are out to change things. He sets down what the goal is: a society where people are free to live, and also aren't starving in the streets. A society where there is legal and economic justice. Then he sets out to say how to get there.

Alinsky spends a lot of time critiquing the idea that "The end does not justify the means." What end? What means? He feels that there are circumstances where one can and should use means that in other circumstances would be unethical. I am not sure I agree, but Alinsky certainly speaks with the voice of experience.

Alinsky's goal seems to be to encourage positive social change by equipping activists with a realistic view of the world, a kind of preemptive disillusionment. If a person already knows what evil the world is capable of, then perhaps the surprise factor can be eliminated, making the person a more effective activist. Alinsky further seems to be encouraging the budding activist not to worry to much about getting his or her hands dirty. It's all a part of the job, he seems to say.

Alinsky, the master political agitator, tactical planner and social organizer didn't mince words...

"Liberals in their meetings utter bold works; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement 'which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.' They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still sit.

"The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. There is a saying that the Liberal is one who walks out of the room when the argument turns into a fight.

"Society has good reason to fear the Radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the Radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while Liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives.

And when the agents of social justice offer you "free" healthcare, be sure to take them up on it or face prison time.

'Welcome to Camp Obama'

Who said this wasn't a cult? This stuff is getting really creepy.

Voters coast-to-coast are receiving e-mails from the Obama campaign encouraging them to sign up to learn pre-election agitation tactics at "Camp Obama." Red kerchiefs, anyone?

When readers first alerted us to the camps, we thought it might be another hoax that migrated into inboxes. But it's for real.

The unsolicited pitch goes like this: "Camp Obama attendees will receive real world organizing experience that will have a direct impact on this election. Graduates of Camp Obama will go on to become Deputy Field Organizers who will lead this campaign to victory in crucial battleground states around the country."

The letter continues, "By participating in Camp Obama you'll get the kind of experience that Barack got as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he learned that real change happens from the bottom up."

While the letter neglects to identify the source of that "experience," a slide on a camp blog linked to the Obama Web site offers a clue. Underneath a "Welcome to Camp Obama" banner, a trainer at Obama headquarters in Chicago is seen speaking next to a wipe board with the words "Saul Alinsky" scrawled across it.

Alinsky is the late Chicago socialist and street agitator who is considered the father of community organizing.

Another slide of a camp trainer identified as Mike Kruglik is equally telling. Kruglik happens to be the Alinsky disciple who first taught Obama hardball organizing tactics on the South Side. He was Obama's boss in the '80s. Kruglik now works for the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, which trains and deploys radicals across the country.

Kruglik once declared Obama "the undisputed master of agitation," according to David Freddoso, author of the best-seller "The Case Against Barack Obama."

Obama learned well from the master agitator. Alinsky taught future radicals that bad things are often done for the right reasons, love without power is sentimental mush, power must be taken, and all change comes about as a result of threat and pressure.

Obama calls his Alinskyite experience "the best education I ever had."

Now he's passing it on to his groupies. He recently told supporters in Nevada, a state that will be hotly contested, to sharpen their elbows in the final lap of the race. Confront Republicans, he said, and "get in their faces."

"Be absolutely ruthless," adds Camp Obama director Jocelyn Woodards, who leads the intensive two-day training course for campers in Chicago.

In the Alinsky model, organizing is code for agitating. For revolution. He had no patience for liberals who merely talked of change.

"Liberals protest," he wrote in "Rules for Radicals," while "radicals rebel." Liberals become "indignant," while "radicals become fighting mad and go into action."

"Liberals give and take oral arguments," Alinsky added. "Radicals give and take the hard, dirty, bitter way of life."

Alinsky's paragon of radicalism was Satan, to whom he dedicated the first edition of "Rules": "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."

Dirty street fighting is at the heart of Obama's organizing. While he stands above the fray, his minions at ACORN are threatening, intimidating, confronting and even committing voter fraud. This is Alinsky's end-justifies-means morality in action. Whatever it takes to win the revolution.

Obama needs more agitators, so he's set up these camps to train them.

It's going to get really ugly come election day.

Via LGF links.

In case you're wondering, this has been ongoing for some time. The Sun Times had an item on this last year.

"The next tip is to be absolutely ruthless," Jocelyn Woodards tells the campers. "We want you to be determined, ambitious, take a risk."

No toasted marshmallows here. This is the second day of Camp Obama, a two-day (sometimes four-day) intensive training course in becoming an activist to help get Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) elected president.

"It's not enough for you to be a supporter of Barack. You have to go out and build an organization that will deliver votes for Barack Obama," Woodards tells the 40 campers -- most in their 20s -- from around the country gathered at the campaign's national headquarters in the West Loop.

Obama is not like other candidates, and part of this training is learning to mimic the methods he used before he was an elected official -- back when he was a community organizer in Chicago following the textbook of legendary agitator Saul Alinsky.

Rivals of Obama know that while he may at times appear to channel Martin Luther King Jr., his methods sometimes give evidence of his allegiance to Alinsky, who shunned starry-eyed idealists and recommended purging do-gooders from organizations. Alinsky wanted results. And his methods often forced the hands of elected officials.

Absolutely ruthless. Now we know the genesis of the savage attacks on Sarah Palin and John McCain while the media regurgitates odes to hope and change.

An attendee notes Camp Obama here.

I can't write about that weekend. It was amazing, awesome, exhausting, enlightening, especially only a week after ER, All I can say is that if you want to do Camp Obama, join up on http://www.my.barackobama.com, and start organizing voters in your area, raising money and awareness, just getting out of your own heads. That's the big thing for me. Getting out of my damn head and doing something which isn't just for me.

You suppose these kids are graduates of Camp Obama?

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

The Father of Community Organizing

The New York Times devotes three pages to exploring the wonders of community organizing, an endeavor which now apparently is a prerequisite for the presidency.

They mention the name Saul Alinsky, but completely gloss over his radical background.

The small organization Mr. Obama worked for, the Developing Communities Project, was influenced by the thinking of Saul Alinsky, a Chicago native regarded as the father of community organizing. Mr. Alinsky viewed self-interest as the main motivation for political participation.

Mr. Obama saw it more broadly. “In his view, figuring out who you are and then getting that person to think about what he or she is going to do with it is the first step toward empowerment,” Daniel Lee, a fellow organizer, recalled. “He told me this was an extension of his own journey in struggling to find his identity.”

Mr. Obama shunned Mr. Alinsky’s strategy of using confrontation tactics like pressuring public officials and business leaders by picketing their homes.

“I think it was strategic that he would not have fallouts with people he disagreed with because he realized that he had to work with them not just on one particular issue, but on other issues down the road,” Mr. Kellman said.

Mr. Obama did adhere to the Alinsky principle of meticulously planning for meetings with people in power. The roles of the residents were scripted and the organizer was a quiet, inconspicuous presence.

Jeremiah Wright is mentioned briefly and more as an afterthought.

Seems the reporter never even heard of Saul Alinsky. Here's a little primer for him. Ironically enough, Hillary Clinton really had the hots for the radical Alinsky.

One thing the media studiously avoids any mention of is how well off the organized community is today.

Not very well organized, to say the least.