RULES FOR RADICALS-HAVES vs HAVE-NOTS

WE ARE POSSIBLY FACING THE GREATEST WAR IN HISTORY THE 2ND AMERICAN CIVIL WAR! OUR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES HAVE DRAWN LINES IN THE SAND. OBAMA IS FIGHTING FOR THE HAVE-NOTS TO RISE & TAKE FROM THE HAVES(A RE-DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH) AND McCAIN IS FIGHTING TO KEEP THE HAVES IN POWER($5000 TAX CREDIT TO THE INSURANCE CO'S,ETC) WIN OR LOSE THE TABLE HAS BEEN SET FOR CHANGE. AMERICA IS HEADED DOWN A SOCIALIST PATH. READ SAUL ALINSKY'S "RULES FOR RADICALS"-SEE FOR YOURSELF WHAT OBAMA HAS DONE BY STIRRING UP THE DIS-ENFRANCHISED TO TAKE THE POWER BACK.


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


These rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.


The organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”

Combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible



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.