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CO School
:
CO
Theory
1) Saul
Alinsky's Followers
30 Years Later
2)
13
Tactics
3)
Organizer's
Checklist
13
TACTICS
-Saul
Alinsky
Here are Alinsky's rules for tactics taken from his book Rules
for Radicals Do they
provide any insights for
solving our present community organization problems?
Always
remember the first rule of power tactics:
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy
thinks you have.
The second
rule is: 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.
The third
rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of
the enemy. Here you
want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
The fourth
rule is: 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.
The fourth
rule carries within it the fifth rule: 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.
The sixth
rule: A good tacit is one that your
people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is
something very wrong with the tactic.
The seventh
rule: A tactic that drags on too long
becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only
limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to
church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing and
one's reaction becomes, "Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I’m all for
the boycott,
but after all there are other important things in. life — and there it goes.
The eight
rule: Keep the pressure on, with
different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your
purpose.
The
ninth rule: The threat usually
more terrifying
than the thing itself
The tenth rule: 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. It should be remembered not only that the action is in the
reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad infinitum. The pressure produces
the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action.
The
eleventh rule: 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. Mahatma Gandhi developed the
tactic of passive
resistance when he saw . he had no other resources than millions of poor
illiterate followers. What else could they do but sit down and block streets.
The twelfth
rule: 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 about this issue. Now you tell us.”
The
thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze
it, personalize
it. and polarize it. In conflict
tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as
universal.
One is-that the opposition must be singled out as -the -target and frozen. By this I mean that-in a
complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to
single out who is to blame for. any particular evil. .There is a constant, and somewhat
legitimate, passing off of the buck. In these times of urbanization, complex
metropolitan governments, the complexities of major interlocked corporations,
and the interlocking of political life between cities and countries and
metropolitan authorities, the problem that threatens to loom more and more is
that of identifying the enemy. Obviously there is no point to
tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks.
The other important point in
the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something
general and abstract such as a- community's segregated practices- or a major
corporation or City- Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary
hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical,
inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity,
or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system.
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