The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Liberal Tactics Pt.1

Non-violent Means to an End

So how does one change the shape of a nation through non-violent means? MAHATMA GANDHI is one of the most noted for the way his peaceful protests confounded India's British occupiers. Gandhi said, "The non-violence of my conception is a more active and more real fighting against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness. I contemplate a mental and, therefore, a moral opposition to immoralities. I seek entirely to blunt the edge of the tyrant's sword, not by putting up against it a sharper-edged weapon, but by disappointing his expectation that I would be offering physical resistance." Gandhi was lucky he was going up against the British and not Hitler who would have put him to death summarily.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said regarding peaceful protests, “One method is that of acquiescence. There are those individuals who feel that the only way to deal with their oppression is to resign themselves to the fate of oppression. There are those who surrender and find themselves becoming conditioned to things as they are. They feel that it is better to live with these things than to go through the ordeals of changing the old order to the new order. There was a man who lived in one of the Negro communities in Atlanta some years ago; he used to play his guitar and sing various songs, and one day he was heard singing a song that went something like this: "Been down so long that down don't bother me." I guess he had achieved a level of freedom- a freedom of exhaustion. He had given up the struggle.

So this is the method of acquiescence- but it is not the way. It may be the easy way at times, but it is not the moral way and it is not the courageous way; it is a cowardly way for the individual who adjusts to an evil system, and he must take some of the responsibility for the perpetuation of the unjust system.”

So fighting back physically, while cathartic at best and deadly at worst, as everyone has heard at least once, violence never solves anything…..war being excluded. War establishes borders, protects a country and stops tyrants like Hitler who do not respond to reason.  Giving in, or acquiescence, does not defend the rights of the individual nor does it stop a problem. When one gives up, the threat is free to take total control as it is not hindered by truth, righteousness or reason.

In recent times we have seen peaceful tax protests in which all sides of the political spectrum have been participating. Unlike protests of the 1960s which often broke out in violence and resulting in bloodshed, there have been no reports of violence at Tea Parties held from one coast to the other.  But what these protestors may or may not know is they have just engaged an enemy in a non-violent war; a war for the very ideals that this country stands for and one which reaches far beyond the ideology of just taxes.

In a 1972 interview in Playboy magazine, Saul Alinksy [self proclaimed radical for social and political “change”] was asked, “The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?” Alinsky responded, “Conservative? That's a crock of cr*p. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in long term endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless. Their utopia of status and security has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal.

They're the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. We'll give them a way to participate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy. We'll start with specific issues -- taxes, jobs, consumer problems, pollution -- and from there move on to the larger issues: pollution in the Pentagon and the Congress and the board rooms of the mega corporations. Once you organize people, they'll keep advancing from issue to issue toward the ultimate objective: people power. We'll not only give them a cause, we'll make life god**mn exciting for them again -- life instead of existence. We'll turn them on.”

Alinsky has had great influence in the American culture and bases his tactics of a non-violent change to the American political and social systems on the model set forth by Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci [pronounced grom-she] believed that by tearing down the old order of things goals could be achieved by eliminating moral absolutes found in the world’s religions, most notably the Christian religion. Once moral barriers are broken down a new set of absolutes replaces the old order from politics to religion to cultural and moral values.

The thrust of Alinksy’s plan is currently being achieved through non-violent means in the form of community organizers and organizations such as ACORN whose goal is to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The question remains as to who gives them the right to moral superiority over the rest of the masses? On page three of Alinsky’s book, “Rules for Radicals”, Alinsky asserts, “In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' This means revolution."

To meet this challenge, the organizer sets forth to generate a consensus by sitting down with people on both sides of an issue. The organizer creates chaos between the two sides, provides guidance toward consensus and leaves the participants almost jubilant in their new found understanding. What really happens is each side has compromised their principles believing that they have traded them for a new, higher morality.

Dr. Robert Klench describes the process as Total Quality Management. "Total Quality Management [TQM] is based upon the Hegelian dialectic, invented by Georg Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel, a transformational Marxist social psychologist. Briefly, the Hegelian dialectic process works like this: a diverse group of people (in the church, this is a mixture of believers (thesis) and unbelievers (antithesis), gather in a facilitated meeting (with a trained facilitator/teacher/group leader/change agent), using group dynamics (peer pressure), to discuss a social issue (or dialogue the Word of God), and reach a pre-determined outcome (consensus, compromise, or synthesis). 

“When the Word of God is dialogued (as opposed to being taught didactically) between believers and unbelievers... and consensus is reached – agreement that all are comfortable with – then the message of God's Word has been watered down... and the participants have been conditioned to accept (and even celebrate) their compromise (synthesis).  The new synthesis becomes the starting point (thesis) for the next meeting, and the process of continual change (innovation) continues. 

"The fear of alienation from the group is the pressure that prevents an individual from standing firm for the truth of the Word of God, and such a one usually remains silent (self-editing).  The fear of man (rejection) overrides the fear of God. The end result is a 'paradigm shift' in how one processes factual information."

To find evidence that these practices are alive and well and being utilized today one only needs to look to the most recent Democratic convention. Saul Alinsky states in his book, “Rules for Radicals (1971)”, “As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.”

At the 2008 Democratic convention Michelle Obama said in her speech, “'Barack stood up that day,' talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, 'and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about 'The world as it is' and 'The world as it should be…' And, 'All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do – that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be."

In the August 31^st, 2008 edition of the Boston Globe, L. David Alinsky (son of Saul) had this to say about the Democratic convention:

“All the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY