SAUL D. ALINSKY Reveille for Radicals “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. Thomas Paine University of Chicago Press • Chicago, Illinois University of Chicago Press • Chicago37 Agent: Cambridge University Press • London Copyright 1946 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 1945. Composed and Printed by The Gallery Press, New York. To Helene. CONTENTS PART I Call Me Rebel What Is a Radical?..........................................................11 1 Where Is the Radical Today?........................................32 2 The Crisis............................................................................62 3 PART II The Building of People’s Organizations 4 77 5 Native Leadership.............................................................87 6. Community Traditions and Organizations . 99 Organizational Tactics..................................................112 7 8. Conflict Tactics.............................. ................................153 9 174 10 Psychological Observations on Mass Organi- 192 207 11 By-Laws of the People’s Organization..................................221 PART I Call Me Rebel CHAPTER 1 What Is a Radical? The people of America live everywhere from Back Bay Boston to the Bottoms of Kansas City. From swank Highland Park, Illinois, to slum Harlem, New York. From the gentlemen farmers of Connecticut to the share-croppers of Arkansas. From the marble swimming pools of magnificent Bel-Air, California, to the muck of the Flats of Cleveland. From sooty Harlan County, Kentucky, to impeccable Bar Harbor, Maine. The people of America are Red, White, Black, Yellow, and all the shades in between. Their eyes are blue, black, and brown, and all the shades in between. Their hair is straight, curly, kinky, and most of it in between. They are tall and short, slim and fat, athletic and anaemic, and most of them in between. They are the different peoples of the world becoming more and more the “in between.” They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvin­ ism and the horizon of a new mankind—a people of the world. Their face is the face of the future. The people of America include followers of all the major religions on the face of the earth. They are Christians, regardless of which one of the two hundred or more different major varieties or sects that compose Christianity. They are Baptists, both North­ ern and Southern, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Catholics, Mennon- 11 the-cob and Wienerschnitzel. They drink Coca-Cola and Pilsu beer. They have fried chicken and hot biscuits at their church socials and chicken a la Stork Club at sophisticated night spots. They eat baked beans at the Automat and venison in the Wedgwood Room of the Waldorf. They are vegetarians, food faddists, and vitamin takers. They eat what their forefathers ate and their forefathers came from everywhere. The diet of America is the diet of the world. The American people were, in the beginning, Revolutionaries and Tories. The American people ever since have been Revolu­ tionaries and Tories. They have been Revolutionaries and Tories regardless of the labels of the past and present. Regardless of whether they were Federalists, Democrat-Republicans, Whigs, Know-Nothings, Free Soilers, Unionists or Confederates, Popu­ lists, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists or Progres­ sives. They have been and are profiteers and patriots. They have been and are Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals. The clash of Radicals, Conservatives, and Liberals which makes up America’s political history opens the door to the most funda­ mental question of what is America? How do the people of America feel? It is in this feeling that the real story of America is written. There were and are a number of Americans—few, to be sure—filled with deep feeling for people. They know that people are the stuff that makes up the dream of democracy. These few were and are the American Radicals and the only way that we can understand the American Radical is to under­ stand what we mean by this feeling for and with people. Psychia­ trists, psychologists, sociologists and other learned students call this feeling identification” and have elaborate and complicated explanations about what it means. For our purposes it boils down to the simple question, How do you feel about people? Do you like people? Most people claim that they like people with, of course, a “few exceptions.” When the exceptions art added together it becomes clear that they include a vast majority H a of the people. It becomes equally clear that most people like just a few people, their kind of people, and either do not actively care for or actively dislike most of the “other” people. You are white, native-born and Protestant. Do you like people? You like your family, your friends, some of your business asso­ ciates (not too many of them) and some of your neighbors. Do you like Catholics, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, Mexicans, Negroes, and Chinese? Do you regard them with the warm feeling of fellow human beings or with a cold contempt symbolized in Papists, Micks, Wops, Kikes, Hunkies, Greasers, Niggers, and Chinks? If you are one of those who think of people in these derogatory terms, then you don’t like people. You may object to this and say that you do not fall into this classification. You don’t call people by such names. You are broad-minded and respect other peoples if they keep in their place—and that place is not close to your own affections. You feel that you are really very tolerant. The chances are that you are an excellent representative of the great American class of Mr. But. Haven’t you met Mr. But? Sure, you have. You have met him downtown at civic luncheons. You have met him at Community Fund meetings, at housing conferences, at political rallies, and most likely he has greeted you every morning from the mirror in your bathroom. Mr. But is the man who is broad­ minded, sensibly practical, and proud of his Christianity. You have heard him talk many times, just as you have heard yourself talk many times. What does he say? Listen to the great American, Mr. But: “Now nobody can say that I’m not a friend of the Mexicans or that I am prejudiced, but ---------------- ” “Nobody can say that I am anti-Semitic. Why, some of my best friends are Jews, but --------------- ” “Surely nobody can think of me as a reactionary, but ------------------------ ” “I don’t think there is anyone in this room that feels more sympathetic towards the Negroes than I do. I have always had a number of them working for me, but-------------- ” !5 “It’s perfectly all right for these people to have equal oppor­ tunities for work, and after all we are all Americans, aren t we? But-----------” “Anybody knows that I would be the first to fight against this injustice, but -----------” “Labor Unions are all right, but-------------- ” “Sure, I say that all Americans should have the right to live any place they want to regardless of race, color, or creed, but -----------” You are very probably a typical Mr. But. You make “tolerant” jokes behind the backs of your fellow Americans, about their clothes, complexions, speech, manners, and names. You regard yourself as tolerant, andin that one adjective you most fittingly describe yourself. You really don’t like people, you tolerate them. You are very tolerant, Mr. But. You leave a luncheon meeting at which you have sat next to a Negro (and you tell your friends about it for months to come) and talked with him. You are so flushed and filled with your own goodness that if the thought could father the deed you would take flight on your new angelic wings. Thomas Jefferson saw this very clearly in his letter to Henry Lee on August 10, 1824: Men by their constitution are naturally divided into two par­ ties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confi­ dence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare them­ selves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristo­ crats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appel- 16 lution of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all. During Jefferson’s lifetime the words Democrat and Radical were synonymous. Just as people then were divided between those who feared and disliked people and those who liked them, so is Jefferson’s observation as true today as it was in 1824 and as true as it always has been since the beginning of mankind. There were those few, and there will be more, who really liked people, loved people—all people.' They were the human torches setting aflame the hearts of men so that they paisionately fought for the rights of their fellow men, all men. They were hated, feared, and branded as Radicals. They wore the epithet of Radical as a badge of honor. They fought for the right of men to govern themselves, for the right of men to walk erect as free men and not grovel before kings, for the Bill of Rights, for the abolition of slavery, for public education, and for every­ thing decent and worth while.