>I'd like to quote Alinsky here:
>
>'The area of experience and communication is
>fundamental to the organiser. An organiser can only
>communicate within the areas of experience of his
>audience; otherwise there is no communication. ... [The
>successful organiser] refrains from rhetoric foreign to
>the local culture: he knows that worn-out
>[ideological] words [serve] only to identify the
>speaker as "one of those nuts" and to turn off any
>further communication.'
>
>He goes on to say that only certain beliefs should be
>challenged, notably the beliefs of powerlessness and
>fatalistic acceptance of outside control. But the
>challenge must come obliquely, and only within a
>context people can understand based on their own
>experience.
>
>The basic message is avoid ideology; stay inside your
>allies' experience; go outside the opposition's. And
>yes, work from the ground up.
I think several decades of experience in the U.S. with Alinsky-style organizing have shown its rather serious limits. Community organization after community organzation and what do we have to show for it? Some co-opted into being junior real estate developers and bankers, many of them very cleverly by the Ford Foundation, and others ineffectual. They have done nothing to reverse the impoverishment of vast urban areas, nor have they had an influence on politics at the regional or national level. They were completely disarmed in fighting welfare reform, too.
Doug