Doug wrote: 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. ---------------------
How does this distinguish Alinsky-style organizing efforts from any other progressive or leftist organizing efforts? Do the Alinskyists fail in distinctive ways? Is the record really any worse for those groups than for all the vanguardists, Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, social democrats, etc., etc.? Or any of the various nationalist efforts, whether Chicano, African-American, or others?
K.Mickey