>Alinsky. Don't get me started on Alinsky. What do we have to show for all
>these decades of Alinsky-style community organizing?
well, lessee...
United for Power and Action in Chicago Chicago Metro Sponsors a housing program in the South Bronx United Senior Action of Indiana Texas Industrial Areas Foundation, which includes the San Antonio Communities Organized For Public Service and Fort Worth Allied Communities of Tarrant Charlotte-Mecklenburg Citizens Forum Tying Nashville Together an unnamed organisation in Bed-Stuy. Oakland Community Organizations Philadelphia Interfaith Action East Brooklyn Congregations Tennessee Shelby County Interfaith Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development West Siders Together (Manhattan) Valley Organised In Community Efforts (LA)
...and I expect I could add at least a few more such, with a bit research.
Now, turnabout's fair play: what has doctrinaire Marxist purism accomplished in the same time (50 yrs) or indeed ever? (I consider Alinsky to have been a non-doctrinaire, non-purist marxist. A Marx's marxist, as it were.)
>>1) It's self-destructive to quote Mao about power
>>coming from the barrel of a gun when it's the other
>>side that has all the guns.
>
>Who quoted Mao?
Sorry, that was a bit more obscure than I intended. My point was that it's quite easy to lose the north and end by mouthing inappropriate slogans instead of looking at the situation in a practical way.
>>So, as far as I'm concerned, the Constitution is a
>>hallowed mandate for fairness and social justice that
>>the Arschlöcher in power today are subverting the Rat's
>>Backside out of. It's shameful, un-American, and
>>life will continue to degrade til they're made to stop.
>
>Un-American? What precisely is American, then? Were slavery and Jim Crow
>American or un-American? How about Mark Hanna and PACs? Andrew Carnegie?
They were/are symptoms of parasitic infestation, nothing more (or less). If you don't like that construction, perhaps you'll explain in what way it's helpful not to distinguish between progressive and regressive elements in a social structure?
>When was this Golden Age from which recent history has been a departure?
>Where and when was this original democracy that's been corruptd by usurpers?
The Golden Age is yet to come. Or not. It will all depend on whether enough of us play the part of antibody better than the scunners who are playing the part of disease process and parasite. They've been multiplying quite rapidly for some time now.
>Yeah, I know I've turned off the masses now.
I really can't imagine anything more classist than to demand of folk who are regularly denied good education and kept in wage slavery that they deliver perfection or be dismissed as unworthy.
If we don't care about whether we've turned off 'the masses', then just exactly what kind of socialists are we? Parlor pinks?