I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is. This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.
The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.
His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.
I guess this is why FOTD is happy. Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is. This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.
The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.
His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.
I guess this is why FOTD is happy. Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.
You guys never cease to amaze me. [:I]
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is. This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.
The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.
His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.
I guess this is why FOTD is happy. Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.
ROTFLMAO! Caught me....rat out your source! Oh my, this revelation will doom all darksiders like the Obama's!
"As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, "
(source:Richards/Jagger)
More guilt by association from Gaspar's right wing elect a Republican at all cost talking points....
Here's the TRUTH....
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/barackobama/
He wrote scores of letters looking for the right job, and almost a year later got an offer to come to Chicago. He gave up a job as a financial writer with an international consulting firm and became a $1,000-a-month community organizer.
Here in Chicago, Obama worked as lead organizer for the Developing Communities Project, a campaign funded by south-side Catholic churches to counteract the dislocation and massive unemployment caused by the closing and downsizing of southeast Chicago steel plants.
From 1984 to '88 Obama built an organization in Roseland and the nearby Altgeld Gardens public housing complex that mobilized hundreds of citizens. Obama says the campaign experienced "modest successes" in winning residents a place at the table where a job-training facility was launched, asbestos and lead paint were negotiated out of the local schools, and community interests were guarded in the development of the area's landfills.
------------------------------------------------
Obama's work on the south side has won him the friendship and respect of many activists. One of them, Johnnie Owens, left the citywide advocacy group Friends of the Parks to join Obama at the Developing Communities Project. He later replaced Obama as its executive director.
"What I liked about Barack immediately is that he brought a certain level of sophistication and intelligence to community work," Owens says. "He had a reasonable, focused approach that I hadn't seen much of. A lot of organizers you meet these days are these self-anointed leaders with this strange, way-out approach and unrealistic, eccentric way of pursuing things from the very beginning. Not Barack. He's not about calling attention to himself. He's concerned with the work. It's as if it's his mission in life, his calling, to work for social justice.
"Anyone who knows me knows that I'm one of the most cynical people you want to see, always looking for somebody's angle or personal interest," Owens added. "I've lived in Chicago all my life. I've known some of the most ruthless and biggest bull****ters out there, but I see nothing but integrity in this guy."
Jean Rudd, executive director of the Woods Fund, is another person on guard against self-appointed, self-promoting community leaders. She admires not only Obama's intelligence but his honesty. "He is one of the most articulate people I have ever met, but he doesn't use his gift with language to promote himself. He uses it to clarify the difficult job before him and before all of us. He's not a promoter; from the very beginning, he always makes it clear what his difficulties are. His honesty is refreshing."
Woods was the first foundation to underwrite Obama's work with DCP. Now that he's on the Woods board, Rudd says, "He is among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants to see our grants make change happen--not just pay salaries."
Another strong supporter of Obama's work--as an organizer, as a lawyer, and now as a candidate--is Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the feisty ACORN community organization, a group that's a thorn in the side of most elected officials. "I can't repeat what most ACORN members think and say about politicians. But Barack has proven himself among our members. He is committed to organizing, to building a democracy. Above all else, he is a good listener, and we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."
Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side. Conducting a session in a New Horizons classroom, Obama, tall and thin, looks very much like an Ivy League graduate student. Dressed casually prep, his tie loosened and his top shirt button unfastened, he leads eight black women from the Grand Boulevard community through a discussion of "what folks should know" about who in Chicago has power and why they have it. It's one of his favorite topics, and the class bubbles with suggestions about how "they" got to be high and mighty.
"Slow down now. You're going too fast now," says Obama. "I want to break this down. We talk 'they, they, they' but don't take the time to break it down. We don't analyze. Our thinking is sloppy. And to the degree that it is, we're not going to be able to have the impact we could have. We can't afford to go out there blind, hollering and acting the fool, and get to the table and don't know who it is we're talking to--or what we're going to ask them--whether it's someone with real power or just a third-string flak catcher."
So did he not work for the Gamaliel Foundation?
Did he not teach workshops on the Alinsky method for ACORN?
Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?
Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.
Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008
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
No talking points, just help me to understand.
Respectfully.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?
Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.
Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008
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
No talking points, just help me to understand.
Respectfully.
If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:
He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.
Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:
Columbia University.
The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.
Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.
Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.
As is Barack Hussein Obama.
Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:
"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.
In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."
As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.
Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye. Friends of Bill Club.
quote:
Originally posted by Friendly Bear
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?
Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.
Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008
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
No talking points, just help me to understand.
Respectfully.
If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:
He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.
Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:
Columbia University.
The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.
Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.
Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.
As is Barack Hussein Obama.
Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:
"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.
In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."
As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.
Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye. Friends of Bill Club.
As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization. It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.
Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.
Really quite enlightening.
Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.
Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.
[:O]
quote:
Originally posted by Hoss
quote:
Originally posted by Friendly Bear
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?
Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.
Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008
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
No talking points, just help me to understand.
Respectfully.
If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:
He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.
Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:
Columbia University.
The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.
Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.
Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.
As is Barack Hussein Obama.
Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:
"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.
In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."
As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.
Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye. Friends of Bill Club.
As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization. It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.
Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.
Really quite enlightening.
Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.
Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.
[:O]
Ever found an error in Wikipedia?
I haven't.
quote:
Originally posted by Friendly Bear
quote:
Originally posted by Hoss
quote:
Originally posted by Friendly Bear
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?
Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.
Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008
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
No talking points, just help me to understand.
Respectfully.
If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:
He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.
Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:
Columbia University.
The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.
Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.
Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.
As is Barack Hussein Obama.
Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:
"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.
In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."
As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.
Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye. Friends of Bill Club.
As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization. It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.
Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.
Really quite enlightening.
Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.
Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.
[:O]
Ever found an error in Wikipedia?
I haven't.
Ever found articles whose accuaracy has been disputed on Wikipedia (normally says it right at the top)
I certainly have.
don't try and pass off Wikipedia as an infallable source of information. That's just plain stupidity on anybody's part.
Many organizations that are offspring of Alinsky-- a guy who DIED in 1972... are faith based"... and now you're demonizing Alinsky just as the right wing loves to do so you can tar and feather Obama... [:(!]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.html
Alinsky was a bluff iconoclast who concluded that electoral politics offered few solutions to the have-nots marooned in working-class slums. His approach to social justice relied on generating conflict to mobilize the dispossessed. Power flowed up, he said, and neighborhood leaders who could generate outside pressure on the system were more likely to produce effective change than the lofty lever-pullers operating on the inside.
Both Obama and Clinton admired Alinsky's appeal for small-d democracy but came to believe that social progress is best achieved by working within the political system, and on a national scale.
Both went to law school, turned to a mix of courthouse and community remedies, and eventually moved into electoral politics.
Associates describe the candidates as combining streaks of idealism with a realistic appreciation of the politically possible, a mix the goal-oriented Alinsky would have recognized in himself. Like Alinsky, they fashioned political strategies defined more by coalitions and compromise than by the flashy but often hollow rhetorical pyrotechnics that Clinton, in her Wellesley honors thesis, called "the luxury of symbolic suicide."
Neither candidate would agree to be interviewed about Alinsky. But Marian Wright Edelman, the Children's Defense Fund leader, who knows Obama, worked closely with Clinton and spoke at Alinsky's funeral, said the organizer's allure was formidable, particularly in the energized 1960s.
"He was brilliant. He was working for underdogs. He was trying to empower communities, which we still need to do. He spoke plainly. He had his outrageous side, but he also had his pragmatic side," Edelman said. "Both Hillary and Barack reflect that understanding of community-organizing strategy. Both just know how to leverage power."
------------------------------------------------
Born in 1909 and bred in the politicized precincts of Chicago, Alinsky was a lifelong student of the dynamics of power who concluded that the city's famed Democratic machine remained unmoved unless pushed.
Alinsky took action with an organizing campaign in 1939 in Back of the Yards, the desperate Chicago meatpacking district depicted in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Fashioning an unlikely alliance of unions, the Catholic church and others to win concessions from industry and government, he said organizers must listen to people's desires, then find leaders to carry the fight.
------------------------------------------------
An organizer must "fan the latent hostilities," he wrote in his 1946 handbook "Reveille for Radicals," and "he must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them."
A master of the attention-getting rhetorical flourish, Alinsky once pressed Eastman Kodak to hire more black workers, saying the only thing the company had done about race was introduce color film. Yet he practiced "a method that sounds more radical than it actually was," said Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, who called Alinsky "a tactician more than he was an ideologist."
Alinsky, unimpressed by dogma, believed in coalitions linked by clear-eyed calculations of self-interest. He focused on concrete local issues: bus routes, public housing, jobs. To him, the fashionable cry of the 1960s that power comes from the barrel of a gun was "absurd." To mark his differences with the bomb-throwers, he subtitled his second book "A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."
The calamitous events of that decade turned Clinton away from the GOP of her Park Ridge, Ill., youth. Arriving at Wellesley, she became president of the Young Republicans, but she soon drifted left. She said that 1968, the year she met Alinsky in Chicago, was a watershed in her "personal and political evolution," marked by the escalation of the Vietnam War and the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
When she returned for her senior year that September, Clinton decided to write a thesis on the war on poverty. Her adviser suggested Alinsky. She called her 92-page work, after a line in a T.S. Eliot poem, " 'There Is Only the Fight . . . ': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model."
Much of Alinsky's agenda, she wrote after interviewing him three times, "does not sound 'radical.' " Even his tactics, she concluded, were often "non-radical, even 'anti-radical.' His are the words used in our schools and churches, by our parents and their friends, by our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them and recognizes the necessity of changing the present structures of our lives in order to realize them."
Among examples of Alinsky's methods, Clinton cited the 1961 decision to send 2,000 black Woodlawn community residents downtown en masse to register to vote. She mentioned activists picketing the suburban homes of slumlords and a mission to dump garbage outside the sanitation commission.
------------------------------------------------
She (Hillary Clinton) told an interviewer shortly after Bill Clinton became president that government programs were too often administered from on high, with too little effect.
"I basically argued that [Alinsky] was right," Clinton told The Washington Post in 1993. "Even at that early stage, I was against all these people who came up with these big government programs that were more supportive of bureaucracies than actually helpful to people. You know, I've been on this kick for 25 years."
In the end, Clinton gave Alinsky mixed reviews, admiring his charisma and his goal of democratic equality while questioning the usefulness and staying power of a small-bore approach based on stirring up conflict in the inner city. She noted that Alinsky was crafting a fresh appeal to the potentially powerful middle class.
------------------------------------------------
Community organizing, for Clinton principally an academic exercise, was more complex for Obama when he arrived in Chicago in 1985 to work with the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Alinsky network. His experience became an emotional and visceral exploration of the roots of urban African American decay and his own identity.
Times had changed. The '60s were over. Chicago had a black mayor, and Alinsky was gone, dead of a heart attack in 1972. But his work and the fundamentals of his philosophy survived on the far South Side.
Obama stepped into the Alinsky tradition after deciding "mainly on impulse," he has said, at age 21 to become a community organizer. His passion ran to romantic visions of the civil rights struggle.
"He wanted to make that kind of contribution and didn't know how to do it," said Gerald Kellman, who hired Obama. "There's that side of him that's strongly idealistic, very much a dreamer, and this kind of work attracts that kind of person. It isn't just that we're going to change things, but we're going to change things from the grass roots."
Obama spent three roller-coaster years trying to build a new source of power in the Altgeld Gardens housing project and the Roseland community, maneuvering among neighbors, church leaders and politicians who did not always welcome the encounters.
"It was poverty on top of poverty. There were so many people who had given up. They just didn't care," said Loretta Augustine-Herron, who signed up to work with Obama. "I don't think he knew how bad it was until he came to our area. He had to have the tenacity and the patience to train us, and sometimes he had to be frustrated."
The Alinsky method, which Obama taught long afterward, is centered on one-on-one conversations. The organizer's task is to draw out people's stories, listening for their goals and ambitions -- "the stuff that makes them tick," one of his teachers told him. There he would find the self-interest that would spark activism.
------------------------------------------------
In time, Obama helped build and guide a small network of grass-roots groups that agitated for better playgrounds, improvements in trash pickup and the removal of asbestos from public housing. The city opened a jobs office in the tumbledown community as the lights were going out in nearby factories.
It was in those neighborhoods, Obama said in announcing for president, "that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith." But by the time Obama moved on, Kellman said, he had seen "the limits of what could be achieved."
Obama spent three years at Harvard Law School, then returned to Chicago, where he taught constitutional law, handled civil rights cases and worked with community groups. He continued to teach the Alinsky philosophy, although he told the New Republic recently that "Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest."
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a friend of Obama's, sees another difference. "If you read Alinsky's teachings, there are times he's confrontational. I have not seen that in Barack. He's always looking for ways to connect."
------------------------------------------------
"It's time for politicians and other leaders to take the next step and to see voters, residents or citizens as producers of this change," Obama told Hank De Zutter of the Chicago Reporter. "What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them?"
What Obama and Clinton both learned, said Edelman, of the Children's Defense Fund, is that "community organizing is crucial but not enough."
Chicago organizer Gregory Galluzzo, Obama's former supervisor, who likes to describe himself as Alinsky's St. Paul, believes that Obama's exposure to the organizer's liturgy taught him that wisdom can emerge from the grass roots. "Hillary," he said, "leans toward the elites."
But Galluzzo believes that both candidates were influenced by their encounters with Alinsky and his methods. "By either one of them being in office," he said, "we're going to have a government that's more responsive to the ordinary people."
quote:
Originally posted by Hoss
quote:
Originally posted by Friendly Bear
quote:
Originally posted by Hoss
quote:
Originally posted by Friendly Bear
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
Is he not an Alinsky acolyte?
Someone should tell that to Saul's son and the ACORNs.
Apparently they are publishing letters to the contrary.
From the Boston Globe
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
August 31, 2008
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
No talking points, just help me to understand.
Respectfully.
If the Main Stream Media would investigate Barack the Redeemer with 1/100th of the zeal they're tearing into Gov. Sarah Palin, they would have reported just what a Community Organizer does:
He helped deliver up city services in exchange for his constituents getting out the vote on election day for the Cook County Democrat Political Machine.
Obama's orientation is a hard-left radical.
He studied political science at the Hive of modern Marxist dogma:
Columbia University.
The Critical Theory Marxists of the Frankfurt School relocated to Columbia U. prior to WWII, to escape persecution from the Nazi Regime.
Their Marxist Dogma has infected thousands of college professors and millions of their students since it was allowed to spread in camouflaged fashion throughout first our Ivy League Universities, then throughout Academia.
Radical Saul Alinsky was one its adherents.
As is Barack Hussein Obama.
Here's what Wikipidia had to say about Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama, Community Organizer:
"Thirteen years after Alinsky died, some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organizer in South Chicago.
In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing and became an instructor and teacher of the Alinsky Method to other community organizers."
As a footnote, fellow Hard-Core Liberal Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky.
Wellesley College had her fawning thesis "sealed" for decades to keep it out of the public eye. Friends of Bill Club.
As you've been so prone to point out, Wikipedia is hardly 'Lexis-Nexis' or a non-partisan media organization. It's a membership of online article updaters that self police the website to have as accurate a set of information as possible.
Myself, I've been using http://www.factcheck.org as of late.
Really quite enlightening.
Even dispelled the rumor that Obama is Muslim.
Oh wait, you must not have gotten that memo yet.
[:O]
Ever found an error in Wikipedia?
I haven't.
Ever found articles whose accuaracy has been disputed on Wikipedia (normally says it right at the top)
I certainly have.
don't try and pass off Wikipedia as an infallable source of information. That's just plain stupidity on anybody's part.
I just like to say Wiki is fallable when someone uses it to dispute one of my points. [;)][}:)]
Pretty much every media organization has the same problem. I defintely don't put a whole lot of weight on Con or Lib blogs. MSM isn't a whole lot better at getting all the facts straight because there is so much competition in the media and we are used to instantaneous news these days.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
Saul Alinsky dedicated his book "Rules for Radicals" to Lucifer.
Obama has a signed copy sitting on his bedstand.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
I dunno, Gassy, that list at least in part looks a lot like some of the tactics that the GOP likes to deploy. Maybe we can see if we they do it too.
quote:
Originally posted by we vs us
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
I dunno, Gassy, that list at least in part looks a lot like some of the tactics that the GOP likes to deploy. Maybe we can see if we they do it too.
Great insight Wevsus. This is the worst tactic I've seen Gas use to date. Couldn't even finish his first post. Had to walk away, get some coffee, settle down and try again. Desperation is obvious. If we don't agree with the resident party's guy, we're simply all seditious, Marxist, Communist, Socialist or just plain simpletons. Welcome back to the HUAC of the fifties. Marxists everwhere..."Save us John!"
People in business and politics routinely use Machiavellian principles laid out in previous centuries. So...I guess they're all seditious, monarchists.
Its not the techniques that matter as much as the motivations.
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
Quote
Great insight Wevsus. This is the worst tactic I've seen Gas use to date. Couldn't even finish his first post. Had to walk away, get some coffee, settle down and try again. Desperation is obvious. If we don't agree with the resident party's guy, we're simply all seditious, Marxist, Communist, Socialist or just plain simpletons. Welcome back to the HUAC of the fifties. Marxists everwhere..."Save us John!"
People in business and politics routinely use Machiavellian principles laid out in previous centuries. So...I guess they're all seditious, monarchists.
Its not the techniques that matter as much as the motivations.
I have to admit I thought that was about as radical as applying Sun Tzu to business.
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
quote:
Originally posted by we vs us
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
I dunno, Gassy, that list at least in part looks a lot like some of the tactics that the GOP likes to deploy. Maybe we can see if we they do it too.
Great insight Wevsus. This is the worst tactic I've seen Gas use to date. Couldn't even finish his first post. Had to walk away, get some coffee, settle down and try again. Desperation is obvious. If we don't agree with the resident party's guy, we're simply all seditious, Marxist, Communist, Socialist or just plain simpletons. Welcome back to the HUAC of the fifties. Marxists everwhere..."Save us John!"
People in business and politics routinely use Machiavellian principles laid out in previous centuries. So...I guess they're all seditious, monarchists.
Its not the techniques that matter as much as the motivations.
Not much of a tactic. I just posted an article, then some information from Alinsky's book, then a letter from Alinsky's son.
I asked simple questions that no one bothered to answer. I wanted some of the more liberal insiders to provide me with the answers and they did not even attempt to.
So I pose the questions again:
Was Obama an ACORN Community Organizer?
Did he teach the Alinsky Method for ACORN?
Did he work for the Gamaliel Foundation?
Answer me these questions three, and we can move on.
I have since Friday acquired a copy of Alinsky's book and would be happy to share some of the information with you, if you are interested?
I personally like this little diddy from chapter 2:
"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves...The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be."The reason I find it so interesting is that Michelle Obama used it in her speech before the DNC when she said:
"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..." The phrase is innocuous enough, especially if you embrace distribution of wealth philosophies, but it shows a very deep rooted connection to Alinsky's principals.
I have much more to share about this. It seems that Obams is very fond of Alinsky's writing and it slips out in his speeches [;)]. . . But it's probably nothing important.
Again I am adding no judgement here, I am simply researching, I am sorry if it makes you angry.
By the way I found in my reading that their are actually 12 principals that Alinsky pushes in the actual book, not 11 as I mentioned before. It seems that many of the organizations that promote the Alinsky method always forget to post one on their websites and in their literature [:O]. It's always the same one too.
Fascinating book though.
Dedication on the first page for our bud FOTD:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3115/2853397745_9b9f3338bc.jpg?v=0)
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
quote:
Originally posted by we vs us
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
I dunno, Gassy, that list at least in part looks a lot like some of the tactics that the GOP likes to deploy. Maybe we can see if we they do it too.
Great insight Wevsus. This is the worst tactic I've seen Gas use to date. Couldn't even finish his first post. Had to walk away, get some coffee, settle down and try again. Desperation is obvious. If we don't agree with the resident party's guy, we're simply all seditious, Marxist, Communist, Socialist or just plain simpletons. Welcome back to the HUAC of the fifties. Marxists everwhere..."Save us John!"
People in business and politics routinely use Machiavellian principles laid out in previous centuries. So...I guess they're all seditious, monarchists.
Its not the techniques that matter as much as the motivations.
Not much of a tactic. I just posted an article, then some information from Alinsky's book, then a letter from Alinsky's son.
I asked simple questions that no one bothered to answer. I wanted some of the more liberal insiders to provide me with the answers and they did not even attempt to.
So I pose the questions again:
Was Obama an ACORN Community Organizer?
Did he teach the Alinsky Method for ACORN?
Did he work for the Gamaliel Foundation?
Answer me these questions three, and we can move on.
I have since Friday acquired a copy of Alinsky's book and would be happy to share some of the information with you, if you are interested?
I personally like this little diddy from chapter 2:
"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves...The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be."
The reason I find it so interesting is that Michelle Obama used it in her speech before the DNC when she said:
"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..."
The phrase is innocuous enough, especially if you embrace distribution of wealth philosophies, but it shows a very deep rooted connection to Alinsky's principals.
I have much more to share about this. It seems that Obams is very fond of Alinsky's writing and it slips out in his speeches [;)]. . . But it's probably nothing important.
Again I am adding no judgement here, I am simply researching, I am sorry if it makes you angry.
By the way I found in my reading that their are actually 12 principals that Alinsky pushes in the actual book, not 11 as I mentioned before. It seems that many of the organizations that promote the Alinsky method always forget to post one on their websites and in their literature [:O]. It's always the same one too.
Fascinating book though.
Dedication on the first page for our bud FOTD:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3115/2853397745_9b9f3338bc.jpg?v=0)
You were obviously internet-savvy enough to dig up the other facts, but you can't conclude whether or not he used ACORN tactics during his time as a community organizer?
You're trolling now. And not in the derogatory internet version of the word.
That's like asking if GWB used cocaine in his younger years. You either don't know, or you're saying if you can't prove it, then the answer must be yes/no, whichever way is most advantageous for your argument. You're the one that keeps bringing it up. Last I checked, that means the burden of proof would be on the accuser.
It is the fact that no one will give me the answer that intrigues me. There is no secret.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
It is the fact that no one will give me the answer that intrigues me. There is no secret.
I've looked and can find nothing derogatory about his time as a community leader. If that's all you say you can find, you're definitely trolling and, as the conservatives around have taken to saying, 'sh*tting yourselves'.
[:O]
Ok, here's the hint. You can find the answers to these questions in Obama's own books.
The entertainment is that those who are so upset, running around in circles on this thread, haven't even referenced Obama's own writing.
I again have made no judgments, no inferences, simply brought up the subject. I have not said anything to the effect that this is a positive or negative for Obama, just that the connection exists and is very strong, and that itself is enough to infuriate some.
So ask yourself, why would the connection to Alinsky, one that Obama himself admits, make these people so angry? Why would it cause them to lash out at me? Have I personally condemned Obama for his relationship to this philosophy?
Nope. I just asked questions that Obama has already answered.
I sought to understand what those who think differently than I know of Obama's past as a Community Organizer.
quote:
Originally posted by FOTD
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
I'm trying to understand Obama's past, and more specifically what a "Saul Alinsky" ACORN Community Organizer is. This is from an article today in the UK's Spectator.
The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.
His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations'.
I guess this is why FOTD is happy. Seems he and old Saul serve the same master.
ROTFLMAO! Caught me....rat out your source! Oh my, this revelation will doom all darksiders like the Obama's!
"As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, "
(source:Richards/Jagger)
Saul Alinsky dedicated his book, "Rules for Radicals", to Lucifer.
Barack Hussein Obama is a Community Organizer in the same mold as advocated by far-Left radical Saul Alinsky.
Who once offered a job to HILLARY upon graduation from Wellesley......
Instead, she went to Yale and met Slick Willie.
He dug her "natural" look, no bra and unshaven legs/armpits.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
Ok, here's the hint. You can find the answers to these questions in Obama's own books.
The entertainment is that those who are so upset, running around in circles on this thread, haven't even referenced Obama's own writing.
I again have made no judgments, no inferences, simply brought up the subject. I have not said anything to the effect that this is a positive or negative for Obama, just that the connection exists and is very strong, and that itself is enough to infuriate some.
So ask yourself, why would the connection to Alinsky, one that Obama himself admits, make these people so angry? Why would it cause them to lash out at me? Have I personally condemned Obama for his relationship to this philosophy?
Nope. I just asked questions that Obama has already answered.
I sought to understand what those who think differently than I know of Obama's past as a Community Organizer.
I don't think any of us give a damn about Obama's connection to Alinsky. I think what we're in a tizzy about is your disingenuous way of "presenting" material. You may somehow think what you're doing here doesn't show bias or is a great logic construct to get us libs to admit to some evil doing, but really all this has been is an obscure and idiotic gotcha game. Backing away with your internet hands in the air and saying, "Hey, just asking a question," is something that 15 year olds do when they've been caught being little pricks. Which is, in this post, just what you've been.
For the record, I don't find Alinsky's organizing tactics to be offensive, nor do I find his dedication to Lucifer -- which is there almost certainly to piss squares like you off -- to be out of line. Let him do what he wants. He's been dead for more than 30 years anyway. I also don't find, if true, anything offensive about Obama embracing Alinsky's philosphies, nor can I find, in any of the passages you quoted, anything that might suggest that I should. I have no idea if Obama was part of ACORN, nor the Gamaliel Society, and frankly could give two ****s, but now that I've heard that it gives you such vapors, I really truly hope he DOES belong to these groups and if he doesn't I hope he joins soon.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
quote:
Originally posted by we vs us
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
As a note, in Alinsky's book he notes 11 Rules a successful Community Organizer must follow.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
I am going to look for these elements in Obama's campaign from this point on. Lets see if we can identify them.
I dunno, Gassy, that list at least in part looks a lot like some of the tactics that the GOP likes to deploy. Maybe we can see if we they do it too.
Great insight Wevsus. This is the worst tactic I've seen Gas use to date. Couldn't even finish his first post. Had to walk away, get some coffee, settle down and try again. Desperation is obvious. If we don't agree with the resident party's guy, we're simply all seditious, Marxist, Communist, Socialist or just plain simpletons. Welcome back to the HUAC of the fifties. Marxists everwhere..."Save us John!"
People in business and politics routinely use Machiavellian principles laid out in previous centuries. So...I guess they're all seditious, monarchists.
Its not the techniques that matter as much as the motivations.
Not much of a tactic. I just posted an article, then some information from Alinsky's book, then a letter from Alinsky's son.
I asked simple questions that no one bothered to answer. I wanted some of the more liberal insiders to provide me with the answers and they did not even attempt to.
So I pose the questions again:
Was Obama an ACORN Community Organizer?
Did he teach the Alinsky Method for ACORN?
Did he work for the Gamaliel Foundation?
Answer me these questions three, and we can move on.
I have since Friday acquired a copy of Alinsky's book and would be happy to share some of the information with you, if you are interested?
I personally like this little diddy from chapter 2:
"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves...The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be."
The reason I find it so interesting is that Michelle Obama used it in her speech before the DNC when she said:
"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..."
The phrase is innocuous enough, especially if you embrace distribution of wealth philosophies, but it shows a very deep rooted connection to Alinsky's principals.
I have much more to share about this. It seems that Obams is very fond of Alinsky's writing and it slips out in his speeches [;)]. . . But it's probably nothing important.
Again I am adding no judgement here, I am simply researching, I am sorry if it makes you angry.
By the way I found in my reading that their are actually 12 principals that Alinsky pushes in the actual book, not 11 as I mentioned before. It seems that many of the organizations that promote the Alinsky method always forget to post one on their websites and in their literature [:O]. It's always the same one too.
Fascinating book though.
Dedication on the first page for our bud FOTD:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3115/2853397745_9b9f3338bc.jpg?v=0)
You are exposing flaws in the character and competence of Obama the REDEEMER of the hard Left and its sycophant Main Stream Media.
The MSM and the hard-left radicals in control of the Democrat Party don't care that Obama's parents were Communists, meeting as they did in a Russian language class, the tongue of their philosophically adopted Mother country, the U.S.S.R.
Obama studied Political Science at Columbia University, with a degree conferred by the nest of domestic academic Marxism, home of Herbert Marcuse the mentor of UC-Berkley professor Angela Davis.
She participated in a Black Panther snatch of a Federal Judge, in which the judge was murdered.
We don't know which Marxist professors Obama studied under, but these and his classes are certainly listed on his college transcript, of which his campaign has BOYCOTTED the release.
Both Obama and Hillary are hard-core adherents of Saul Alinsky, with Hillary writing her Wellesley College senior thesis about Alinsky.
His "Rules for Radicals" handbook for radical Marxist inspired change became Obama's literal bible.
Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.
To LUCIFER.
Obama has a signed original.
Both Obama and Hillary are hard-core adherents of Saul Alinsky, with Hillary writing her Wellesley College senior thesis about Alinsky.
That's a big fat hairy bear LIE. They both admired how Alinski worked for POOR WORKING PEOPLE ON THE SOUTHSIDE OF CHICAGO.
I'm sure you hated the union movement too.....
EVERYTHING is marxist and communist in your little cult-like friendly bear world...
(http://maudnewton.com/images/20070918_marx_bird_monster.jpg)
Geez.
What a waste of thread. There are no new ideas Gas. Just differing ways of presenting the same info. You seem to think this packaging of old ideas is dangerous to our country or you wouldn't bring it up.
You know who else was a radical not long after Lucifer? Jesus. Radical for his times and attacked for his beliefs, methods, and his work within the masses as an unpaid agitator against the existing system. But then, you guys might see him more as a Marxist, Socialist. And psst....they wrote a book about him that McCain and his cohorts often read and quote! Obama does too!!
Then you show mock surprise that people won't jump into your traps and just answer your questions. Indeed.
And you know who was a radical after Jesus? McCain...he's so mavericky. [xx(]
quote:
Originally posted by USRufnex
Both Obama and Hillary are hard-core adherents of Saul Alinsky, with Hillary writing her Wellesley College senior thesis about Alinsky.
That's a big fat hairy bear LIE. They both admired how Alinski worked for POOR WORKING PEOPLE ON THE SOUTHSIDE OF CHICAGO.
I'm sure you hated the union movement too.....
EVERYTHING is marxist and communist in your little cult-like friendly bear world...
(http://maudnewton.com/images/20070918_marx_bird_monster.jpg)
Geez.
Alinsky offered Hillary a job when she graduated from Wellesley.
She considered it, then declined in order to attend Yale Law School.
Since Alinsky died in 1972, it is unlikely that Obama ever met his philosophical mentor.
Nonetheless, the DISCIPLES of Saul Alinsky indoctrinated the Columbia U. trained hard-core Marxist Barach Hussein Obama in Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".
God, please save our country from Barack Hussein Obama!!
DISCIPLES... indoctrinated... trained hard-copy Marxist.... Barach Hussein Obama
You, sir are a propagandist... which explains your unhealthy fascination with Fox News...
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3109.html
Falsifying information that is favorable to Republicans and problematic for Democrats is a regular tactic of Fox News. Specific examples are breathtakingly dishonest, including the Obama Madrassa smear, Carl Cameron's false claims that John Kerry referred to himself as a "metrosexual" and "news anchor" Brit Hume repeating the false canard that the public does not trust the Democratic Party on national defense.
But it's the sweep of the disinformation campaign that suggests a genuine pattern of propagandistic manipulation of the public. The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a study in October 2003 of public knowledge and attitudes about current events, focusing on media consumption habits. The study examined three generic misconceptions about the march to war in Iraq – alleged WMDs, purported Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and supported international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. While three-fifths of Americans held at least one of these misconceptions at the time, speaking to the poor quality of American punditry, Fox News viewers stood out – their viewers were "three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions."
More than 80 percent of Fox News viewers had a basic factual misconception about the war in Iraq, which were coincidentally used by the Bush administration to justify their policies at the time.
This should not be a surprise, as the leadership of Fox News is heavily tied into the Republican Party apparatus. Let's start with the top. Roger Ailes learned his trade in 1968 at the feet of the granddaddy of GOP disinformation, Richard Nixon, continuing his career as a high level aide to Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign, and crafting George H.W. Bush's media strategy in 1988, including the infamous Willie Horton ads.
Ailes isn't the only high level Republican operative in a position of authority at the network. Former "Fox News Sunday" host Tony Snow worked for President George H.W. Bush as a speechwriter, moved to the network, and then became White House press secretary for President George W. Bush.
Fox News, aside from its Republican leadership, supports the Republican Party overtly. As Robert Greenwald of Foxattacks.com and OutFoxed discovered, Fox News executive John Moody hands down a memo with Republican messaging themes each day to guide editorial content. Sometimes the support is more direct – just last month, Fox News personality Sean Hannity was the headline speaker at the South Carolina Republican Party's Annual Silver Elephant Dinner.
Falsification of information is bad enough for an outlet channel that calls itself a news organization, but the overt ties to the Republican Party are deeply disturbing for our democracy as a whole. This is not an ideological argument about diversity – Fox News is not really a conservative news channel, it is a Republican propaganda and surrogate operation, as Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch seem to have baked into their business model a wholesale allegiance to the Republican Party.
quote:
Originally posted by USRufnex
You, sir are a propagandist...
Quick Ruf, name one person who posts on the political section of TNF who is NOT a propagandist.
Can't do it can you?
[;)]
(http://www.ardeon.org/happy/us/propaganda.jpg)
(http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_Arab_Public_Opinion_2008.gif)
FB, did you go to OU? I remember a poli-sci class my sophomore year that the professor was attempting to compare and contrast the different 'isms to a class. Capitalism, Marxism, etc. He noted the advantages and disadvantages of each. When he pointed out that Communism had an advantage in planning resources the guy next to me suddenly bolted upright and yelled at the professor, "You're teaching Communism!! My parents warned me about you commie professors!" We were all stunned. How did he make it to college and not understand the difference between teaching something and embracing it? How did he make it to college without understanding that even a faulty system can have elements that are successful?
Well, how did you?
Remember this one Ruf?
(http://www.bushflash.com/jpg/a28_b.jpg)
(http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/photos/uncategorized/rosietba.jpg)
(http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q55/71conan/TN/ss-sharpton.jpg)
quote:
Originally posted by Conan71
(http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q55/71conan/TN/ss-sharpton.jpg)
Now that's actually pretty damned funny right there.
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
What a waste of thread. There are no new ideas Gas. Just differing ways of presenting the same info. You seem to think this packaging of old ideas is dangerous to our country or you wouldn't bring it up.
You know who else was a radical not long after Lucifer? Jesus. Radical for his times and attacked for his beliefs, methods, and his work within the masses as an unpaid agitator against the existing system. But then, you guys might see him more as a Marxist, Socialist. And psst....they wrote a book about him that McCain and his cohorts often read and quote! Obama does too!!
Then you show mock surprise that people won't jump into your traps and just answer your questions. Indeed.
Oh good Lord, I have nothing against radicals. Radicals shake up our perception of society and open our eyes to new possibilities.
Again, I never said anything negative about radicals. . . and if you feel this is old information than please feel free to ignore it.
That said, I have finished my little reading assignment, and I must say I am a bit disappointed. This playbook is THE PLAYBOOK, down to Obama's mantra of Hope for Change.
Ok, so here's my book report:
You see, Aliniski understands that "the world as we believe it should be" is our fantasy. A fantasy that we can realize, but only if we take the necessary steps to change our condition.So I'm ok with this. I believe this. It's the way to live your life and realize your dreams. When you are not in the situation you want, you change your situation. All good with me.
Oh but how he turns. Rather than using his wit, his intelligence, and his rather Sartresque writing style to encourage organizers to refine themselves, and push the communities towards enlightenment, education, and personal responsibility, he encourages them to use deceit, camouflage and subterfuge to achieve their goals.
He encourages his followers to shape public perception through deception. No lie is to great if it serves the cause aye?
Oh and that little Rule #10 that no one wants to post on their web sites, that little rule encourages organizers to incite violence. It instructs them to push hard enough to promote violence from their opponent. Then to use it as a public example.
He goes almost as far as promoting martyrdom as a means to manipulate public perception.
I am so disappointed that I never got the chance to read this book earlier in my life. It has opened my eyes to so much more of what is taking place on the political playing field. This is a guide to manipulating the poor and uneducated into doing your political bidding. It's a "How To" on creating a motivated army of people who have no understanding what they are fighting for.
Unfortunately, now I am not nearly as impressed with Obama's strategies. I thought they were new, fresh, avant-guard, but this is old flawed angry class warfare stuff. There is nothing here for the individual. It's the "my hive mentality is better than your hive mentality" crap. It's reactionary and really sad.
Here's my Rule for Radicals. A prisoner that does not like his cell has two choices. He can work towards obtaining the tools to escape, or he can demand that the guards repaint his cell.
Edit: Capitalized "Lord" Thanks WB. Your piety is without question.
Gas, you really should capitalize "Lord" even when used in vain.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
What a waste of thread. There are no new ideas Gas. Just differing ways of presenting the same info. You seem to think this packaging of old ideas is dangerous to our country or you wouldn't bring it up.
You know who else was a radical not long after Lucifer? Jesus. Radical for his times and attacked for his beliefs, methods, and his work within the masses as an unpaid agitator against the existing system. But then, you guys might see him more as a Marxist, Socialist. And psst....they wrote a book about him that McCain and his cohorts often read and quote! Obama does too!!
Then you show mock surprise that people won't jump into your traps and just answer your questions. Indeed.
Oh good Lord, I have nothing against radicals. Radicals shake up our perception of society and open our eyes to new possibilities.
Again, I never said anything negative about radicals. . . and if you feel this is old information than please feel free to ignore it.
Edit: Capitalized "Lord" Thanks WB. Your piety is without question.
(http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/funny-pictures-cat-is-suspicious-of-your-intentions.jpg)
Radical was in the first sentence of your post describing the man who wrote what you think is the current playbook for politics. That's why I responded to it.
I don't believe anything you've posted about power, acquisition of power, and manipulating of masses is anything new or particularly shocking. Just my observation that little is new in human relations, simply new to the latest reader of history or practitioner of politics. Perhaps some new interpretations of old stuff but not really new. The Bible is really helpful in proving my opinion. So are heiroglyphs!
We tend to think that our generation, our time in history, our level of education and technology makes us superior to the past. It is an arrogant illusion. Unearthing of ancient texts describing trade between countries 3000yrs ago show they used accounting principles, inventory methods and shipping practices no different than today.
I do admire your passion for making connections with these things. I would be more willing to delve into such a discussion if it was non partisan in nature and simply a revelation in thinking. Unfortunately its a playbook used by all sides and you're choosing a side as am I. I'm taking your advice and ignoring it as old news.
quote:
Originally posted by waterboy
Radical was in the first sentence of your post describing the man who wrote what you think is the current playbook for politics. That's why I responded to it.
I don't believe anything you've posted about power, acquisition of power, and manipulating of masses is anything new or particularly shocking. Just my observation that little is new in human relations, simply new to the latest reader of history or practitioner of politics. Perhaps some new interpretations of old stuff but not really new. The Bible is really helpful in proving my opinion. So are heiroglyphs!
We tend to think that our generation, our time in history, our level of education and technology makes us superior to the past. It is an arrogant illusion. Unearthing of ancient texts describing trade between countries 3000yrs ago show they used accounting principles, inventory methods and shipping practices no different than today.
I do admire your passion for making connections with these things. I would be more willing to delve into such a discussion if it was non partisan in nature and simply a revelation in thinking. Unfortunately its a playbook used by all sides and you're choosing a side as am I. I'm taking your advice and ignoring it as old news.
Well said.
ACORN has been busy preparing for this election. I wonder how many dead Ohioans will be voting this year?
Washington
July 26, 2007,Seattle Times
Felony charges filed against 7 in state's biggest case of voter-registration fraud. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now
Michigan
September 14, 2008, Detroit Free Press
Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ...
Florida
Oct. 13, 2007, PRNewswire
A Florida state attorney is investigating thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registrations associated with the leading organizer of Florida's Amendment 5 ballot initiative. But this is just the tip of an iceberg of illegalities, fraud and contradictions connected to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) ... Former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart has declared an intent to sue ACORN and has made charges of rampant voter fraud operations. Stuart was employed and specifically tasked by ACORN to generate 103,000 new voter registrations from Dade County. He reports that ACORN threw out Republican registrations while paying for Democratic ones. Stuart also charges that ACORN targeted ex-cons and that he personally set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail.
New Mexico
Sept. 18, 2008, Judicial Watch Blog
This week officials in New Mexico's most populous county (Bernalillo) notified federal authorities that more than 1,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted to the clerk's office. ACORN, which pays workers for each registration, is the prime suspect since it has handled thousands of new voter registrations in New Mexico since January. County workers subsequently discovered that at least 1,100 new registrations list Social Security numbers for people already in the county's database of registered voters, names of registered voters with different birth dates and addresses that don't exist.
Wisconsin
Aug. 6, 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them. "One woman called us to complain because her husband has been dead for 10 years and a voter registration was submitted," Edman said. In about 12 cases, deputy registrars paid by ACORN were "making people up or registering people that were still in prison," said Carolyn Castore, ACORN's state political director. And in other cases, workers used the same address for numerous voters or used driver's license numbers that did not fit the voters' birth dates, Edman said. But most of the fraud involved submitting duplicate cards for voters who were already registered, and forging the voters' signatures, Castore said.
Ohio
August 27, 2008, The Plain Dealer
A national organization that conducts voter registration drives for low-income people has curtailed its push in Cuyahoga County after the Board of Elections accused its workers of submitting fraudulent registration cards. Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant. ACORN has submitted about 75,000 voter registration cards to the Cuyahoga board this year.
Pennsylvania
Sept. 18, 2008, The Bulletin: Philadelphia's Family Newspaper
A community organization, with longstanding ties to Barack Obama, has, according to numerous reports, repeatedly run afoul of voter registration laws both locally and nationally. Philadelphia election officials recently accused ACORN, of filing multiple fraudulent voter registrations during the 2008 Pennsylvania primary. The case has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's office, according to Philadelphia Deputy Election Commissioner Fred Voight. Delaware County election officials have made similar allegations against the group, and criminal indictments are pending. This past July 24, Dauphin County detectives offered a $2,000 reward for information about the whereabouts of Luis R. Torres-Serrano, an ACORN worker, who was accused of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registrations.
Nevada
July 7,2008, Las Vegas Review Journal
ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to have collected 60,000 new voter registrations in Clark County since February ... Lomax said while he supports the goal of getting more people registered to vote, he sees rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week.
quote:
Originally posted by Gaspar
ACORN has been busy preparing for this election. I wonder how many dead Ohioans will be voting this year?
Washington
July 26, 2007,Seattle Times
Felony charges filed against 7 in state's biggest case of voter-registration fraud. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now
Michigan
September 14, 2008, Detroit Free Press
Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ...
Florida
Oct. 13, 2007, PRNewswire
A Florida state attorney is investigating thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registrations associated with the leading organizer of Florida's Amendment 5 ballot initiative. But this is just the tip of an iceberg of illegalities, fraud and contradictions connected to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) ... Former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart has declared an intent to sue ACORN and has made charges of rampant voter fraud operations. Stuart was employed and specifically tasked by ACORN to generate 103,000 new voter registrations from Dade County. He reports that ACORN threw out Republican registrations while paying for Democratic ones. Stuart also charges that ACORN targeted ex-cons and that he personally set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail.
New Mexico
Sept. 18, 2008, Judicial Watch Blog
This week officials in New Mexico's most populous county (Bernalillo) notified federal authorities that more than 1,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted to the clerk's office. ACORN, which pays workers for each registration, is the prime suspect since it has handled thousands of new voter registrations in New Mexico since January. County workers subsequently discovered that at least 1,100 new registrations list Social Security numbers for people already in the county's database of registered voters, names of registered voters with different birth dates and addresses that don't exist.
Wisconsin
Aug. 6, 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them. "One woman called us to complain because her husband has been dead for 10 years and a voter registration was submitted," Edman said. In about 12 cases, deputy registrars paid by ACORN were "making people up or registering people that were still in prison," said Carolyn Castore, ACORN's state political director. And in other cases, workers used the same address for numerous voters or used driver's license numbers that did not fit the voters' birth dates, Edman said. But most of the fraud involved submitting duplicate cards for voters who were already registered, and forging the voters' signatures, Castore said.
Ohio
August 27, 2008, The Plain Dealer
A national organization that conducts voter registration drives for low-income people has curtailed its push in Cuyahoga County after the Board of Elections accused its workers of submitting fraudulent registration cards. Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant. ACORN has submitted about 75,000 voter registration cards to the Cuyahoga board this year.
Pennsylvania
Sept. 18, 2008, The Bulletin: Philadelphia's Family Newspaper
A community organization, with longstanding ties to Barack Obama, has, according to numerous reports, repeatedly run afoul of voter registration laws both locally and nationally. Philadelphia election officials recently accused ACORN, of filing multiple fraudulent voter registrations during the 2008 Pennsylvania primary. The case has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's office, according to Philadelphia Deputy Election Commissioner Fred Voight. Delaware County election officials have made similar allegations against the group, and criminal indictments are pending. This past July 24, Dauphin County detectives offered a $2,000 reward for information about the whereabouts of Luis R. Torres-Serrano, an ACORN worker, who was accused of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registrations.
Nevada
July 7,2008, Las Vegas Review Journal
ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to have collected 60,000 new voter registrations in Clark County since February ... Lomax said while he supports the goal of getting more people registered to vote, he sees rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week.
Nice job on resurrecting a two week old thread. That reeks of desperation.
[:O]
Can you hear me huffing and puffing?
Sweat rolling down my brow?
Moist palms?
[:D]
I think they are drinking way too much of that Fox News rot gut, (it is hard for me to go with the kool aid analogy since I lost friends in the Jim Jones debacle in Guiana many years ago)
the only time we hear about Voter fraud is right before any election that Fox thinks the Republican party might lose, which means all of them.