Alinsky - Legacy

Legacy

The documentary The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy, states that "Alinsky championed new ways to organize the poor and powerless that created a backyard revolution in cities across America." Alinsky formed the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in 1940, and Edward T. Chambers became its Executive Director after Alinsky died. Since the IAF's formation, hundreds of professional community and labor organizers and thousands of community and labor leaders have attended its workshops. Fred Ross, who worked for Alinsky, was the principal mentor for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Other organizations following in the tradition of the Congregation-based Community Organizing pioneered by IAF include PICO National Network, Gamaliel Foundation, and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART). Hillary Clinton's senior honors thesis on Saul Alinsky, written at Wellesley College, noted that Alinsky's personal efforts were a large part of his method.

Several prominent American leaders have been influenced by Alinsky's teachings, including Ed Chambers, Tom Gaudette, Ernesto Cortes, Michael Gecan, Wade Rathke,and Patrick Crowley . Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for the grassroots political organizing that dominated the 1960s. Jack Newfield writing in New York magazine included Alinsky among "the purest Avatars of the populist movement," along with Ralph Nader, Cesar Chavez, and Jesse Jackson.

Biographer Sanford Horwitt has claimed that U.S. President Barack Obama was influenced by Alinsky and followed in his footsteps as a Chicago-based community organizer. Horwitt furthermore has asserted that Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign was influenced by Alinsky's teachings.

Adam Brandon, a spokesman for the conservative non-profit organization FreedomWorks, which is one of several groups involved in organizing Tea Party protests, says the group gives Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to its top leadership members. A shortened guide called Rules for Patriots is distributed to its entire network. In a January 2012 story that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, citing the organization's tactic of sending activists to town-hall meetings, Brandon explained, "his tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective." Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey also gives copies of Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.

In 1969, he was awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award.

Alinsky died of a sudden, massive heart attack in 1972, on a street corner in Carmel, California, at the age of 63. Two months previously, he discussed life after death in his interview with Playboy:

ALINSKY: ... if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.

PLAYBOY: Why?

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots over there.

PLAYBOY: Why them?

ALINSKY: They're my kind of people.