Saul Alinsky

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Lore & Background

Saul Alinsky was born in 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, to Lithuanian Jewish emigrant parents from what was then Vilna in the Russian Empire. He was the only surviving son of Benjamin Alinsky and his second wife, Sarah Tannenbaum Alinsky. His father started as a tailor, then ran a delicatessen and a cleaning shop. Both parents were strict and observant Orthodox. Alinsky described himself as devout until age 12, when he began to fear his parents would force him to become a rabbi. He recalled that antisemitism was 'so pervasive ... you just accepted it as a fact of life.' After retaliating against Polish boys, a rabbi told him: 'where there are no men, be thou a man.' Alinsky considered himself an agnostic but would 'always say Jewish.'

In 1926, Alinsky entered the University of Chicago, studying in America's first sociology department under Ernest Burgess and Robert E. Park. He was critical of academic approaches to poverty, claiming to be 'astounded by all the horse manure [sociologists] were handing out about poverty and slums.' The Great Depression ended his interest in archaeology. A chance graduate fellowship moved him to criminology; for two years as a 'nonparticipant observer,' he claimed to have hung out with Chicago's Al Capone mob, who taught him 'the terrific importance of personal relationships.' He took a job in the Illinois Division of the State Criminologist, working with juvenile delinquents and at the Joliet Correctional Center, but found it dispiriting: if he dwelt on causes of crime like poor housing or unemployment, he was labeled a 'red.'

In 1938, Alinsky gave up his last employment at the Institute for Juvenile Research to devote himself full-time as a political activist. He raised funds for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and for southern sharecroppers, organized for the Newspaper Guild, fought evictions, and agitated for public housing. He worked alongside the CIO and its president John L. Lewis. In January 1946 the BYNC supported the first major walkout of the United Packinghouse Workers. In 1940, with support from Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and Chicago Sun-Times publisher Marshall Field, Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a national community organizing network. The IAF partnered with religious congregations and civic organizations to build 'broad-based organizations' and train local leadership. Alinsky wrote that urban anonymity was 'one of eroding destruction to the foundations of democracy.' Through the IAF, he spent the next 10 years repeating his organizational work from Kansas City and Detroit to the farm-worker barrios of Southern California.

Reader's Guide

Saul Alinsky's significance lies in his pioneering approach to community organizing, which sought to empower poor and marginalized populations to press demands upon landlords, politicians, bankers, and business leaders. His work through the Industrial Areas Foundation won him national recognition and notoriety. Beginning in the 1990s, Alinsky's reputation was revived by commentators on the political right as a source of tactical inspiration for the Republican Tea Party movement and subsequently, by virtue of indirect associations with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as the alleged source of a radical Democratic political agenda. While criticized on the political left for an aversion to broad ideological goals, Alinsky has also been identified as an inspiration for the Occupy movement and campaigns for climate action. His methods—defending the arts both of confrontation and of compromise in community organizing—remain a touchstone in debates about social justice organizing.

Did You Know?

• Saul Alinsky was the only surviving son of Benjamin Alinsky and his second wife, Sarah Tannenbaum Alinsky.
• As a 'nonparticipant observer' in criminology, Alinsky claimed to have hung out with Chicago's Al Capone mob, who taught him 'the terrific importance of personal relationships.'
• Alinsky raised funds for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and for southern sharecroppers before becoming a full-time activist.
• Alinsky's 1971 book 'Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer' defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise as keys to the struggle for social justice.