Some Notes on Activism and Agitation

A friend who is becoming interested in social justice asked me for suggestions, from my own experience, of how to approach elected officials. I advised her to read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and she told me she was already in the process of reading it. I wrote to her:

Alinsky is a genius when it comes to organizing and activism. I only disagree with him on two points: I think he misunderstands Machiavelli, and his comments about “working within the system” are problem...