He tells us straight out what he’s looking for in a “community organizer.” First off, he looks for flexibility.31 That means moving from method to method, argument to argument, fighting like a guerrilla rather than like a coordinated army. Don’t worry about methodological consistency, says Alinsky—just do what you have to in order to win. Alinsky believes that the ends justify the means as a general rule. He believes that fearing corruption of your internal values only leads to paralysis, and that the only way to truly win is to abandon yourself wholly to your ends. As Stalin would have put
...more
