“Protest Tactics”
Saul Alinsky
Protest Tactics
Tactics: Doing what you can with what you have (225)
Focus Here: Tactic of Taking: How the Have Nots can Take
Power from the Haves (225)
Protest Tactics
Human Face: Illustration of Tactics
Eyes: visibility, public demo of strength
Ears: make a lot of noise, use if you don’t have numbers
Noise: if you are too small to make noise, stink up the place.
(SHIT IN)
Rules for Radicals
Rules of Power and Organization
First Rule: “Power is not only what you have but what the
enemy thinks you have”
Second Rule: “Never go outside the experience of your own
people”
Third Rule: “Wherever possible go outside of the experience
of the enemy”
Sherman Example: Shocked the South with new tactics.
Rules for Radicals
Fourth Rule: “Make the Enemy live up to their own book of
rules.” (226)
You will kill them with this: they cannot do it.
Fifth Rule: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
It is hard to counterattack, and infuriates the opposition.
Sixth Rule: “A good tactic is one that your people enjoy”
Rules for Radicals
Seventh Rule: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
Columbia University example: Blockade went on too long.
Eighth Rule: “Keep the Pressure On”
Ninth Rule: “The Threat is usually more terrifying than the
thing itself.”
Example: O’Hare “Shit-In”
Rules for Radicals
Tenth Rule: “Need to Develop operations that will maintain a
constant pressure upon the opposition.”
Eleventh Rule: “If you push a negative enough it will break
through into its counterside.”
Alinsky’s apartment was burglarized by a private security
firm hired by a corporation he was protesting. He also
received a death threat. He used both against the company.
He threatened to go public with the assassination in a
Congressional hearing.
Rules for Radicals
Thirteen Rule: “Pick the Target, freeze it, personalize it and
polarize it.” (227-228)
Pick Target: In an increasingly complex world, govt agencies
and
corporations will try to shift the responsibility and blame.
You therefore need to pin down the target.
Rules for Radicals
Personalize It: Give the opposition a name and face: going after
a company or “City Hall” is too abstract.
Examples: CIO did this in the 1930s
Polarization: “He that is not with me is against me”
(Luke 11:23) You need to draw a sharp distinction
between the your side and the opposition.
Need to be clear and decisive about who the opposition is.