I) DIVIDING BY CLASS: Obama the Chicago Community Organizer: From the mid- to late 1980s, Barack Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago. Thomas Sowell, the eminent Hoover Institution Fellow, offers this concise explanation of what community organizers do: “For community organizers ... racial resentments are a stock in trade.... What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.” Obama Uses Saul Alinsky Tactics to Foment Class Resentments: Three of Barack Obamas mentors in Chicago were trained at the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by the famed godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky. In the Alinsky model, “organizing” is a euphemism for “revolution”—where the ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of Americas social and economic structure. The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx and Engels predicted.¨ But Alinskys brand of revolution is not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. As Richard Poe explains, “Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.” Indeed, Alinsky advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, unobtrusively gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to then introduce changes from those platforms. Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method for several years.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:02:24 +0000
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