Strategy

by Lawrence Freedman

  Yet he was working with people with few resources and little self-confidence, who were almost completely absorbed by coping with the everyday problems of existence. Alinsky’s colleague, Nicholas von Hoffman, who worked with him for a decade before leaving in 1962 to become a journalist, described how the “lumpen proletariat” faced a series of emergencies and a chain of bad news: “Gas is cut off, electrical service terminated, the landlord is evicting them, a cousin is in jail, the baby has to be rushed to the emergency room, one of the kids sassed a social worker and the family is getting cut off, the reigning male came home and beat the hell out of the mother, Wilson stole the food money, Janice is pregnant, Mother missed her appointment with the vocational counsellor because she was drunk.” As a result, the poor were “unreliable, not the stuff of organizations which are bound together by keeping their commitments.” In practice that meant (as the civil rights movement also discovered) that the pool of credible and capable local leaders was small; the activist base was narrow. Only a few percent of any community were involved in Alinsky’s campaigns. His methods, therefore, came to rely on careful organization and strong leadership. While that did not fit with the later fashion for spontaneity and participatory democracy, he judged that he got better results. His pragmatism was also reflected in his choice of campaigns. Von Hoffman recalled that Alinsky “had no tolerance for a defeat that could have been avoided, no patience with moral victories.” He picked fights that he could win on the grounds that not all injustices could be righted.42

  Chávez

  Although the younger Alinsky had been prepared to cast himself in the role of heroic organizer, the elder Alinsky was more wary of the notion. The people who grasped power and its uses were rarely pure in their motives, if only because they enjoyed the rough and tumble of politics. That could make them devious and cynical, relishing their notoriety, as he certainly did. An awareness of imperfection was to be preferred to a claim of perfection. In this regard, he worried about Cesar Chávez, a man whose work he supported. Chávez had been hired in the early 1950s by Fred Ross, who was running the Alinsky-sponsored Community Service Organization in California to promote voter registration and workers’ rights among Mexican farm workers. A decade later, Chávez left to form what became the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). He was a follower of Gandhi, adopting methods such as fasting and pilgrimages and insisting on nonviolence. In the spring of 1966 he led farm workers in a march from Delano to Sacramento, the California state capital. This was combined with a campaign for a nationwide boycott of Californian grapes. Alinsky was skeptical, but the boycott gained widespread support. It lasted five years and ended in victory: higher wages and rights to organize unions enshrined in law.

  Traditional unions were wary of migrant workers, who were presented as threats to white employment. An earlier attempt by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)43 to organize farm workers failed because the leadership did not understand local conditions or speak Spanish and instead relied on familiar models from old labor campaigns, despite having to work with a transitory workforce with a high turnover. Chávez saw the value of rooting the union in local communities, which offered educational possibilities, access to the church, and added to the tactical repertoire—for example, rent strikes. He could also use the example of the civil rights movement:

  How have negroes won their battles? When everyone expects them to run … they kneel and pray. When they appear beaten, they turn their defeat into victory. They use only what they have, their bodies and their courage … We farm workers have the same weapons—our bodies and our courage … The day we farm workers apply this lesson with the same courage as they have shown in Alabama and Mississippi—on that day, the misery of the farm workers will come to an end.44

  Chávez’s strategy put him at the center of his movement. An iconic moment came in 1968 when his people were wearying of a long strike that appeared to be going nowhere, and the value of nonviolence was being questioned. He embarked on a fast to reassert his authority, spiritual more than coercive, and to demonstrate the power of suffering. His penitence was presented as a response to those in the union who had spoken of violence. Mexican Catholics appreciated the symbolism and saw him to be suffering on their behalf. With ministers in attendance, the fast became a religious event. It had a galvanizing effect on the workers, many of whom made their own pilgrimages to the site of the fast.

  The advantages gained in strengthening union support were further reinforced when the grape growers, who apparently believed that the fast was a fraud, decided to issue an injunction against the union’s tactics at this point. This provided a frail Chávez with a perfect opportunity to turn up in the courtroom, attended by thousands of praying supporters. When he ended his fast after twenty-five days (one day more than Gandhi’s longest fast) he did so after an ecumenical service with a piece of bread handed to him by Senator Robert Kennedy (about to declare his candidacy for the presidency). A minister read Chavez’s speech:

  I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men.45

  Alinsky was wary of piety. He told Chávez that he found the fast “embarrassing.” Nor was he impressed by Chávez’s insistence on living on a low wage, ensuring an appropriate level of suffering, when he had a family to support. Eventually Chávez’s insistence that UFW staff all work on a subsistence wage became a source of discontent.46

  One of those who worked with Chávez, Marshall Ganz, observed the importance of the initial motivation as a source of strategic creativity. Strategy did not come first but followed the commitment to act, which inspired “concentration, enthusiasm, risk taking, persistence, and learning.” The intense interest in the problem at hand encouraged critical thinking, challenging expectations and contexts.47 Chávez provided the impetus, but he also had a view of organization that depended on strong leadership, and in which the people who did the work made the decisions. This was far removed from participatory democracy, or any sort of democracy, really. Building a movement and running an organization were two different activities. In the latter role Chávez became autocratic and eccentric, eventually leaving the UFW in disarray. Chávez remained an inspirational figure, and many of the alumni of the UFW went on to play important roles in other social movements. Nonetheless, he ended up destroying his own creation by purging insufficiently sycophantic staff.48

  Imperfect Communities

  The natural imperfections of human beings were reflected in the rank and file as well as the leaders. Perhaps Alinsky’s most bitter lesson was that there was no natural coincidence of views between politically aware outside organizers and the communities they urged to seize power. After 1945, the collective efforts of the revitalized Back of the Yards community were devoted to keeping out blacks. As von Hoffman observed, once the area had been rebuilt and revitalized it became “a stable rock of racial exclusion.” There was now something to defend. Even people who were not actively racist still believed that blacks coming into the community “were harbingers of slumification, crime, bad schools and punishing drops in real estate values.”49

  In his last interview (where he was described as one “who looks like an accountant and talks like a stevedore”), Alinsky recognized somewhat ruefully the irony of this and a less-than-romantic view of “the people.” When he arrived at the Back of the Yards in the late 1930s, it was already “a cesspool of hate; the Poles, Slovaks, Germans, Negroes, Mexicans and Lithuanians all hated each other and all of them hated the Irish, who returned the sentiment in spades.” As he diagnosed the problem, it was one of “dreams of a better world” being replaced by “nightmares of fear—fear of change, fear of losing their material goods, fear of blacks.” He was thinking “of moving back into the area and organizing a new movement to overthrow the one I built 25 years ago.” He still thought it was
right to help people escape from “filth and poverty and despair,” even if they now shared the “establishment’s prejudices.” Just because the “have-nots exist in despair, discrimination and deprivation” did “not automatically endow them with any special qualities of charity, justice, wisdom, mercy or moral purity.” They were just ordinary people with all the normal weaknesses.

  History is like a relay race of revolutions; the torch of idealism is carried by one group of revolutionaries until it too becomes an establishment, and then the torch is snatched up and carried on the next leg of the race by a new generation of revolutionaries. The cycle goes on and on, and along the way the values of humanism and social justice the rebels champion take shape and change and are slowly implanted in the minds of all men even as their advocates falter and succumb to the materialistic decadence of the prevailing status quo.

  During the 1960s, such sentiments ensured that Alinsky was a popular speaker on campuses. He argued for radical, though not revolutionary, change and the redistribution of power. And he did not pretend that it would be easy or straightforward: “Change means movement; movement means friction; friction means heat; heat means controversy.” Yet he had little affinity with the leaders of the New Left. In the summer of 1964, a meeting was arranged between Alinsky and a few of the key figures in SDS, including Tom Hayden and Todd Gitlin. It did not go well. Alinsky was dismissive. Little would be achieved without leadership and hierarchy, and it was naïve to suppose that the poor wanted anything other than the lifestyles that these middle class youngsters were rejecting.50 For Alinsky, being the underdog was a liability to be overcome rather than a badge of honor.

  Alinsky’s skepticism also extended to Martin Luther King, Jr., although he admired his achievements and copied some of his tactics. There was an attempt to get them to join forces when King came to Chicago in 1966, but they never met. Alinsky was resistant, wary of such a celebrity entering his home base, especially as he had made a deliberate decision not to try to campaign in the South, where he suspected he would be neither welcome nor effective. He was not one to take second place, even to a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he also questioned whether a southern preacher could succeed in this setting. Alinsky appreciated that the civil rights movement’s basic approach was similar to his own, in terms of using direct action to dramatize key issues. The key to its success, he thought, was the stupidity of the southern establishment and international pressure. “A Bull Connor with his police dogs and fire hoses down in Birmingham did more to advance civil rights than the civil rights fighters themselves.”51 Alinsky had always insisted on proper organization, and his people noticed the difference with King’s entourage. Some were “very talented and some crazy as hoot owls,” but too many spent time bickering with each other, seeking to get close to King. The leadership never fired anyone and exercised no control over spending.52

  Bayard Rustin had argued vehemently with King about Chicago, warning him about the harsh, cynical culture of the northern ghettoes and the complexity of city politics, especially the formidable machine of Mayor Michael Daley. Life was often tough, but blacks were not excluded from the political process and local conditions were less simple than the morality play that had been played out in the South. In one row Rustin told King that he did not know what Chicago was like. “You’re going to be wiped out.” King ended the argument by saying that he was going to pray and consult with the Lord. Rustin was furious. “This business of King talking to God and God talking to King,” he complained was no way to resolve serious strategic questions.53 Rustin’s misgivings were justified. King received a hostile reception and failed to gather any momentum behind his campaign. Rather than choosing a single issue around which to mobilize, nothing was precluded and any issue might be picked up. In other words, the campaign lacked focus. The aim was to draw a number of potential constituents, from slum dwellers to the unemployed to students, into activity and then escalate into a mass movement that could take dramatic action. Financial difficulties, poor local leadership, distractions in the South, and the complexities of which Rustin had warned all meant that King’s campaign never acquired momentum.

  Alinsky demonstrated what could be done with community organization but also the limits of a bottom-up approach. Battles could be won and lives improved, but the results were bound to be disillusioning if set against romantic notions about what the people might achieve collectively once mobilized. The people, especially those with tough lives, had their own priorities and ways of coping. Only on occasion did these coincide with those of activists. Moreover, few campaigns could have the moral clarity of the civil rights movement, which put the establishment on the spot from the start. It was impossible in a liberal society to argue against the principle of desegregation, so the only issues were about pace and method. Other issues were more complex, both analytically and ethically. In addition, as Rustin began to argue forcefully, the changes sought—whether in civil rights or addressing the causes of poverty—required support from central government. Merely raging against the system resulted in largely unproductive consequences for the people on whose behalf the activists claimed to be raging.

  CHAPTER 25 Black Power and White Anger

  We had fed the heart on fantasies,

  The heart’s grown brutal from the fare;

  More Substance in our enmities

  Than in our love.

  —William Butler Yeats, “The Stare’s Nest by My Window”

  IN THE ABSENCE of perceptible progress, the consequences of the reluctance to accept compromise and forge coalitions lay either in disillusionment and apathy or else anger and more extreme policies. This could be seen in the swift evolution of the SNCC during the course of the 1960s. SNCC’s founding statement affirmed “the philosophical ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presumption of our belief, and the manner of our action.” This affirmation became strained as the SNCC activists became impatient, uncertain about what they were achieving for their pains, frustrated at the limits of their open and inclusive political style and with the restraint required by a nonviolent philosophy. They were told to play safe to keep the support of white liberals, even as the Democrats refused to disown racist politicians. They became suspicious, not only of the segregationists and police, but also of the elitism of Martin Luther King.

  In the North there was already a more radical aspect to black politics. For example, Malcolm X, who converted to the Nation of Islam while in jail and became its most prominent and charismatic figure, provided a striking contrast to King’s Christian message of love and peace. Malcolm X proclaimed black separatism, denounced whites as devils, and refused to reject violence. Self-defense, he insisted, was not really violence but “intelligence.” He spoke in ways that King could not to the disaffected and frustrated blacks of the inner cities. The civil rights leaders rebuked him for stirring up racial hatred and playing to white stereotypes of blacks. Eventually he did have a change of heart. He continued to push for a distinctively black consciousness but left the Nation of Islam in 1964 and moderated his rhetoric. He was murdered soon after, in February 1965.1

  A more distant influence with a clearer message was Frantz Fanon. His views developed through his encounters with French colonialism and culminated in his time in Algeria, where he went as a psychiatrist before joining the National Liberation Front (FLN). His main testament, Wretched of the Earth, was written in 1961 as he was dying from leukemia. It was later argued that the English translation of this book, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction, sharpened the tone, more so than Fanon intended. His insights on colonial conditions were played down as a result of the stress on violence as the only strategic language that colonizers recognized.2 The psychiatrist in him offered an existentialist take on violence, providing the book’s intensity.

  Fanon picked up on Sartre’s claim that it was not the Jewish character that provoked anti-Semitism but instead “the anti-Semite creates the Jew,” and so argued that “the settler”
had “brought the native into existence and perpetuates his existence.”3 Violence was a means of escaping from this psychological as well as physical domination. “At the level of the individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees him from his inferiority complex and restores his self-respect … the colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence.” Sartre added: “The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through the force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and comes to know himself in that he himself creates himself.”4 The philosopher Hannah Arendt suspected that most of Fanon’s admirers had not gone beyond his first chapter—“Concerning Violence”—for later he showed awareness of how “unmixed and total brutality” would lead “to the defeat of the movement within a few weeks.” She was most appalled by Sartre’s claim to be a Marxist while espousing notions that owed more to Nechayev and Bakunin, and his excitement over what might be achieved by “mad fury” and “volcanic outbursts.”5