Grassroots pressure on large organizations will grow. Studying Alinsky's rules and developing counteractive strategies can level the playing field, especially during high profile public debate and decisionmaking.
Here are eight of Alinsky's 13 Rules for Radicals. They take advantage of the patterns of weakness and repeated mistakes large organizations make.
1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. Feeling secure stiffens the backbone.
3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There's no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy. They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They'll even suggest better ones.
7. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. Keep trying new tactics to keep the opposition off balance. As the enemy masters one approach, hit them with something new.
8. Pick the target (say a Frank Lorenzo) and freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions. People hurt faster than institutions.
This sampling of Alinsky's rules illustrates why opposition groups enjoy opposing you and why corporations fail to win. Simply put, large organizations are never as committed to victory as their opposition is committed to defeating them. There are no surprises here, just unprepared organizations.
NOTHING NEW: HOMELESSNESS IS FUELED BY A "PREOWNED" WORLD
When you are neither a predator nor a slave, an "owner" or an "owned" . . .
it's easy to become homeless . . . in a "preowned" world.
We pay a price for cramming more
apart~meants in a dronezone.
So much power utilization . . .
yet our psyches remain in the dark.
Jim Stephens, founder of Food for Thought, the grass-roots feeding program for the homeless, was arested Monday morning for allegedly distributing food without a health permit.
Stephens, 35, was arrested by San Diego police in the University Towne Center area on a warrant for serving food without a health permit. He was being held in county jail yesterday, with bail set at $5,000.
