The Alinsky Connection  

Grist has a "green take on Super Tuesday", looking at the contrast between the Democrat and Republican front runners.

Coming out of Super Tuesday's primaries and caucuses in 22 states, the Republicans are looking ever more likely to nominate their most eco-conscious candidate, John McCain, who was the big GOP winner of the day. But green issues don't seem to have played much if any role in the Republican voting, and McCain didn't reference anything environmental in his speech to supporters at the end of the night. In contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- who are still running oh so close -- both made impassioned calls for environmental action in their speeches on Tuesday.

"I see an America where we stand up to the oil companies and the oil-producing countries, where we launch a clean energy revolution and finally confront the climate crisis," said Clinton, who also praised "businesses who are training people for green-collar jobs" and "the auto companies and the auto workers who want higher gas-mileage cars so we can compete with the rest of the world." Said Obama, "[W]e will harness the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all and we will invest in solar and wind and biodiesel, clean energy, green energy that can fuel economic development for generations to come." And the race goes on ..

Crikey's Guy Rundle has also been following the primaries and was mighty impressed with Obama's latest speech.

So far, Obama's taken nine states, some, like Georgia, he could have reasonably banked on, but in some he's absolutely stormed in, like the 73% result in Kansas, and the 67% in Minnesota. But he's also gained a surprisingly strong showing in New York, taking almost 40% from Clinton -- this all matters because of the arcane way in which the delegates are being awarded on the Democratic side.

In fact MSNBC is now saying that delegates could be a 50/50 split, although with 6% of the votes counted in California, Clinton is leading about 2 to 1. But whatever result she gets, it's a win for Obama – and a guarantee that the next months are going to be an absolutely grueling campaign for every last delegate – including the 22 or so to be selected by the Democrats Abroad primary over the next few days. Clinton spoke about half an hour ago, and she sounded wooden and depleted – as she would, having actually taken fewer states than Obama. Obama's speaking now – the networks cut off the end of McCain's speech to get the start of Obama's, which is about as symbolic as it gets – and he sounds like he just cranked it up a notch.

It's a new speech -- not his stump, thank Christ -- and it's expert, effortlessly moving from the general, to the empowering ("This is not about what I'm doing, it is what you are doing – because you are tired of the failure, tired of the lies ..." etc) and then onto the specifics, the mother foreclosed on, the soldier going on another tour in a war that never should have been waged. God it's a good speech, like Bach perfectly played, every part fitting together, every note struck at exactly the right strength.

It feels like you're watching the moment in the race when the second runner hits the front and magically draws out the energy of the leader as they're passed. You can count off every technique outlined by Saul Alinsky, the Chicago activist who was Obama's inspiration – from the particular to the general, the pregnant pause, turning it round from speaker to audience, the parable that leads to the invocation, taking the story through to the call to action – "we are the people we have been waiting for to change the world. The time is unlike any other. Let's go to work!"

The mention of Alinsky reminded me of this MSNBC article from last year on Hillary's "hidden thesis" (the only time I've ever heard of him) - maybe Obama and Clinton aren't all that far apart in their inspirations. That said, both are hard to make out, as their sniping session a while back (about Hillary being an ex-WalMart board member and Obama being backed by a Chicago "slumlord" - and one soon to go on trial at that) demonstrated. Certainly neither seem to have any friends on the far left, who you would think would still admire Alinsky.

The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended. But rarely has it been read, because for the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency it was locked away.

As forbidden fruit, the writings of a 21-year-old college senior, examining the tactics of radical community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, have gained mythic status among her critics — a “Rosetta Stone,” in the words of one, that would allow readers to decode the thinking of the former first lady and 2008 presidential candidate. ...

Rodham’s thesis describes trying to pin him down on his personal philosophy: “Alinsky, cringing at the use of labels, ruefully admitted that he might be called an existentialist,” she wrote. Rodham tried to ask him about his moral relativism — particular ends, he said, often do justify the means — but Alinsky would only concede that “idealism can parallel self-interest.”

In her paper, she accepted Alinsky's view that the problem of the poor isn't so much a lack of money as a lack of power, as well as his view of federal anti-poverty programs as ineffective. (To Alinsky, the War on Poverty was a “prize piece of political pornography,” even though some of its funds flowed through his organizations.) “A cycle of dependency has been created,” she wrote, “which ensnares its victims into resignation and apathy.”

In formal academic language, Rodham offered a “perspective” or muted critique on Alinsky's methods, sometimes leaving unclear whether she was quoting his critics or stating her own opinion. She cited scholars who claimed that Alinsky's small gains actually delayed attainment of bigger goals for the poor and minorities.

In criticizing the “few material gains” that Alinsky engineered — such as pressing Kodak Co. to hire blacks in Rochester, or delaying the University of Chicago's expansion into the Woodlawn neighborhood — Rodham placed part of the blame on demography, the diminishing role of neighborhoods in American life. Another part she laid charitably to an Alinsky character trait: “One of the primary problems of the Alinsky model is that the removal of Alinsky dramatically alters its composition," she wrote. "Alinsky is a born organizer who is not easily duplicated, but, in addition to his skill, he is a man of exceptional charm."

In the end, she judged that Alinsky's “power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by existing social conflicts” — overriding national issues such as racial tension and segregation. Alinsky had no success in forming an effective national movement, she said, referring dismissively to “the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict.”

Putting Alinsky's Rochester symphony threat into academic language, Rodham found that the conflict approach to power is limited. “Alinsky's conclusion that the ‘ventilation’ of hostilities is healthy in certain situations is valid, but across-the-board ‘social catharsis’ cannot be prescribed,” she wrote.

She noted, however, that he was trying to broaden his reach: In 1969, Alinsky was developing an institute in Chicago at his Industrial Arts Foundation, aimed at training organizers to galvanize a surprising target: the middle class. That was the job he offered to Hillary Rodham.

Though some student activists of the 1960s may have idolized Alinsky, he didn't particularly idolize them. At the time Hillary Rodham brought him to Wellesley in January 1969 to speak at a private dinner for a dozen students, he was expressing dissatisfaction with New Left protesters such as the Students for a Democratic Society. One of his criticisms, surprisingly, was their tactical mistake of rejecting middle-class values.

Rodham closed her thesis by emphasizing that she reserved a place for Alinsky in the pantheon of social action — seated next to Martin Luther King, the poet-humanist Walt Whitman, and Eugene Debs, the labor leader now best remembered as the five-time Socialist Party candidate for president.

“In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York Times," she wrote of Alinsky, "and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life, he considers himself a revolutionary. In a very important way he is. If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared — just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths — democracy.”

Sidebar: ALINSKY's RULES FOR RADICALS - "Personalize it"

Saul Alinsky's rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals"

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Back to Guy Rundle at Crikey, who also has some comments about global warming policy and tornados.

"If you are Mitt Romney you can't say this is a good night."
"Well, if you're Mitt Romney you've entrenched your vote among conservatives ..."
"Nooooo - if you're Mitt Romney you can say you've got good hair – that's all you can say."
- MSNBC exchange last night.

It tore across the heart of the country, ripping up everything in its path – no, it wasn't the Mike Huckabee express, it was a brace of tornados that the rest of the country barely noticed until all the votes had been counted. When the Super Tuesday storm died down, the death toll of the real storm was 50.

I'm not the type to point to every weird weather episode as evidence of climate change – but an increasing number of Americans are, and that includes the insurance companies. Millions of homes across the west's tornado alley and on the Gulf coast are uninsurable, effectively destroying their value. If anything was likely to remind Americans of the last eight years of torpor and failure, it's this perfect storm, the economy meeting the environment, your sub-prime mortgage home you can't afford the payments on suddenly being unsellable because no one wants to buy a future pile of matchwood.

The increasing perception that the environment is getting up and walking around the joint in great big boots has undoubtedly been great for McCain, who's been the only Republican to really campaign on the issue - although of course he's talked about it a lot more in states with open primaries rather than in the hardcore GOP-only zones. Huckabee has also been leaning on the Biblical notion of stewardship of God's earth to carve a furrow between the evangelicals and a policy they regarded as communism not so long ago.

Only Mitt Romney is giving out that guffawing Chamber of Commerce rhetoric ("Hey – it's global warming! Why should we pay for it all?"), constructing the environment as an add-on, a position as 80s nostalgic as big floppy hair and an interesting Peter Carey novel. That isn't the only reason why Mitt tripped – he pretty much screwed up on everything, and Huckabee's relentless southern barnstorming wore the foundations away.

McCain has so far picked up 613 delegates, with Romney on 270 and Huckabee on 190. McCain seems to have been pretty sure it would fall out that way, which is why he spent so much time campaigning in Romney's home state Massachusetts, hoping to land the killer blow. Mitt won that 41 to 30%, but all the pundits have begun the deathwatch. There's not a chance he'd get the VP slot – there'd be a McCain-Noam Chomsky ticket before that happened. Indeed, McCain's in a hell of a dilemma VP-wise, since any choice that might blunt Obamappeal – Condoleeza Rice has been spoken of (though she has such a Bush taint that may be hype) – would simply drive the evangelicals further away. But a McCain-Huckabee ticket would put a man who believes angels guide bullets to their targets, one icy-path-shattered hip away from the nuclear button.

Really I was hoping Romney would get the nomination, because a Clinton/Obama v Romney stoush would be like a grudge match between a real person and a piece of whitebait on a string. If McCain can knock Romney out early, he can start attacking the Democrats and the race will come right in. Unless Huckabee scarfs up Romney's delegates in toto, and really lays a number on him from the Right.

For the Democrats, Obama's performance was very much in the tornado mode, as a glance at the results show. With the exception of her home state, Clinton's victories were all in the 50-60% range. Obama's numbers by contrast were huge, hitting high sixties and seventies in states as diverse as Georgia, Minnesota and Kansas.

The results clearly demonstrate that white Democrats will get behind him – though whether the swinging voters he needs in the mid-west will follow remains to be seen – and Camp Obama is also claiming that they have a lot more scope for fundraising over the next months, saying that Hillary Clinton has tapped out the $2000 maximum on her supporters, while Obama's crowd have been giving in hundred and fifties here and there. Indeed news has just come in that Clinton has put $5 mill of her own cash in (as a "loan") to her campaign, and staff are working for no salary (Bill, it should be noted, has earnt $40 million from speeches over the past few years. Working without pay is like running a garage sale for the Ceaucescus).

The Democrat race is going to go on and on – Hillary wasn't being cute when she tipped her hat to American Samoa in her speech last night. A plurality could easily come down to primaries in Puerto Rico or the currently underway Democrats Abroad primary – although if it gets that close the Convention will be a very ugly fight about credentials, voting irregularities etc etc. That's routine convention behaviour, and not enough to cause a serious rift in the party – unless Clinton, or realistically the Clintons, try to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated.

Both states were stripped of their delegates for moving their primaries to earlier than Super Tuesday, and all candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. Then on the eve of a South Carolina primary she knew she was going to lose, Hillary started making noises about "ohhhhh it's terrible that all these people are going to be unrepresented" and then bent the rules by flying to Flordia for a "victory" party on the night of the dead primary.

If the Clintons made a real effort to seat these delegates, it will sour the entire run. If they manage to seat them, it would plunge the party into crisis. Are the Clintons that crazed that they would put the party through that. Why that'd be as crazy as ... as ... swapping your second term effectiveness for an executive chair BJ, or sending a 6000-page health care bill to Congress, scorning all tactical advice.

Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle also turns out a few witty phrases from time to time, and he is also pondering the Clinton / Obama matchup - an Exxon's record profits - in "Dead soldiers, peak oil and mind-boggling profits; praise Jesus, the machine's still working".

Surprisingly moving Barack Obama music videos? The potential end of the writer's strike? Cute young deer being saved by helicopters? No no no no no. Here are your most deeply inspiring news stories of the month:

A flurry of pink slips fluttered over the job sector as corporate payrolls were sliced like sour pie. Foreclosures are skyrocketing and new home sales across the nation are plummeting faster than Britney Spears' serotonin levels. A nasty recession is either creeping or flooding in, depending on your perspective and how recently you purchased your home and/or tried to dump your Google stock.

Meanwhile, the largest corporation in the world, the one which has consistently raked in the largest and most appalling profits of any organization on Earth, a company so powerful and deeply influential to the machinations of our own nation, our government, the globe, so ingrained and unstoppable that no president, no administration, no nuclear warhead to its CEO's home planet stands a chance of slowing it down or altering its behavior in any significant way because there is simply far, far too much money involved in its nefarious endeavors, has recently posted the largest profit of any company in American history.

Yes, the Exxon Mobil corporation sucked in a staggering $11.7 billion in a single quarter (more than $40 billion for the year, a new record for an American company) thanks largely to record-breaking prices for a barrel of oil, which are of course only record-breaking because, well, the Bush administration has essentially engineered the economy and launched a bogus war and desiccated the American idea exactly so they would be.

Oh yes, two more trifling stories, buried beneath the nauseating Exxon headlines and the tales of looming economic struggle: More U.S. soldiers are dead in Iraq as a result of Bush's failed war, U.S. military spending in 2009 will reach its highest levels since WWII ($515 billion), insurgents have taken to strapping suicide bombs to mentally retarded women and nearly 100 more civilians are dead in another bombing in Baghdad because the U.S. troop surge is working so well. Oh wait.

Do you feel the righteousness? The inspiration? Can you sense the deep connection between these stories? Because the truth is, they merely add up to the heartwarming conclusion that, without a doubt, American capitalism is still firing on all cylinders. Praise!

Yes, the system is working just exactly as those in control of the nation right now wish it to be working, with the most dominant, ruthless corporations in the world (Exxon joined by Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhilips et al) still making the most money in the most destabilizing and environmentally devastating manner possible, while poor uneducated kids die like chattel in unwinnable wars trying to secure a tiny bit more of the source of their profit.

And somewhere in between, the nation's overall health and well-being are sacrificed like dazed lambs to an ignorant god, with our government offering up only the most meager, desultory efforts to keep it functional so as to not induce all-out fire-and-pitchfork revolt.

Is that too simplistic? Too reductive? Not even close. Hell, you can distill it down even further. For if you understand, as most sentient creatures on the planet now do, that this "war" is merely a particularly bloody chunk of a particularly brutal, fraudulent national energy policy spearheaded by Dick Cheney and beloved by Saudi Arabia and Halliburton and most of Texas, then it is no stretch at all to say that we are sending American kids to their deaths exactly so Exxon can continue to make $3 billion in a single month (or: $100 million per day, $4 million per hour, or more than $1,000 every. Single. Second).

Or how about this for dark math: $40 billion for the year, 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers ... that's a cool $10 million in pure profit for every American soldier BushCo has thrown to the wolves of petroleum, just for 2007 alone. Even if you factor in the 20,000 wounded, paralyzed and brain damaged U.S. soldiers — not to mention the record number of military suicides — on a body-by-body basis, you've still got yourself one hell of a sweet profit margin. See Dick Cheney's vile, crooked little grin? Now you know where it comes from.

This, you might argue, is perhaps the bleakest way to look at American capitalism, as an instrument of war and death and gluttony that serves only the most cretinous corporate masters at the expense of, well, everyone else. This is the capitalism of the hard right, a particularly ruthless type that happily sacrifices quite literally everything — the environment, health, human life, God, national identity, the stability of future generations — for the sake of immediate and unchecked profit.

It is the kind of system, furthermore, that brings with it a huge, nauseating sense of shame for how we have approached the world, pouring a vague disgust over the nation like a cancerous sludge. This is perhaps BushCo's cruelest gift of all: tragically convincing us that this strain of capitalism, a furious weapon of greed and disgrace, inviting all manner of corruption and destruction as it brings out the absolute worst in the human animal, is the only flavor there really is.

But then again, no. Maybe there's something else, a flipside we've forgotten amid the insane oil profits and dead bodies and global mistrust. It's the awkward truism that American capitalism is potentially capable, despite its dark core of profit, despite its frequently poisoned heart, of tremendous creative opportunity and ingenuity. Like porn, like God, like wisdom and plutonium and very, very dark rum, it's all in how you use it.

Here, then, is perhaps the most dominant question surrounding the upcoming big transition, as the nation prepares over the next year to finally rid itself of the cancer of Bush: Are we still capable of reshaping the capitalist demon, injecting it, on a national scale, with something like conscience and compassion and responsibility, sans the need to sell your mother, rape Alaska, or bomb ancient cities and kill pathetic foreign dictators in a pitiable attempt to vindicate your dad? Is such a turnaround even possible anymore?

Because this nasty truth remains: Bush or no, Exxon and its nefarious, insanely powerful ilk are ramming full speed ahead, undertaking more incredibly brutal, land-raping techniques as you read these very words to get at the Earth's remaining supply of oil, sucking up tar sand and coal and anything else possible to maintain profit and power. They are, and will continue to be, utterly relentless and, at least for a number of years to come, quite unstoppable.

There is no eliminating the dark side of capitalism, the gluttony and the greed and the violent underbelly. There is only minimizing, shifting the emphasis, changing the pitch and angle of approach, trying to take what is, at its very heart, a flawed and self-destructive system, and making it into something proud and interesting and vibrant, something actually worth defending.

Can it be done? Is it still possible? No matter how many poetic Barack Obama speeches, no matter how many pragmatic Hillary Clinton promises, it's a question that seems far bigger than both of them. And the truth is, it's really the only question that matters.