{"id":15399,"date":"2015-06-19T09:21:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T13:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15399"},"modified":"2015-06-19T09:21:32","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T13:21:32","slug":"alinksy-one-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15399","title":{"rendered":"Alinsky does a one-on-one"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Summer Institute of Civic Studies<\/a> yesterday, we briefly listened to Saul Alinsky talking to Studs Terkel<\/a>\u00a0in 1971. The tape is both an evocative glimpse of Alinsky as a person (you should picture a chain-smoking older man in a suit and small round glasses, talking like James Cagney) and an example of how he envisioned one of the basic tools of community organizing, the one-on-one interview. Near the end, he says:<\/p>\n

I run into you. You’re on welfare, you know, standing on the corner. So we get into kind of a session. So I say, ah, where do you live?<\/p>\n

–Over there. Well, where do you expect me to live? I’m on relief. Where do you want<\/em> me to live–in a 14-carat palace?<\/p>\n

–You pay anything to live there?<\/p>\n

–Ah, come on, you trying to be funny?<\/p>\n

–Well no, I don’t want to be funny. Jeez, ah, the place looks like it’s loaded with rats, roaches, everything.<\/p>\n

–You damn well know it is.<\/p>\n

–Hmm, what would happen if you didn’t pay your rent?<\/p>\n

–What would happen? They’d throw me out, my kids, everybody else. What do you mean?<\/p>\n

–Yeah. [Pause.] What would happen if nobody<\/em> paid their rent over there?<\/p>\n

–Why they’d …! Well, truthfully, they’d have a little trouble throwing us all out, wouldn’t they?<\/p>\n

The tape ends there, but the next move would be for Alinsky to say, “Hey, mac, we’re having a meeting tomorrow night down at Our Lady of Sorrows. Interested in stopping by for a while to talk with some other tenants on relief?”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Summer Institute of Civic Studies yesterday, we briefly listened to Saul Alinsky talking to Studs Terkel\u00a0in 1971. The tape is both an evocative glimpse of Alinsky as a person (you should picture a chain-smoking older man in a suit and small round glasses, talking like James Cagney) and an example of how he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15407,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399\/revisions\/15407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}