Saul Alinsky Quotes
The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change.
Alinsky, Saul D. Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. Random House, 1971, p. 116.
This is not only attributed by reliable sources but apparently Roosevelt had said this on several occasions. The word “radical” has had different shades of meaning at different periods of American History. The origin of the word from the Latin means someone who wishes to change things very rapidly and not gradually. In the time of the Civil War, the majority of the Republicans proudly referred to themselves as “radicals” or “radical Republicans” because they wanted to abolish slavery immediately. In the late 19th century the word “radical” referred to anarchists. From the Russian Revolution onward “radicals” were communists who presumably wanted to change governments throughout the work through revolution—very rapid change. However, in the early 20th century, radicals were people who wanted to reform and regulate businesses and monopolies rapidly and it is this sense he was a radical. But by style, he was a radical in most things in that he wanted to change things and change them rapidly.
This was King’s first appearance on the nation’s most prestigious news show.
Saul David Alinsky was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians and business leaders won him national recognition and notoriety. Responding to the impatience of a New Left generation of activists in the 1960s, in his widely cited Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer (1971) Alinsky defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise involved in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice.
