Front Porch Republic » Russell Arben Fox

Saul Alinsky, Localist

Russell Arben Fox — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:05:43 +0000

Well no, not exactly. But as anyone who has ACTUALLY READ ALINSKY KNOWS–in contrast to those who simply parrot his name as part of rather stretched smear of anyone they which to paint as dangerous un-American radical–Alinsky was primarily about trying to create democratic, Jeffersonian responses to the pathologies of the big-business, big-government, highly undemocratic postwar liberal American consensus. Michael Kazin lays out the facts:

On the night of his triumph in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich boldly announced: “The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.”….[T]his was classic demagoguery: connect a name that, at least to a crowd of Southern Republicans, sounds rather alien—and certainly not Christian—with a president whom many conservatives already suspect of being an un-American, anti-religious socialist….

[In fact, while] Saul Alinsky often called himself a radical….his career as a community organizer had thoroughly traditional foundations in grassroots democracy and institutional religion. Indeed, it was built with the active support and resources of key figures in the Roman Catholic Church….

In the late 1930s, Alinsky launched his first project in the Back of the Yards, a multi-ethnic, working-class, mostly Catholic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Bernard J. Sheil, the city’s auxiliary bishop, championed the new Back of the Yards Council and encouraged local priests and leading parishioners to take part. Sheil, founder of the Catholic Youth Organization, helped set up Alinsky’s network of local organizers—the non-profit Industrial Areas Foundation—and convinced financier Marshall Field III to bankroll it.

During the 1940s and early 1950s, Alinsky worked closely with another influential priest, Monsignor John O’Grady, director of the National Conference of Catholic Charities. O’Grady liked Alinsky’s focus on mobilizing local people to help themselves and introduced the “radical” to a parish priest who was working with young Puerto Ricans in a poor neighborhood near the University of Chicago.

The Monsignor and the Jewish troublemaker got along so well that Alinsky began to work with O’Grady on the older man’s biography. The book was not completed, but the outline made clear that the two shared a strong critique of modern liberalism that would be congenial to many conservatives today: “…the New Deal was important, it was good…yet it carried an opposite side to the shield, in terms of a gravitation of power and the establishment of enormous bureaucracies which were evil.” Americans should turn, instead, wrote Alinsky, “to grass roots organization and decentralization.”

As Alinsky knew well, O’Grady’s thinking drew from the Catholic principle of “subsidiarity,” which the Church began to develop in the late 19th century as an alternative to social change directed by powerful nation-states. Subsidiarity holds that social problems should first be handled by the smallest, most local authority in existence. As Pope Pius XI wrote in a 1931 encyclical: “It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry.”….

Contrary to Gingrich’s ignorant slur, [Alinsky] frequently quoted Jefferson and Madison and had contempt for young leftists in the 1960s who disdained the American flag. “The responsible organizer would have known,” he wrote in 1971, “that it is the establishment that has betrayed the flag while the flag, itself, remains the glorious symbol of America’s hopes and aspirations.”….

In 1969, Saul Alinsky received the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award, given annually by a coalition of Catholic groups in the Midwest to commemorate an encyclical about human rights and alternatives to war written by Pope John XXIII. Most honorees have been ardent reformers of one faith or another: Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu, Cesar Chavez, Daniel Berrigan, and Jim Wallis are on the list—as is Lech Walesa.

Newt Gingrich would, no doubt, point to some of those names as proof of how the Left can seduce innocent devotees of his new-found faith. But he might find it difficult to criticize the woman who received the award seven years after Saul Alinsky: a community organizer from Calcutta named Mother Teresa.

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Huzzah for the Montana Supreme Court!

Russell Arben Fox — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:59:01 +0000

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Russell Arben Fox — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:22:38 +0000

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Russell Arben Fox — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:09:13 +0000

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Russell Arben Fox — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 02:28:05 +0000

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Russell Arben Fox — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:58:09 +0000

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Russell Arben Fox — Tue, 17 May 2011 20:54:12 +0000

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Russell Arben Fox — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:34:38 +0000

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He Deserved It

Russell Arben Fox — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:15:56 +0000

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS That’s a terribly unChristian thing to say, I know. To speak in moral terms–to speak of “desert”–in matters of war is to invariably invest those actors which participate in war–in other words, to…

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Russell Arben Fox — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:51:36 +0000

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Theses on Unions, Wisconsin, and Other Things

Russell Arben Fox — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:25:53 +0000

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS So last night, the Republicans in the Wisconsin state senate passed the bill which Governor Scott Walker has made the cornerstone of his new administration: stripping collective bargaining rights from most of the…

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Alito Gets it Right about Free Speech

Russell Arben Fox — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:34:17 +0000

As I predicted last October, the Supreme Court has made short work of the argument that the odious, bigoted, hateful, ridiculous Westboro Baptist Church ought to be subject to lawsuits for the emotional distress which their ugly protests cause. No, it seems, the First Amendment triumphs over all. Perhaps that is a good thing–the comments on my post here at FPR ran mostly against my desire to stop seeing free speech treated as such an absolute fetish that communities and states can legitimately empower citizens to demand, at the very least, that speakers of hate be made to accept the costs of advertise ideas so obviously opposed to widely held standards. I take solace, however, in knowing that one justice on the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito, a justice whose decisions I’ve mostly disliked, at least stands firm against treating allowing individuals to pretty much say whatever they want whenever they want, without consequences…and in doing so, I think he’s taking a stand on behalf of the ability of localities to articulate a moral and public order, which of course they ought (within limits; neither I nor Alito want to throw out the First Amendment here!) to be able to do. Anyway, for anyone interested, my thoughts on the 8-1 decision in Snyder v. Phelps is here. Enjoy.

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A (Compromised) Localist Looks at Wisconsin

Russell Arben Fox — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:05:45 +0000

The demonstrations in support of union power in Wisconsin ought to speak powerfully to all localists, despite the complicated baggage they bring with them.

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Libertarians and Others Talking about Traditionalism

Russell Arben Fox — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:30:15 +0000

The libertarian website Cato Unbound asked me to write an essay on traditionalism for their January issue; what I ended up producing was a little longer, and little more philosophical, and a little less political than I think it needed to be, but they edited it down nicely, and the resulting argument in favor of respecting traditions should produce some interesting debates as the month goes by. (Alert readers will notice that one of the scheduled respondents to my lead essay, John Fea, is a one-time Front Porch Republic contributor.) My basic argument is that many critics of traditions rest content in demonstrating that the knowledge and virtue which many (including, I trust, most FPRers) believe traditions to impart to them is arbitrary, the result of random and ad hoc historical construction. Here is a taste of what I’m responding to:

One of the assertions [of traditionalism's opponents] is that what appears to adherents of various traditions as morally worthy is really only a subjective perception of such. Tradition is constructed out of nostalgia and is the result of paying undue attention to isolated moments that can be prettified in our memories. Those who don’t live in a fully reactionary environment find themselves put on the spot: if their lives are in any way characterized by pluralism, then they must acknowledge that there is an element of willful construction involved in how a traditional belief or practice comes to include (and exclude) whatever it does. And that, supposedly, undermines the theoretical force of the moral claim made on behalf of traditions. How, the argument runs, could a subjectively experienced and consciously elaborated-upon moment from out of the whole historical sweep of events be construed as truly serving normative personal or public ends? There is no reason to think that the resulting practice or belief is anything but somewhat arbitrary.

To see how I respond to that, read my lead essay–or, perhaps, if you’re a glutton for punishment, read the longer, even more philosophical version here. Either way, follow it along, if the topic intrigues you; John’s and others’ comments are bound to be worth your time.

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The Kodachrome Era Ends, Right Here in Kansas

Russell Arben Fox — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:45:36 +0000

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]

Today, Dwayne’s Photo, a family-owned and operated film-processing business that has operated in the small town of Parsons, Kansas, for over 50 years, will stop handling Kodachrome film. After they close shop today for the holiday, there will be no other place on earth still handling what was for many years the absolute standard when it came to color film. According to the NYT article:

Last year, Kodak stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye….

The status of lone survivor is a point of pride for Dwayne Steinle, who remembers being warned more than once by a Kodak representative after he opened the business more than a half-century ago that the area was too sparsely populated for the studio to succeed. It has survived in part because Mr. Steinle and his son Grant focused on lower-volume specialties–like black-and-white and print-to-print developing, and, in the early ’90s, the processing of Kodachrome.

Still, the toll of the widespread switch to digital photography has been painful for Dwayne’s, much as it has for Kodak. In the last decade, the number of employees has been cut to about 60 from 200 and digital sales now account for nearly half of revenue. Most of the staff and even the owners acknowledge that they primarily use digital cameras. “That’s what we see as the future of the business,” said Grant Steinle, who runs the business now.

Time marches on, and technology changes. Sometimes for better, often for worse, usually for a little bit of both. My wife, who learned photography while working in a newsroom back when you did your developing in a darkroom rather than on a computer, may shed a small tear (though only a small one, to be frank). Oh well. At least the era left us with something to remember it by, right?

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Russell Arben Fox — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:24:25 +0000

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