4 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
S. Lane
S. Lane
5 months ago

Alinsky’s 13 Rules (the cheat-sheet version)

  1. Power is what you have, not what you wish you had. Use the strengths available, not the ones you don’t.
  2. Never go outside the experience of your people. Stick to what they can understand and handle.
  3. Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy. Confuse or disorient them.
  4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. Exploit their stated principles until they break.
  5. Ridicule is the most powerful weapon. It’s hard to counter, cheap, and emotionally effective.
  6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy. Fun keeps people engaged.
  7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Burnout kills movements.
  8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up; keep introducing new issues.
  9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. Fear does the heavy lifting.
  10. If you push a negative hard enough, it’ll push through and become a positive. Backlash can benefit you.
  11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Don’t just tear down; be ready to show what you’d do instead.
  12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Focus attention on a single person/institution.
  13. Power and people flow from two main sources: money and people. Organizers mobilize both.

Mindset Principles

  • Conflict is essential: you don’t get change without it.
  • Morality is flexible: “the ends justify almost any means” if it brings power to the powerless.
  • Organization > individual effort: leaders don’t solve problems, they mobilize people.

That’s 95% of the book’s practical content in a few minutes.

Lance
Lance
5 months ago
Reply to  S. Lane

Haven’t listened to the podcast in about three years. Out the gate Spirko with very salty language. Keep listening to gather the nuggets of truth.