- Remember we are talking about revolution, not revelation; you can miss the target by shooting too high as well as too low. First, there are no rules for revolution any more than there are rules for love or rules for happiness, but there are rules for radicals who want to change their world; there are certain central concepts of action in human politics that operate regardless of the scene or the time. To know these is basic to a pragmatic attack on the system. These rules make the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one who uses the tired old words and slogans, calls the police "pig" or "white fascist racist" or "motherfucker" and has so stereotyped himself that others react by saying, "Oh, he's one of those," and then promptly turn off.

This failure of many of our younger activists to understand the art of communication has been disastrous. Even the most elementary grasp of the fundamental idea that one communicates within the experience of his audience — and gives full respect to the other's values — would have ruled out attacks on the American flag. The responsible organizer would have known that it is the establishment that has betrayed the flag while the flag, itself, remains the glorious symbol of America's hopes and aspirations, and he would have conveyed this message to his audience. On another level of communication, humor is essential, for through humor much is accepted that would have been rejected if presented seriously. This is a sad and lonely generation. It laughs too little, and this, too, is tragic.

"When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of Communism, We will not take it under the label of Socialism. There labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable; We'll take it under Liberalism, under Progressivism, under Democracy. But take it we will."

Alexander Trachtenberg, 1944 [American Communist movement.]

-Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.

-For the real radical, doing "his thing" is to do the social thing, for and with people. In a world where everything is so interrelated that one feels helpless to know where or how to grab hold and act, defeat sets in; for years there have been people who've found society too overwhelming and have withdrawn, concentrated on "doing their own thing." Generally we have put them into mental hospitals and diagnosed them as schizophrenics. If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich, unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out. My "thing," if I want to organize, is solid communication with the people in the community. Lacking communication I am in reality silent; throughout history silence has been regarded as assent — in this case assent to the system.

-Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families—more than seventy million people—whose incomes range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right [left]. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.

-Our youth are impatient with the preliminaries that are essential to purposeful action. Effective organization is thwarted by the desire for instant and dramatic change, or as I have phrased it elsewhere the demand for revelation rather than revolution. It's the kind of thing we see in play writing; the first act introduces the characters and the plot, in the second act the plot and characters are developed as the play strives to hold the audience's attention. In the final act good and evil have their dramatic confrontation and resolution. The present generation wants to go right into the third act, skipping the first two, in which case there is no play, nothing but confrontation for confrontation's sake—a flare-up and back to darkness. To build a powerful organization takes time. It is tedious, but that's the way the game is played—if you want to play and not just yell, "Kill the umpire."

-We will start with the system because there is no other place to start from except political lunacy. It is most important for those of us who want revolutionary change to understand that revolution must be preceded by reformation. To assume that a political revolution can survive without the supporting base of a popular reformation is to ask for the impossible in politics.

-Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives— agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.

-A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.

@CarletonJ I'll just tell you in DMs. It's not that important

-Those who, for whatever combination of reasons, encourage the opposite of reformation, become the unwitting allies of the far political right [left]. Parts of the far left have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right. It reminds me of the days when Hitler, new on the scene, was excused for his actions by "humanitarians" on the grounds of a paternal rejection and childhood trauma. When there are people who espouse the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy or the Tate murders or the Marin County Courthouse kidnapping and killings or the University of Wisconsin bombing and killing as "revolutionary acts," then we are dealing with people who are merely hiding psychosis behind a political mask. The masses of people recoil with horror and say, "Our way is bad and we were willing to let it change, but certainly not for this murderous madness—no matter how bad things are now, they are better than that." So they begin to turn back. They regress into acceptance of a coming massive repression in the name of "law and order."

-These were students who had been with Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire and followed him across the country. Some had been with Robert Kennedy when he was killed in Los Angeles. Many of the tears that were shed in Chicago were not from gas. "Mr. Alinsky, we fought in primary after primary and the people voted no on Vietnam. Look at that convention. They're not paying any attention to the vote. Look at your police and the army. You still want us to work in the system?"

It hurt me to see the American army with drawn bayonets advancing on American boys and girls. But the answer I gave the young radicals seemed to me the only realistic one: "Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing—but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates."

Postchristianity

-WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

-An example of the political insensitivity of many of today's so-called radicals and the lost opportunities is found in this account of an episode during the trial of the Chicago Seven:

Over the weekend some hundred fifty lawyers, from all parts of the country, had gathered in Chicago to picket the federal building in protest against Judge Hoffman's [arrest of] the four lawyers. This delegation, which was supported by thirteen members of the faculty of Harvard Law School and which included a number of other professors as well, submitted a brief, as friend of the Court, which called Judge Hoffman's actions "a travesty of justice [which] threatens to destroy the confidence of the American people in the entire judicial process . . ." By ten o'clock the angry lawyers had begun to march around the Federal Building, where they were joined by hundreds of student radicals, several Black Panthers, and a hundred or more blue-helmeted Chicago police.

Shortly before noon, about forty of the picketing lawyers carried their signs into the lobby of the Federal Building, despite the notice posted on the glass wall beside the entrance, and signed by Judge Campbell, forbidding such demonstrations within the building. Hardly had the lawyers entered, however, than Judge Campbell himself descended to the lobby, dressed in his black robes and accompanied by a marshal, a stenographer, and his court clerk. Surrounded by the angry lawyers, who were themselves encircled by a ring of police and federal marshals, the Judge proceeded to hold Court then and there. He announced that unless the pickets withdrew immediately, he would charge them with contempt. This time, he warned, there could be no question that their contempt would occur in the presence of the Court, and would thus be subject to summary punishment. No sooner had he made this announcement however, than a voice from the throng shouted, "Fuck you, Campbell." After a moment of tense silence, followed by a cheer from the crowd and a noticeable stiffening among the police, Judge Campbell himself withdrew. Then the lawyers, too, left the lobby and rejoined the pickets on the sidewalk. —Jason Epstein, The Great Conspiracy Trial,
Random House, 1970.

The picketing lawyers threw away a beautiful opportunity to create a nationwide issue. Offhand, there would seem to have been two choices, either of which would have forced the judge's hand and kept the issue going: some one of the lawyers could have stepped up to the judge after the voice said, "Fuck you, Campbell," said that the lawyers there did not support personal obscenities, but they were not leaving; or all the lawyers together could have chorused, with one voice, "Fuck you, Campbell!" They did neither; instead, they let the initiative pass from them to the judge, and achieved nothing.

*Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing. In short, radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events.*

-The basic requirement for the understanding of the politics of change is to recognize the world as it is. We must work with it on its terms if we are to change it to the kind of world we would like it to be. We must first see the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. We must see the world as all political realists have, in terms of "what men do and not what they ought to do," as Machiavelli and others have put it.

**-The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

The eighth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory. The same means employed with victory seemingly assured may be defined as immoral, whereas if it had been used in desperate circumstances to avert defeat, the question of morality would never arise. In short, ethics are determined by whether one is losing or winning. From the beginning of time killing has always been regarded as justifiable if committed in self-defense.**

gotta bail

That's basically what they're saying

-IN THE BEGINNING the incoming organizer must establish his identity or, putting it another way, get his license to operate. He must have a reason for being there —a reason acceptable to the people.

Any stranger is suspect. "Who's the cat?" "What's he asking all those questions for?" "Is he really the cops or the F.B.I.?" "What's his bag?" "What's he really after?" "What's in it for him?" "Who's he working for?"

The answers to these questions must be acceptable in terms of the experience of the community. If the organizer begins with an affirmation of his love for people, he promptly turns everyone off. If, on the other hand, he begins with a denunciation of exploiting employers, slum landlords, police shakedowns, gouging merchants, he is inside their experience and they accept him. People can make judgments only on the basis of their own experiences. And the question in their minds is, "If we were in the organizer's position, would we do what he is doing and if so, why?" Until they have an answer that is at least somewhat acceptable they find it difficult to understand and accept the organizer.

 His acceptance as an organizer depends on his success in convincing key people—and many others—first, that he is on their side, and second, that he has ideas, and knows how to fight to change things; that he's not one of these guys "doing his thing," that he's a winner. Otherwise who needs him? All his presence means is that the census changes from 225,000 to 225,001.

It is not enough to persuade them of your competence, talents, and courage—they must have faith in your ability and courage. They must believe in your capacity not just to provide the opportunity for action, power, change, adventure, a piece of the drama of life, but to give a very definite promise, almost an assurance of victory. They must also have faith in your courage to fight the oppressive establishment—courage that they, too, will begin to get once they have the protective armor of a power organization, but don't have during the first lonely steps forward.

-The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a "dangerous enemy." The word "enemy" is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people, to identify him with the Have-Nots, but it is not enough to endow him with the special qualities that induce fear and thus give him the means to establish his own power against the establishment. Here again we find that it is power and fear that are essential to the development of faith. This need is met by the establishment's use of the brand "dangerous," for in that one word the establishment reveals its fear of the organizer, its fear that he represents a threat to its omnipotence. Now the organizer has his "birth certificate" and can begin.

-Establishing one's credentials of competency is only part of the organizer's first job. He needs other credentials to begin—credentials that enable him to meet the question, "Who asked you to come in here?" with the answer, "You did." He must be invited by a significant sector of the local population, their churches, street organizations, social clubs, or other groups.

The organizer's job is to inseminate an invitation for himself, to agitate, introduce ideas, get people pregnant with hope and a desire for change and to identify you as the person most qualified for this purpose. Here the tool of the organizer, in the agitation leading to the invitation as well as actual organization and education of local leadership, is the use of the question, the Socratic method:

Organizer: Do you live over in that slummy building?

Answer: Yeah. What about it?

Organizer: What the hell do you live there for?

Answer: What do you mean, what do I live there for? Where else am I going to live? I'm on welfare.

Organizer: Oh, you mean you pay rent in that place?

Answer: Come on, is this a put-on? Very funny! You know where you can live for free?

Organizer: Hmm. That place looks like it's crawling with rats and bugs.

Answer: It sure is.

Organizer: Did you ever try to get that landlord to do anything about it?

Answer: Try to get him to do anything about anything! If you don't like it, get out. That's all he has to say. There are plenty more waiting.

Organizer: What if you didn't pay your rent?

Answer: They'd throw us out in ten minutes.

Organizer: Hmm What if nobody in that building paid their rent?

Answer: Well, they'd start to throw . . . Hey, you know, they'd have trouble throwing everybody out, wouldn't they?

Organizer: Yeah, I guess they would.

Answer: Hey, you know, maybe you got something—say, I'd like you to meet some of my friends. How about a drink?

-The issue that is not clear to organizers, missionaries, educators, or any outsider, is simply that if people feel they don't have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it. Why start figuring out how you are going to spend a million dollars if you do not have a million dollars or are ever going to have a million dollars —unless you want to engage in fantasy?

Once people are organized so that they have the power to make changes, then, when confronted with questions of change, they begin to think and to ask questions about how to make the changes. If the teachers in the schools are bad then what do we mean by a bad teacher? What is a good teacher? How do we get good teachers? When we say our children do not understand what the teachers are talking about and our teachers do not understand what the children are talking about, then we ask how communication can be established. Why cannot teachers communicate with the children and the latter with the teachers. {sic} What are the hangups? Why don't the teachers understand what the values are in our neighborhood? How can we make them understand? All these and many other perceptive questions begin to arise. It is when people have a genuine opportunity to act and to change conditions that they begin to think their problems through —then they show their competence, raise the right questions, seek special professional counsel and look for the answers. Then you begin to realize that believing in people is not just a romantic myth. But here you see that the first requirement for communication and education is for people to have a reason for knowing. It is the creation of the instrument or the circumstances of power that provides the reason and makes knowledge essential. Remember, too, that a powerless people will not be purposefully curious about life, and that they then cease being alive.

From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe.[5] Known as paradisus judaeorum (Latin for "Paradise of the Jews")

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25646954

-In the early days the organizer moves out front in any situation of risk where the power of the establishment can get someone's job, call in an overdue payment, or any other form of retaliation, partly because these dangers would cause many local people to back off from conflict Here the organizer serves as a protective shield: if anything goes wrong it is all his fault, he has the responsibility. If they are successful all credit goes to the local people. He acts as the septic tank in the early stages—he gets all the shit. Later, as power increases, the risks diminish, and gradually the people step out front to take the risks. This is part of the process of growing up, both for the local community leaders and for the organization.

The organizer must know and be sensitive to the shadows that surround him during his first days in the community. One of the shadows is that it is just about impossible for people to fully understand—much less adhere to—a totally new idea. The fear of change is, as discussed earlier, one of our deepest fears, and a new idea must be at the least couched in the language of past ideas; often, it must be, at first, diluted with vestiges of the past.

-But it's more than that. It is a desperate search for personal identity—to let other people know that at least you are alive. Let's take a common case in the ghetto. A man is living in a slum tenement. He doesn't know anybody and nobody knows him. He doesn't care for anyone because no one cares for him. On the corner newsstand are newspapers with pictures of people like Mayor Daley and other people from a different world—a world that he doesn't know, a world that doesn't know that he is even alive.

When the organizer approaches him part of what begins to be communicated is that through the organization and its power he will get his birth certificate for life, that he will become known, that things will change from the drabness of a life where all that changes is the calendar. This same man, in a demonstration at City Hall, might find himself confronting the mayor and saying, "Mr. Mayor, we have had it up to here and we are not going to take it any more {sic}." Television cameramen put their microphones in front of him and ask, "What is your name, sir?" "John Smith." Nobody ever asked him what his name was before. And then, "What do you think about this, Mr. Smith?" Nobody ever asked him what he thought about anything before. Suddenly he's alive! This is part of the adventure, part of what is so important to people in getting involved in organizational activities and what the organizer has to communicate to him. Not that every member will be giving his name on television—that's a bonus— but for once, because he is working together with a group, what he works for will mean something.

-It is difficult for people to believe that you really respect their dignity. After all, they know very few people, including their own neighbors, who do. But it is equally difficult for you to surrender that little image of God created in our own likeness, which lurks in all of us and tells us that we secretly believe that we know what's best for the people. A successful organizer has learned emotionally as well as intellectually to respect the dignity of the people with whom he is working. Thus an effective organizational experience is as much an educational process for the organizer as it is for the people with whom he is working. They both must learn to respect the dignity of the individual, and they; both must learn that in the last analysis this is the basic purpose of organization, for participation is the heartbeat of the democratic way of life.

We learn, when we respect the dignity of the people, that they cannot be denied the elementary right to participate fully in the solutions to their own problems. Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises and who are not helpless, passive, puppet-like recipients of private or public services. To give people help, while denying them a significant part in the action, contributes nothing to the development of the individual. In the deepest sense it is not giving but taking— taking their dignity. Denial of the opportunity for participation is the denial of human dignity and democracy. It will not work.

fair

I think White National is a modern description of a notion that has been in place since the founding of most European derived nations

@Bjorn - MD Genetically Bosniaks are but culturally they aren't

Looking more at the US application personally

If a Bosniak were willing to convert away from Islam and change their name if it is deived from an Islamic source, then I wouldn't have an issue accepting them as white

I can understand that, but Bosniaks and frankly Albanians are small enough groups that it wouldn't matter