Editing Saul Alinsky (section)

== Early life ==
===Childhood===
Saul Alinsky was born in 1909 in Chicago, [[Illinois]], to [[Lithuanian Jewish]] emigrant parents from [[Vilnius]], [[Russian Empire]]. He was the only surviving son of Benjamin Alinsky and his second wife, Sarah Tannenbaum Alinsky, from [[Vilnius]] (now Lithuania).<ref>''Cook County, Illinois, U.S., Birth Certificates Index, 1871–1922''</ref><ref>''[[1920 United States census]]''</ref>{{sfnp|Horwitt|1989|p=3}} His father started out as a tailor, then ran a delicatessen and a cleaning shop.

Both parents were strict and observant [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox]]. Alinsky describes himself as being devout until the age of 12, the point at which he began to fear his parents would force him to become a [[rabbi]]. Although he had "not personally" encountered "much [[antisemitism]] as a child", Alinsky recalled that "it was so pervasive ... you just accepted it as a fact of life." Called up for retaliating against some Polish boys, Alinsky acknowledged one rabbinical lesson that "sank home." "It's the American way . . . Old Testament . . . They beat us up, so we beat the hell out of them. That's what everybody does." The rabbi looked at him for a moment and said quietly, "You think you're a man because you do what everybody does. But I want to tell you something great: 'where there are no men, be thou a man'". Alinsky considered himself an [[Agnosticism|agnostic]],<ref>{{cite book |title=Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky |year=2010 |publisher=Nation Books |isbn=978-1-56858-625-0 |pages=108–109 |first=Nicholas |last=Von Hoffman |quote=He passed the word in the Back of the Yards that this Jewish agnostic was okay, which at least ensured that he would not be kicked out the door.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective |year=2011 |publisher=Georgetown University Press |isbn=978-1-58901-743-6 |first=Charles E. |last=Curran |page=[https://archive.org/details/socialmissionofu0000curr/page/32 32] |quote=Saul D. Alinsky, an agnostic Jew, organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago in the late 1930s and started the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940 to promote community organizations and to train community organizers. |url=https://archive.org/details/socialmissionofu0000curr/page/32 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend |year=1987 |publisher=Mercer University Press |isbn=978-0-86554-279-2 |first=Deal Wyatt |last=Hudson |editor1-first=Deal Wyatt |editor1-last=Hudson |editor2-first=Matthew J. |editor2-last=Mancini |page=40 |quote=Saul Alinsky was an agnostic Jew for whom religion of any kind held very little importance and just as little relation to the focus of his life's work: the struggle for economic and social justice, for human dignity and human rights, and for the alleviation of the sufferings of the poor and downtrodden.}}</ref> but when asked about his religion would "always say Jewish."{{sfnp|Norden|1972|p=62}}

===College studies===
In 1926, Alinsky entered the [[University of Chicago]]. He studied in America's first sociology department under [[Ernest Burgess]] and [[Robert E. Park]]. Overturning the propositions of a still ascendant [[eugenics]] movement, Burgess and Park argued that social disorganization, not [[heredity]], was the cause of [[disease]], [[crime]], and other characteristics of [[slum]] life. As the passage of successive waves of immigrants through such districts had demonstrated, it is the slum area itself, and not the particular group living there, with which social pathologies were associated.{{sfnp|Horwitt|1989|pp=11–13}} Yet Alinsky claimed to be "astounded by all the horse manure [sociologists] were handing out about poverty and slums, playing down the suffering and deprivation, glossing over the misery and despair. I mean, Christ, I’d lived in a slum, I could see through all their complacent academic jargon to the realities."<ref>{{cite conference|title=Inconvenient Data and "the Problem of Politics"|conference=ESRC Seminar Series: Activism, Volunteering and Citizenship Seminar 5: Biographies of Activism and Social Change|last=Andrews|first=Molly|publisher=Centre for Narrative Research|url=https://slideplayer.com/slide/10398434/|access-date=18 August 2024}}</ref>{{sfnp|Norden|1972|p=62}}

The [[Great Depression]] put an end to an interest in archaeology: after the stock-market crash "all the guys who funded the field trips were being scraped off [[Wall Street]] sidewalks." A chance graduate fellowship moved Alinsky on to [[criminology]]. For two years, as a "nonparticipant observer", he claims to have hung out with Chicago's [[Al Capone]] mob (he explains that, as they "owned the city", they felt they had little to hide from a "college kid"). Among other things about the exercise of power, he says they taught him was "the terrific importance of personal relationships".<ref name="Sanders">{{cite book |last1=Sanders |first1=Marion K |title=The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky |date=1965 |publisher=Harper and Row |location=New York |pages=19–21, 26–27 |url=https://historyofsocialwork.org/1946_Alinsky/1965%20the%20professional%20radical%20consersations%20with%20Saul%20Alinsky%20OCR.pdf |access-date=9 December 2020}}</ref> Alinsky took a job in the Illinois, Division of the State Criminologist, working with juvenile delinquents and at the [[Joliet Correctional Center]]. He recalls it as a dispiriting experience: if he dwelt on the contributing causes of crime, such as poor housing, [[racial discrimination]], or unemployment, he was labelled a "[[Red (political adjective)|red]]."{{sfnp|Norden|1972|pp=62–64}}