Editing Saul Alinsky (section)

==="The myth of Saul Alinsky" criticism===
In the summer of 1967, in an article in ''[[Dissent (American magazine)|Dissent]]'', Frank Riessman summarized a broader left-wing case against Alinsky. Seeking to explode "The Myth of Saul Alinsky", Riessman argued that rather than politicize an area, Alinsky's organizational efforts simply directed people "into a kind of dead-end local activism." Alinsky's opposition to large programs, broad goals, and ideology confused even those who participated in the local organizations because they find no context for their action. As a result, confined to what might be secured by purely local initiative, they achieved, at best, "a better ghetto."<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1496177443RiessmanJuly1967.pdf |title=More on Poverty: The Myth of Saul Alinsky |first=Frank |last=Riessman |date=July 1967 |magazine=[[Dissent (American magazine)|Dissent]] |access-date=January 21, 2020}}</ref>

Riessman insisted that it was for the "organizer-strategist-intellectual" to "provide the connections, the larger view that will lead to the development of a movement," but adding—"this is not to suggest that the larger view should be imposed upon the local group." The New Left themselves seemed unable to strike the necessary balance. As they appeared to drift in events of the 1960s, failing above all to stop the [[Vietnam War|war in Vietnam]], Gitlin suggests that the SDS constructed their larger view "on the cheap".<ref>{{cite book |last=Gitlin |first=Todd |author-link=Todd Gitlin |date=2003 |title=The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left |location=Berkeley, California |publisher=University of California Press |page=179 |isbn=978-0-52023-932-6}}</ref> Far from reconciling neighborhood agendas (welfare, rent, police harassment, garbage pick-up . . .) with radical ambition, their reheated revolutionary dogma prepared a "left exit" from community organizing, something that most New Left groups had effected by 1970.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://newpol.org/review/step-america/ |title=A Step into America: The New Left Organizes the Neighborhood |first=Manfred |last=McDowell |date=2013 |magazine=[[New Politics (magazine)|New Politics]] |volume=XIV |number=2 |pages=133–141 |access-date=January 21, 2020}}</ref>

Alinsky's dismissal of Riessman as "a little whining [[Pekingese]]," as someone he "refused to debate with,"<ref name="MobilizingthePoor">Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/OsfxnaFaHWI Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20180211142414/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsfxnaFaHWI Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{Cite episode |title=Mobilizing the Poor |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsfxnaFaHWI |access-date=January 21, 2020 |series=Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. |series-link=Firing Line (TV program) |station=[[PBS]] |date=December 11, 1967 |season=2 |number=79 |via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref> might suggest that Alinsky was sensitive to the charge that the communities he helped organize were led into a political cul-de-sac. In 1964, he and Hoffman had agreed that The Woodlawn Organization was "stymied." It staggered in the face of deteriorating housing, chronic unemployment, and bad schools in a political environment that was unfriendly-to-hostile. Unless they did something, TWO "would go down." Alinsky was not a community-organizing purist. He saw the possibility of an electoral breakout: of Woodlawn helping mount a challenge to the incumbent in the 1966 Democratic-Party primary for the 2nd Congressional District. But Brazier, his preferred candidate, would not run and the community organization was fearful for its non-political tax-exempt status. In the end Daley's political machine had little difficulty in rolling over the additional support galvanized for the reform-minded state legislator, Abner Mikva.{{sfnp|Horwitt|1989|pp=313–315}}