Editing Saul Alinsky (section)

===The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council===
In 1938, Alinsky gave up his last employment at the [[Institute for Juvenile Research]], [[University of Illinois at Chicago]], to devote himself full-time as a political activist. In his free time he had been raising funds for the [[International Brigade]] (organized by the [[Communist International]]) in the [[Spanish Civil War]] and for southern [[sharecropper]]s, organizing for the [[Newspaper Guild]] and other fledgling unions, fighting evictions, and agitating for public housing.<ref name="Sanders" /> He also began to work alongside the CIO ([[Congress of Industrial Organizations]]) and its president [[John L. Lewis]]. (In an "un-authorized biography" of the labor leader Alinsky wrote that he later mediated between Lewis and President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] in the White House).<ref>{{cite book |last=Alinsky |first=Saul |date=2007 |orig-year=1949 |title=John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography |location=[[Whitefish, Montana]] |publisher=Kessinger Publishing |isbn=978-1-43259-217-2}}</ref>

Alinsky's idea was to apply the organizing skills he believed he had mastered "to the worst slums and ghettos, so that the most oppressed and exploited elements could take control of their own communities and their own destinies. Up until then, specific factories and industries had been organized for social change, but never whole communities."{{sfnp|Norden|1972|p=71}}

In the belief that if his approach succeeded in these neighborhoods, it could do so anywhere, Alinsky looked to the back of the [[Union Stock Yards|Chicago Stockyards]] (the area made infamous by [[Upton Sinclair]]'s 1905 novel ''[[The Jungle]]''). There with Joseph Meegan, a park supervisor, Alinsky set up the [[Back of the Yards]] Neighborhood Council (BYNC). Working with the archdiocese, the Council succeeded in rallying a mix of otherwise mutually hostile Catholic ethnics (Irish, Poles, Lithuanians, Mexicans, Croats . . .) as well as [[African Americans]] to demand, and win, concessions from local meatpackers (in January 1946 the BYNC threw its support behind the first major walkout of the [[United Packinghouse Workers of America|United Packinghouse Workers]]),{{sfnp|Horwitt|1989|pp=199-20}} landlords and city hall. This, and other efforts in the city's [[South Side, Chicago|South Side]] to "turn scattered, voiceless discontent into a united protest" earned an accolade from [[Illinois governor]] [[Adlai Stevenson II|Adlai Stevenson]]: Alinsky's aims "most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood, tolerance, charity and dignity of the individual."{{sfnp|Norden|1972|pp=71–72}}

In founding the BYNC, Alinsky and Meegan sought to break a pattern of outside direction established by their predecessors in poor urban areas, most notably the settlement houses. The BYNC would be based on local democracy: "organizers would facilitate, but local people had to lead and participate." Residents had to "control their own destiny" and in doing so not only gain new resources but new confidence as well.<ref name="Slayton 1996">{{cite web |url=https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=history_articles |title=Review of Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy |first=Robert A. |last=Slayton |date=1996 |website=[[Chapman University]] Digital Commons |access-date=January 21, 2020}}</ref> "Some of Saul's real genius," according to one observer, was "his sense of timing and understanding how others would perceive something. Saul knew that if I grab you by the shoulders and say do this, do that and the other, you're going to resent it. If you make the discovery yourself, you're going to strut because you made it".{{sfnp|Horwitt|1989|p=105}}