Editing Saul Alinsky (section)

===Mentoring in The Woodlawn Organization===
With the groundwork prepared by his deputy [[Edward T. Chambers]], Alinsky began mentoring The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), based in the [[Woodlawn, Chicago|Woodlawn]] community area on Chicago's [[South Side, Chicago|South Side]]. Like other IAF organizations, TWO was a coalition of existing community entities, local block clubs, churches, and businesses. These groups paid dues, and the organization was run by an elected board. The TWO moved quickly to establish itself as the "voice" of the black neighborhood, mobilizing, developing and bringing up new leadership. An example was [[Arthur M. Brazier]], the first spokesperson and eventual president of the organization. Starting out as a mail carrier, Brazier became a preacher in a store front church, and then, through TWO, emerged as a national spokesman for the [[Black Power]] movement.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brazier |first=Arthur M. |date=1969 |title=Black Self-Determination: The Story of the Woodlawn Organization |location=Grand Rapids, Michigan |publisher=William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.}}</ref>

In 1961, to show city hall that TWO was a force to be reckoned with, Alinsky combined "two elements—votes, which were the coin of the realm in Chicago politics, and fear of the black mass" by bussing 2,500 black resident citizens, down to city hall to register to vote.<ref>Slayton (1998)</ref>{{fcn|date=June 2023}}

Through TWO, Woodlawn residents challenged the redevelopment plans of the University of Chicago. Alinsky claimed the organization was the first community group not only to plan its own urban renewal but, even more important, to control the letting of contracts to building contractors. Alinsky found it "touching to see how competing contractors suddenly discovered the principles of brotherhood and racial equality." Similar "conversions" were secured from employers elsewhere in the city with mass shop-ins at department stores, tying up bank lines with people exchanging pennies for bills and vice versa, and the threat of a "piss-in" at Chicago [[O'Hare International Airport]].{{sfnp|Norden|1972|p=169}}

For Alinsky the "essence of successful tactics" was "originality." When [[Richard J. Daley|Mayor Daley]] dragged his heels on building violations and health procedures, TWO threatened to unload a thousand live rats on the steps of city hall: "sort of share-the-rats program, a form of integration": 
<blockquote>Any tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag itself. No matter how burning the injustice and how militant your supporters, people get turned off by repetitious and conventional tactics. Your opposition also learns what to expect and how to neutralize you unless you're constantly devising new strategies.</blockquote>
Alinsky said that he "knew the day of sit-ins had ended" when the executive of a military contractor showed him blueprints for the new corporate headquarters. "'And here', the executive said, 'is our sit-in-hall. [You will have] plenty of comfortable chairs, two coffee machines and lots of magazines . . . '". "You are not going to get anywhere", Alinsky concluded, unless you are "constantly inventing new and better tactics" that move beyond your opponent's expectations.{{sfnp|Norden|1972|p=39}}