Finding Native Leadership – Saul Alinsky
Power goes to two poles: to those who’ve got money and those who’ve got people.
Saul Alinsky
I am reading Reveille for Radicals by Chicago’s Saul Alinsky, who is considered the father of community organizing. In the late 1930′s he organized the Back of the Yards area in Chicago and later communities throughout the US including the black ghetto of Rochester, New York to the Mexican American barrios of California.
One thing that he discusses in the book is finding native leadership:
These indigenous leaders are in a very true sense the real representatives of the people of the community. They have earned their position of leadership among their people and are accepted as leaders… To organize the people means to talk with them, to get them together so that they can talk with one another and arrive at a common agreement. But, it is obviously impossible to get all of the people to talk with one another. The only way that you can reach people is through their own representatives or their own leaders. (p. 65)
In contrast, Alinsky complains that many leaders are chosen because they are of the professional class, or they have a similar profile to the employees of the social organizations choosing them. These are some quotes from leaders within Alinsky’s People’s Organization about a young academic who claims to be representing the city of Chicago, compared to a local labor leader, John:
Now, that professor says that he and the other guys with him represent the City of Chicago. What the hell are they talking about? When we talk about representing men we really mean representing them. I don’t know what they mean by their words. Now take John here (a local labor leader). When he goes into a factory and organizes the people for his union he says he represents them. He can bargain for them. The employer knows that if John feels that the workers should go out on strike, they will go out on strike and if John says they ought to end the strike, they’ll go back to work. The boss knows that John really represents the people, but this professor who says he represents Chicago – if he even got into a fight with anybody, who else, outside of his second cousin and maybe a couple of friends of his, would get behind him? Who does he represent? He says "the City of Chicago". What the hell is he talking about? The poor guy, maybe he really believes it. He doesn’t mean wrong, he’s just nuts! (p. 69)
I agree, even though this was written in 1949 and obviously a lot has changed. A lot of our leaders today are not native leaders. They are chosen through administrative credentials rather than through natural leadership. They got there through paper credentials and "managing-up" instead of really understanding the people that they represent. Think about your professional, your school, your political leaders. Do they represent you? How did they earn their credentials? The process of finding native leaders is much more painstaking because it requires listening and interacting rather than reading a list of credentials, but it is much more worthwhile.
* All page references taken from this edition of Reveille for Radicals.
