13 TACTICS

-Saul Alinsky

Here are Alinsky's rules for tactics taken from his book Rules for Radicals

Always remember the first rule of power tactics:

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. It also means a collapse of communication.

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule: A good tacit is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing and one's reaction becomes, "Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I’m all for the boycott, but after all there are other important things in. life — and there it goes.

The eight rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The ninth rule: The threat usually more terrifying than the thing itself

The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign. It should be remembered not only that the action is in the reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad infinitum. The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action.

The eleventh rule: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative. Mahatma Gandhi developed the tactic of passive resistance when he saw . he had no other resources than millions of poor illiterate followers. What else could they do but sit down and block streets.

The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right " we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.”

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it. and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universal. One is-that the opposition must be singled out as -the -target and frozen. By this I mean that-in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for. any particular evil. .There is a constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing off of the buck. In these times of urbanization, complex metropolitan governments, the complexities of major interlocked corporations, and the interlocking of political life between cities and countries and metropolitan authorities, the problem that threatens to loom more and more is that of identifying the enemy. Obviously there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks.

The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract such as a- community's segregated practices- or a major corporation or City- Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system.