Democracy is Messy

When I was a work-study student at Northwestern University's Center for Urban Affairs, I frequently came across references to the name of Saul Alinsky, an organizer in Chicago's poor and minority communities. Almost invariably, the name came up in an admiring context, with Alinsky held up as a role model for a way to make a positive difference in the world.

I was surprised, then, when I came across a Washington Post story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.html) that portrayed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as avoiding discussion of their past links with Alinsky or his organizing tactics. I would see such a link as evidence of their commitment to relate to common people. But then I saw the story quoted a Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, as comparing admiration of Alinsky to admiring "some of the people from Germany in the 1930s and '40s."

I'll assume he wasn't referring to Germans opposed to Nazism during that period. So he's comparing Alinsky -- who probably would have been organizing Jews and others to oppose Nazism if he were there at that time -- to a political structure that repressed and annihilated the minorities of its society, and often imprisoned or killed anyone who expressed dissent. How about comparing him to communism, where a government forces everyone to march in lockstep to the tune of the party in power?

No, Alinsky brought together people, who didn't have the money or power to be heard on their own, to make their needs and desires known to an indifferent political elite and government bureaucrats. He held the radical idea that people know what is needed in their own neighborhoods, and that, together, they can work to improve conditions. He believed in letting their voices be heard.

Sounds like democracy to me.