About a year after the 2009 Rick Santelli rant that helped trigger the rise of the Tea Party, a reporter from a national newspaper called and asked what I thought “Rules for Radicals” author Saul Alinsky would have said if he’d been told that many of the organizing tools and concepts promoted by Alinsky had been studied and applied by Tea Party leaders. I am the co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Alinsky created in 1940; the reporter assumed that I’d be appalled.
Where our democracy thrives: everywhere
