If you’re feeling discouraged, scared, weary, confused, it might be a good day to look at Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. A year ago today, I was thinking about the latest killing in Baltimore, the drought in California, earthquakes caused by fracking as well as naturally caused earthquakes in Nepal and a school I love that I didn’t know how to save from chaotic leadership. Today I think about slave labor, poisoned food and water, the Presidential ‘race,’ more innocent people killed, jailed, in poverty, and still, how to save that beloved public school.
It used to be we spent our time in schools thinking about how to teach and run our schools better. Now we think more about how to survive in the conditions that have been created. So far, we have not been able to stem the tide of corporatization of our education system or any other public system for that matter.
Still, I can’t come up with an excuse for giving up.
Saul Alinsky’s advice for community organizers still evokes ideas for action:
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. Teachers give their flesh and blood every day—if we insist on a narrative of still reaching students with education that is liberating, we will be perceived as having power.
RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. When I arranged for a group of powerful educators to meet with our congressman, he showed up late, yawned, had zero interest in what we wanted to talk with him about–only wanted to talk about legislation he was sponsoring. We know a lot about how to persuade people, how to lead them to think, how to organize a crowd. We don’t necessarily know so much about how politicians and corporations actually work and how they make the decisions they make.
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. Teachers know how to use their presence to get others to listen; teachers carry a moral compass that we might be able to use to knock people, whose only concern is profit, off balance.
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. What are the rules of the corporate reformers? Anything for money? Data is a powerful weapon to manipulate for your own purposes?
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. Susan Ohanian posts great cartoons, stupid test items and Duncanisms, and other great resources on her site.
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. What do we like to do? We like to have meaningful conversations about teaching, about kids. We like to see kids learn and think. We like to talk about our content and ideas. These our what we get to do when our jobs are why they need to be so our protest is to do what our jobs need to be.
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. New ways to talk about what is going wrong hasn’t been too difficult since the tests and mandates keep increasing. This year students in Colorado districts take tests from March through May. That has led to new protests and new allies in dialogue with each other.
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. That describes what I see being done to teachers and principals—as soon as they figure out one way to meet data requirements, the criteria or filter is changed. They can never succeed as success keeps getting redefined with more and more criteria. However, we can keep the pressure on and never let up pointing out the facts of what is going on, who the players are, the amour of tax money going to Pearson and other corporations. Repetition of information builds momentum through social media.
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. This is another hard one to figure out. What do we have as a threat? Teacher strikes are sometimes a threat and sometimes make no difference. What is there?
RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. Getting out the facts about the use of tests, the amount of time on tests, the questions on the tests……data on charter schools.
RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. We were vulnerable to attacks on assessment and efficacy. Performance Assessment is one possibility for a constructive alternative to standardized tests.
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. Arne Duncan, TFA, Charter School Chain CEO’s,