After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois

Religious values. Civil rights. The labor movement. Women's rights. Memories, songs and stories handed down. Those are the deep roots of community organizing and nowhere have they grown and flourished better than in Illinois. This book tells some stories that may have been forgotten about Saul Alinsky and the organizing model that he invented in Back of the Yards, Chicago in 1939. What it meant to Chicago and Illinois and to the nation in the 1960s and '70s. How it failed, where it prevailed. And how a new generation of activists relates Alinsky-style organizing to politics and civil rights. From Pembroke to Herrin, from Woodlawn to San Antonio, from the Packinghouse Workers to the Farm Workers, the Alinsky tradition has helped shape the last 50 years of our history and is working on the next. - Back cover.