Part Five of a series: "What did Barack Obama teach ACORN?"
• Read the entire series: here
What does it take to be a good community organizer? When Barack Obama trained community organizers for an ACORN subsidiary, Project Vote, he taught from the 1971 book 'Rules for Radicals', by the late socialist Saul Alinsky.
Obama calls his Alinskyite experience "the best education I ever had." In the photo above-left, Obama is teaching Alinsky's principles of "Power Analysis" and "Relationships built on self-interest" as seen written upon the blackboard [click photo to enlarge.] This post contains another selection from Alinsky's "playbook of the Left."
Let's find out more about the man expected to be elected President of the United States next month.

• People are naturally suspicious of community organizers
• Community organizers need to stoke common socialist "class" grievances.
• Community organizers must show themselves to be "fighters."
• Community organizers must employ power and fear to gain the faith of the "lower class."
excerpted from "Rules for Radicals", by Saul Alinsky: In the Beginning
In the beginning the incoming organizer must establish his identity or, putting it another way, get his license to operate. He must have a reason for being there - a reason acceptable to the people.
Any stranger is suspect. "Who's the cat?" "What's he asking all those questions for?" "Is he really the cops or the F.B.I." "What's his bag?" "What's he really after?" "What's in it for him?" "Who's he working for?"
The answers to these questions must be acceptable in terms of the experience of the community. If the organizer begins with the affirmation of his love for people, he promptly turns everyone off. If, on the other had, he begins with a denunciation of exploiting employers, slum landlords, police shakedowns, gouging merchants, he is inside their experience and they accept him. People can make judgments only on the basis of their own experiences. And the question in their minds is, "If we were in the organizer's position, would we do what he is doing and if so, why?" Until they have an answer that is at least somewhat acceptable they find it difficult to understand and accept the organizer.
His acceptance as an organizer depends on his success in convincing key people - and many others - first, that he is on their side, and second, that he has ideas, and knows how to fight to change things; that he's not one of these guys "doing his thing," that he's a winner. Otherwise who needs him? All his presence means is that the census changes from 225,000 to 225,001.
It is not enough to persuade them of your competence, talents, and courage - they must have faith in your ability to provide the opportunity for action, power, change, adventure, a piece of the drama of life, but to give a very definite promise, almost an assurance of victory. They must also have faith in your courage to fight the oppressive establishment - courage that they, too, will begin to get once they have the protective armor of a power organization, but don't have during the first lonely steps forward.
Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith. The Have-Nots have a limited faith in the worth of their own judgments. They still look to the judgments of the Haves. They respect the strength of the upper class and they believe that the Haves are more intelligent, more competent, and endowed with "something special." Distance has a way of enhancing power, so that respect becomes tinged with reverence. The Haves are the authorities and thus the beneficiaries of the various myths and legends that always develop around power. The Have-Nots will believe them where they would be hesitant and uncertain about their own judgments. Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.