Radical

In a nation that abhors the word liberal, what a refreshing look at an old-style activist.

When Barack Obama came to prominence as a presidential candidate, his Chicago background—in particular, his efforts as a "community organizer"—reignited an interest in Saul Alinsky (1909-72), the hard-charging activist whose 1971 book, "Rules for Radicals," was said to have had a formative influence on Mr. Obama's thinking. Some critics worry that Alinsky's ideas guide Mr. Obama even today, in the White House. About such matters Nicholas von Hoffman cares little. But about Alinsky himself Mr. von Hoffman cares a great deal. He knew Alinsky, worked with him for 10 years in Chicago community groups and now offers a portrait of him in "Radical."

Von Hoffman, Nicholas. (2010). Radical: a portrait of Saul Alinsky. New York : Nation Books.

Alinsky's activism began when he left his studies and joined in labor-union agitation on Chicago's South and West sides. Before long he was organizing community groups in rent strikes and store boycotts, arranging safe passage for blacks on their way to jobs in bigoted neighborhoods, and conducting negotiations among feuding ethnic groups. He could be daring with his tactics, but he drew the line at jail: "Saul had an absolute prohibition," says Mr. von Hoffman. "He would explain that a staff person cannot operate behind bars." In this respect Alinsky's methods differed from those of his contemporaries in the civil-rights movement.

Emphasis added, for these are important points. Nincompoops on the right, even on the left, dismiss radicals far too easy with cartoonish looks and superficial characterizations.

Battle of Ideas

Running Commentary
By Benjamin Balint
(PublicAffairs, 290 pages, $26.95)

no institution in the realm of ideas has contributed more to highlighting such shared circumstances [of Israel and the US] than Commentary magazine, founded in 1945 by the American Jewish Committee. Of course, as Benjamin Balint reminds us in "Running Commentary," his acutely perceptive account of the magazine's history, Commentary's concerns have ranged far beyond its keynote focus on the America-Israel relationship

The magazine's core founding community of writers—among them, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe and Alfred Kazin—came to its pages having experimented with Marxism and ambivalent about their Jewishness. If their vestigial leftist orientation inclined them to raise their eyebrows at America's middle-class culture, their Jewishness—their growing recognition that, in the U.S., Jews could succeed and gain acceptance in a way that they had never done in Europe—brought them, over time, to a deep love of America. And if their Jewishness fostered an initial hesitancy toward Israel's birth in 1948—for contributors such as Hannah Arendt, Nazism had cast a pall on all nationalisms—their leftist stance inclined them to welcome a communal, kibbutz-centered state run by a European-style labor party. 

Forced to choose between its lingering leftist orientation and an undiluted pro-Americanism, the magazine chose America. Thus it was that Commentary came to its twin solidarities: with Israel, with America.
 

As Mr. Balint's book shows so vividly, Commentary made—and continues to make—an invaluable contribution to the politics and culture of our time. All one could ask is that it return more often to its roots and give us a little more of that old-time religion.

A liberal

Found an article in TheDailyBeast website by Eric Alterman, at the foot of which he was described as  the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals. He is also the author of this Springsteen book (1999), among his other books.

Paul Newman dead at age 83

3 different stories on this great actor and liberal activist from the Times, Journal and NY Daily News.