--- title: Who Was Saul Alinsky,? Carson, Clinton and What to Know description: The late activist graced headlines once again after Ben Carson's speech at the convention cited Alinsky as one of Hillary Clinton's mentors canonical: https://time.com/4415300/ben-carson-saul-alinsky-hillary-clinton/ author: Mahita Gajanan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-20T20:18:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T23:24:18.785Z article:section: History og:title: Who Was Saul Alinsky? og:description: The late activist is back in the headlines thanks to Ben Carson og:url: https://time.com/4415300/ben-carson-saul-alinsky-hillary-clinton/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte688e7fbea1f7c50/69889ccef887dccc03e96b27/saul-alinsky.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3001 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Saul Alinsky og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Who Was Saul Alinsky? twitter:description: The late activist is back in the headlines thanks to Ben Carson twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte688e7fbea1f7c50/69889ccef887dccc03e96b27/saul-alinsky.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ben Carson Said Saul Alinsky Was Hillary Clinton's Hero. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Jul 20, 2016 8:18 PM UTC  Saul Alinsky, a professional organizer with a strong aversion to welfare programs, is pictured on a street on Chicago?s south side, on Feb. 16, 1966. Saul Alinsky, a professional organizer with a strong aversion to welfare programs, is pictured on a street on Chicago?s south side, on Feb. 16, 1966.AP by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Jul 20, 2016 8:18 PM UTC Saul Alinsky graced headlines on Wednesday, after retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson named him as one of Hillary Clinton’s mentors and heroes in a [speech to the Republican convention](http://time.com/4414254/republican-convention-ben-carson-speech-transcript-video/) the night before. “And, her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone that she greatly admired and that affected all of her philosophies subsequently,” the former presidential candidate told the crowd. “Let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky. He wrote a book called, _Rules for Radicals_. On the dedication page it acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.” Alinsky’s [book](https://books.google.com/books?id=VIH0UbZ8qU4C&dq=rules+for+radicals&source=gbs%5Fnavlinks%5Fs), while it does contain an epigram that [quotes Alinsky himself referring to](http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/beck-rules-3.jpg) Lucifer as “the first radical,” is dedicated “to Irene,” his wife. But Alinsky, a community activist who wrote about organizational tactics for grassroots groups, was in fact the [subject](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/politics/05clinton.html?%5Fr=0) of Clinton’s 1969 senior thesis at Wellesley—and clearly remains to this day a subject of much debate. So, who was Saul Alinsky, and what did he do? TIME’s [first reporting](http://time.com/vault/issue/1939-07-24/page/1/) on Alinsky, who was born in 1909, goes all the way back to 1939, when he was named as the organizer of the Back-of-the-Yards Neighborhood Council, a pro-labor and anti-fascist group that had been brought together by the Chicago native and University of Chicago graduate—who, the magazine noted, “once lived with the Capone gang” for social research. At that point, Alinsky had been getting involved in labor organizing for years, as part of a career that has been [traced](http://time.com/vault/issue/1972-06-26/page/100/) back to when he first got involved with disputes among miners’ groups. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) Reports from the 1960s recognized Alinsky as for his work in [community organizing](http://time.com/vault/issue/1965-09-01/page/40/) throughout Chicago and the country. In 1965, Alinsky traveled “from city to city advising the poor on how to organize for uplift” amid the “new poverty” that had hit the U.S. at that time. And neither party was immune from his barbs: Alinsky became a vocal critic of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration’s famous [antipoverty programs; i](http://time.com/3659383/war-on-poverty-1964/)n 1966, Alinsky [called the War on Poverty](http://time.com/vault/issue/1966-05-13/page/1/) “a prize piece of political pornography.” But it was in 1970, in [an essay](http://time.com/vault/issue/1970-03-02/spread/60/) called “Radical Saul Alinsky: Prophet of Power to the People,” that TIME attempted to distill the Alinsky mythos: --- > “” --- At the time, Alinsky’s goals were to build power and share it with others—and not only people who were most obviously in need of it. “Although he has largely helped the very poor, he has begun to teach members of the alienated middle classes how to use power to combat increasingly burdensome taxes and pollution,” the profile noted. Alinsky was never one to shy away from conflict. To prove a point about the need for better city sanitation services in poor neighborhoods, he had garbage brought to an alderman’s house and rats to city hall. Some saw his tactics as evidence of that he was a bit of a jokester, who had mastered the [technique of complaining](http://time.com/vault/issue/1972-07-03/page/34) with “a touch of imagination.” (His influence carries on: this year, Bernie Sanders supporters said they are planning a [“fart-in” at the Democratic National](http://time.com/4412925/sanders-fart-in-protest/) Convention in Philadelphia to protest Clinton’s nomination — an idea attributed to Alinsky, who once threatened the same form of protest in Rochester, N.Y.) Others, however, saw him thumbing his nose at American society; in the last presidential election, Barack Obama’s Chicago-organizer link to Alinsky was used to paint him, as Newt Gingrich [put it](http://time.com/vault/issue/2012-02-20/page/23/), as “the most radical President in American history.” But Alinsky, clearly, was all right being the subject of conflict—and with the difficulty of pinning down his legacy. Asked by TIME in 1968 whether he was a true revolutionary or a person who wanted to work within the system, his answer was a complicated one. “I would destroy \[the system\] if I knew of a better one,” Alinsky [told TIME](http://time.com/vault/issue/1968-10-18/page/72/). “The problem is that I can’t find a better one.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4415300/ben-carson-saul-alinsky-hillary-clinton/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4415300/ben-carson-saul-alinsky-hillary-clinton/"},"headline":"Ben Carson Said Saul Alinsky Was Hillary Clinton's Hero. 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