Hi, Folks -
Found here:
http://quite-rightly.blogspot.com/2012/04/friday-flashback-saul-alinsky-al.html
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AnonymousAugust 15, 2015 at 5:39 PM
In the 1972 Playboy interview, Alinsky described how he organized a gang to rip off cafeterias in and around Chicago. He gained entry into organized crime through his criminal proclivities, cleverness, & cunning.
In that Playboy interview, Alinsky alleges he joined the Chicago crime syndicate to write a research paper while studying criminology.
"I was awarded the graduate Social Science Fellowship in Criminology, the top one in that field, which took care of my tuition and room and board — I still don’t know why they gave it to me — maybe because I hadn’t taken a criminology course in my life and didn’t know one goddamn thing about the subject — But this was the Depression and I felt like someone had tossed me a life preserver — Hell, if the Fellowship had been in shirt cleaning, I would have taken it."
But Alinsky never wrote any research paper on the Chicago mob & may've been killed for even thinking about it. Plus, he never got any degree in Criminology. The only degree he ever got was a B.A. in Archaeology. Do you suppose the mob would let someone write an exposé about its activities? The Justice Department sent Capone to prison for evading income taxes, because they couldn't gather enough evidence to convict him of his other crimes. But an Alinsky exposé would've made the FBI’s & Justice Department's job easy. But that never happened. Alinsky kept everything he'd learned about the Capone crime syndicate a secret until a few weeks before his death.
Alinsky alleges "he" left the mob after two years. Alinsky would have us believe Frank "the Enforcer" Nitti & the other gangsters threw him a big going away party and bid him farewell. But all of us know no one leaves the mob alive. So, Alinsky may’ve have been working for the mob all along as a masterful shakedown artist. After all, what's the difference between a shakedown artist & a community organizer. Alinsky never got a degree in Criminology & openly admitted there was no money to be made in Archaeology. But there was a lot of easy money to be had as a gangster.
Here's what Alinsky also said in the 1972 Playboy interview: "He introduced me to Frank Nitti, known as the Enforcer, Capone's number-two man, and in control of the Chicago mob after Al's income-tax rap. Nitti took me under his wing. I called him the Professor, and I became his student. Nitti's boys took me everywhere, showed me all the mob's operations, from gin mills and whorehouses and bookie joints to the legitimate businesses they were beginning to take over. Within a few months, I got to know the workings of the Capone mob inside out."
The "he" that introduced Alinsky to Nitti was none other than Big Ed Stash, the mob's top executioner. Stash always kept an eye open for new talent.
Alinsky helped the mob discover legitimate (although immoral) ways to make money, because many of the new legal shakedowns were just as profitable as & less dangerous than some of their criminal enterprises.
Nitti was accused of installing Mob members in positions of power in unions in Chicago, but he was acquitted when the state’s only witness refused to testify after gang members (Alinsky?) threatened to butcher his wife at one of their slaughter houses in “The Yards”. Alinsky admitted in the Playboy interview that he was more ruthless than Frank "the enforcer" Nitti.
Later, Nitti was successful in taking over the Hollywood Stage Hands Union in California so he could shakedown the film industry for money. The mob’s protection racket was illegal, but threatening demonstrations & strikes were perfectly legal as Alinsky taught the mob new ways to make big money the easy way. Alinsky hoped the mob could infiltrate legitimate businesses in order to provide cover for its criminal activities.
The old ways morphed into the new ways. And that's now the Chicago way thanks to Alinsky's teachings.
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