Hillary Clinton's 1969 Thesis on Saul Alinsky
“THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT…”
An Analysis of the Alinsky Model
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree under the Special Honors Program, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Hillary D. Rodham
Political Science
2 May, 1969
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mass of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate–but there is no competition–There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements………………………………… i
Chapter
I. SAUL DAVID ALINSKY: AN AMERICAN RADICAL . 1
II. THE ALINSKY METHOD OF ORGANIZING: THREE
CASE STUDIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
III. “A PRIZE PIECE OF POLITICALPORNOGRAPHY”. . 44
IV. PERSPECTIVES ON ALINSKY AND HIS MODEL. . . 53
V. REALIZING LIFE AFTER BIRTH . . . . . . . . 68
Appendices……………………………………… 76
Bibliography……………………………………. 84