PLAYBOY: You seem optimistic. But most
radicals and some liberals have expressed fear that we're heading into
a new era of repression and privacy invasion. Are their fears exaggerated,
or is there a real danger of America becoming a police state?
ALINSKY: Of course there's that
danger, as this whole national fetish for law and order indicates. But
the thing to do isn't to succumb to despair and just sit in a corner wailing,
but to go out and fight those fascist trends and build a mass constituency
that will support progressive causes. Otherwise all your moaning about
a police state will just be a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's one of the
reasons I'm directing all my efforts today to organizing the middle class,
because that's the arena where the future of this country will be decided.
And I'm convinced that once the middle class recognizes its real enemy
-- the megacorporations that control the country and pull the strings on
puppets like Nixon and Connally -- it will mobilize as one of the most
effective instruments for social change this country has ever known. And
once mobilized, it will be natural for it to seek out allies among the
other disenfranchised -- blacks, chicanos, poor whites.
It's to that cause I plan to devote
the remaining years of my life. It won't be easy, but we can win. No matter
how bad things may look at a given time, you can't ever give up. We're
living in one of the most exciting periods of human history, when new hopes
and dreams are crystallizing even as the old certainties and values are
dissolving. It's a time of great danger, but also of tremendous potential.
My own hopes and dreams still burn as brightly in 1972 as they did in 1942.
A couple of years ago I sat down to write a new introduction to Reveille
for Radicals, which was first published in 1946, and I started to write:
"As I look back upon my youth. . . ." But the words stuck, because I don't
really feel a day older. I guess having been out in the front lines of
conflict for most of my life, I just haven't had the time to grow older.
Anyway, death usually comes suddenly and unexpectedly to people in my line
of work, so I don't worry about it. I'm just starting my 60s now
and I suppose one of these days I'll cop it -- one way or another -- but
until then I'll keep on working and fighting and having myself a hell of
a good time.
PLAYBOY: Do you think much about death?
ALINSKY: No, not anymore. There
was a period when I did, but then suddenly it came to me, not as an intellectual
abstraction. but as a deep gut revelation, that someday I was going to
die. That might sound silly, because it's so obvious, but there are very
few people under 40 who realize that there is really a final cutoff point
to their existence, that no matter what they do their light is someday
going to be snuffed out. But once you accept your own mortality on the
deepest level, your life can take on a whole new meaning. If you've learned
anything about life, you won't care any more about how much money you've
got or what people think of you, or whether you're successful or unsuccessful,
important or insignificant. You just care about living every day to the
full, drinking in every new experience and sensation as eagerly as a child,
and with the same sense of wonder.
PLAYBOY: Having accepted your own mortality,
do you believe in any kind of afterlife?
ALINSKY: Sometimes it seems to
me that the question people should ask is not "Is there life after death?"
but "Is there life after birth?" I don't know whether there's anything
after this or not. I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other and
I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man's obsession
with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own
mortality. Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything
to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.
PLAYBOY: Why?
ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven
for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're
a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're
short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots
over there.
PLAYBOY: Why them?
ALINSKY: They're my kind of people. |