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A BONA-FIDE ALINSKY “SQUEEZE”…OR PUBLIC DISINFORMATION SCHEME?
by Jane Marple, ©2012
(Mar. 21, 2012) — An article in the Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1970, found agitator Saul Alinsky having jolly good fun “rubbing raw the sores of discontent” into Commonwealth Edison.
At the time, Commonwealth Edison’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer was Thomas G. Ayers, father to Marxist radical and Obama colleague Bill Ayers.
Was this Alinsky tactical targeting of Commonwealth Edison a bona fide Alinsky-style “squeeze” or a “friendly” game of public disinformation between two “Industrial relations” experts?
According to journalist Lynn Taylor, community organizer Saul Alinsky conducted protests at Commonwealth Edison in Chicago in the early 1970s. Alinsky, who founded the Industrial Areas Foundation, recruited members to petition private corporations to change their policies regarding “pollution control,” one of which was Commonwealth Edison.
Alinsky stated that one of his purposes was to “put the squeeze” on companies which held shares in other companies so as to ensure that the stock was used “responsibly.”
Prior to becoming Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Commonwealth Edison, Thomas G. Ayers worked his way up the ranks and was appointed Vice President of Industrial Relations at Commonwealth Edison in 1953. According to an October 1, 1953 article in the Arlington Heights, IL Herald, Thomas G. Ayers began holding this appointment after 16 years of service.
Ayers held this Industrial Relations position for 10 years prior to becoming President of Commonwealth Edison in 1963.
In his capacity as Vice President of Industrial Relations, Thomas G. Ayers surely would have known who Saul Alinsky and his “Industrial Areas Foundation” were all about, prior to the “squeeze” in 1970.
Per the 1970 Chicago Tribune article, Lynn Taylor reports that while having cocktails together, one of the “corporate executives” asked Alinsky, “Why don’t you just stick to demonstrations?”
I just wonder who exactly Saul Alinsky was having cocktails with?
According to his obituary dated June 12, 2007 in the Chicago Tribune, Tom Ayers “led civil, racial initiatives” and “pushed for an end to housing discrimination against blacks.” Just how far afield were the worldviews of Tom Ayers and Saul Alinsky?
I say that because it was his job as a parent to instill good values which Bill obviously does not have. Bill is unbalanced in that he places respect for life lower in order than achieving a goal, in his mind, of creating a more fair life for a culture that has not produced it of it’s own beliefs.
I find it quite remarkable that those who complain of racial biases fail to recognize that race is not a lone factor in poverty, social strife or politics. It is culture that disposes a social order to be beneficial to itself not color. The old adage that you can lead a horse to water but not make it drink is true.
Our nation was founded to allow the results of good social order, culture, to reap it’s rewards while at the same time allowing any others to adopt what measures they might to do the same, or not. Not changing to get better results is no reason to say or think that there needs to be a way to force equal results by means of law. You are equally at liberty to continue to make bad decisions as good ones right up until your bad ones impose on those who have made good ones.
Tom Ayers was a business man and in business there is a rule that the customer comes first. While at heart his goal was to see “equality” among the community, he went about it thinking his customer was right. When I hear people say that a black man must show his blackness or else be called an uncle Tom I’m reminded that there is a culture not a color that is being promoted. That’s fine right up until that culture is self destructive. Watering that horse by force is wrong. Tom never learned that, didn’t teach his son that and the basic rule, the golden rule, must be prime. All other rules of a culture define their people and their successes or failures.
He who fails the golden rule will fail in all else.
BTW if I said it, the rule, I’d be called a religious something or other and dismissed. An honest person can not argue it is wrong so I’ll leave it at that.
http://conservapedia.com/William_Ayers
Tom Ayers failed as a parent.
Alinsky, like Frank Davis, succeeded in infiltrating and polluting the US with communist ambitions cloaked in the message of freedom. It’s hard to believe that even rebellious youth can be so easily fooled by simply claiming such diametrically opposed ideas are one and the same. I guess when compared to the ever present corruption in government, which our founders knew well and tried to harness, it is easy to mistake the process of checking power with itself as condoning bad behavior. The alternative however is, under egalitarian rule, to have unchecked ambition. How many Nero’s and Caesars must we endure on earth before it becomes commonly understood that no oath, no promise or contracted power over another human can be trusted to any others without having a way to say no and be heard? The option has always been to turn to arms when pleas and suffering were looked upon from well fed perches by those who orchestrated them. It then falls to the belief that judgement of those should be left to God and facilitated, as sworn.
A pen said
Tom Ayers failed as a parent
I am curious as to your observation. What prompts it? Not that I disagree.