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But is it Ethical?

The New Mexico Organizing Project and Albuquerque Interfaith are affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), which was founded in 1940 by Saul Alinsky who wrote:

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical; from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer." [Saul Alinsky, dedication to Rules for Radicals]

Alinsky meant what he said. The "rules" he proposed to his community organizers, taken from his own writings, are not ethical:

• "The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that...the end justifies almost any means."
• "The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics....There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father."
• "The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments....Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means....All effective actions require the passport of morality." [Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (pp. 29, 34, 36, 43, 44)]

Today’s Industrial Areas Foundation trains its membership in the same "principles:"

"All participants in the Industrial Areas Foundation national training programs are given a reprint of a 1933 article by John H. Randall, Jr. titled ‘The Importance of Being Unprincipled’...The thesis is that because politics is nothing but the ‘practical method of compromise,’ only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle...everyone else who wants to be effective in politics has to learn to be ‘unprincipled’ enough to compromise in order to see their principles succeed." [Mary Beth Rogers, Cold Anger (p. 210, footnotes for chapter 16, #4)]

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Will the Church be a voice for morality in the public square?

The Industrial Areas Foundation seeks to organize faith institutions in a given region to create a strong public voice. However, the IAF’s own positions on truth and morality are frequently opposed to the Church’s positions.

"IAF seeks to teach groups like Mexican/Americans of San Antonio to build on and then transcend natural ties of family and ethnicity." [Peter Skerry, New Republic, Feb. 6, 1984]

"One of the worst things you can be is overly principled. Everybody has got to compromise, adapt, change." [Ernesto Cortes, SW Regional Director IAF, "Organizing the Community" ]

"I have always believed that abortion and birth control are personal rights to be exercised by the individual." [Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals ]

"An organizer working for change...does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing."
[Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (p. 10-11)]

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Reaping As You Sow

What are Industrial Areas Foundation locals doing today to use these "ethical" principles? To give a single example, Albuquerque Interfaith has attempted to build public support for educational reform that:

8 Produces inferior academic achievement. See federally funded research sited at: www.parentscoalition.org/resources/documents/seven-reasons.htm

8 Destroys traditional parental rights and responsibilities. The parent is only one of many "stakeholders" in his child.

8 Creates government control over all facets of a citizen’s life by "organizing communities around schools." Schools that are struggling simply to teach academic skills are now asked to regulate job placement, establish a student’s "career track," oversee mental and physical healthcare, dental care and welfare.

8 Pushes its educational reform despite lack of parental involvement or support of this reform. While claiming to represent thousands, Albuquerque Interfaith has only a few, hand-picked supporters from each congregation to back its educational "reform" movement. These individuals say that they speak for the entire faith-based community, but how many of their fellow parishioners would agree?

Why is the Industrial Areas Foundation attempting to organize in your church?

"...one of the largest reservoirs of untapped power is the institution of the parish and congregation. Religious institutions form the center of the organization. They have the people, the values, and the money." [Organizing for Family and Church (pg. 18), IAF Publication]