Saul D. Alinsky

American community organizer and author — who created modern community organizing in Chicago — author of Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals — whose organizing methods became the model for subsequent political organizing on both left and right.

Creates modern community organizing — Alinsky's Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (1939) was the first successful multi-ethnic community organization in a major American city; his method (organizing through existing institutions, identifying self-interest, building power through confrontation) is the template for community organizing worldwide.