http://www.nohillaryclinton.com/blog/blog_images/alinsky.jpg

I would, once again, like to thank reader, Anna, for her heads-up on this connection to local history. I looked into Saul’s connection to Rochester and the Reverend Florence and found this wonderful part 12 of an interview with Saul by Playboy Magazine. This guy is a character, in addition to being a brilliant activist organizer. Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite (my bold):

In the aftermath of the riots, the Rochester Area Council of Churches, a predominantly white body of liberal clergymen, invited us in to organize the black community and agreed to pay all our expenses. We said they didn’t speak for the blacks and we wouldn’t come in unless we were invited in by the black community itself. At first, there seemed little interest in the ghetto, but once again the old reliable establishment came to the rescue and, by overreacting, cut its own throat. The minute the invitation was made public, the town’s power structure exploded in paroxysms of rage. The mayor joined the city’s two newspapers, both part of the conservative Gannett chain, in denouncing me as a subversive hatemonger; radio station WHAM delivered one-minute editorial tirades against me and told the ministers who’d invited me that from now on they’d have to pay for their previously free Sunday-morning air time. A settlement house that had pledged its support to us was promptly informed by the Community Chest that its funds would be cut off if it went ahead; the board retracted its support, with several members resigning. The establishment acted as if the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan was camped on its doorstep.

[snip]

PLAYBOY: How did you organize Rochester’s black community?

ALINSKY: With the assistance of a dynamic local black leader, the Reverend Franklin Florence, who’d been close to Malcolm X, we formed a community organization called FIGHT — an acronym for Freedom, Integration, God, Honor, Today. We also established the Friends of FIGHT, an associated group of some 400 dues-paying white liberals, which provided us with funds, moral support, legal advice and instructors for our community training projects. We had a wide range of demands, of which the key one was that Kodak recognize the representatives of the black community who were designated as such by the people and not insist on dealing through its own showcase “Negro” executive flunky with a Ph.D. Kodak naturally refused to discuss such outrageous demands with us, contending that FIGHT had no legitimacy as a community spokesman and that the company would never accept it as such.

I’m tempted to reprint the whole thing here, but follow the link and read on. You won’t be disappointed. I could add commentary, but you will likely draw your own conclusions about Saul’s involvement in the Rochester Civil Rights Movement and Rev Florence’s rich history of activism. You would hope that the Republican County Legislature would read this and become more familiar with the people they arrest for exercising their rights to assembly and free speech. (That is kind of audacious of me, though, isn’t it?)

(Notice the mention of Gannett and WHAM in the text. The more things change, the more they remain the same.)