she seems keen on going after this "saul alinsky" character, instead of foucault. but, as far as i can tell, she's tearing down a strawman.

....because in all of my years of organizing and agitating out here on the radical left, i've actually never heard anybody talk about saul alinsky. we talk about foucault, we talk about chomsky, we talk about davis, we talk about the black panthers, etc, but alinsky is just not an influence, anywhere, at all. i've never read anything he's written, and i've never seen him cited by anybody except the news papers trying to smear obama with him.

maybe it's a problem of distance, a problem of degrees to the left; maybe saul alinsky is the opponent to the right of my opponents on the right and so i'm firewalled from him in a realistic sense, but, whatever it is, this is a discussion that isn't real to me.

i'm also beginning to realize that the text is being written almost solely from a reformist perspective, and that "progressive reformist" would not be considered an insult by the author, but rather an acceptable identity. see, i guess we'll have to see what the democratic socialists of america think about this, but maybe i'm operating on a misunderstanding: i would assume that people walking into a dsa meeting would consider themselves a good distance to the left of anybody calling themselves a progressive, and that they would consequently consider somebody identifying as a "progressive reformist" to be more of an opponent than an, at best, temporary ally. i could be wrong on that point. i guess we'll see the reaction.